Punch (66.1874)

106

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI,

[March 7, 1874.

AN ALLIANCE OF AMAZONS.

It is positively, if
not credibly, reported
that, within the last
month, the women of
Southern Ohio have suc-
ceeded in shutting up
half of the liquor-shops
in the chief towns.
This achievement they
are said to have ac-
complished by syste-
matically mobbing those
establishments and
their keepers, and per-
sisting in singing hymns
and praying at the top
of their voices outside

the doors. This American Ladies’ campaign against drink and drink-sellers has been entitled
the “Women’s Whiskey War.” It appears to “ work well,” as some journals say of our
Licensing Act; only that measure has been followed by a considerable increase in the con-
sumption of “intoxicating liquors.” What is to prevent the Women of England from

following the example of their sisters in
America, by taking the Liquor Law into
their own hands at the instance of the
United Kingdom Alliance ? A nature not
generally gregarious beyond measure, nor
flighty. The Police, who, if they created a
disturbance and an obstruction, would com-
pel them to move on, and perhaps take some
of them into custody on a charge of being
in that very state occasioned by excess in
spirituous and fermented liquors. Common-
sense, which, in respect of those stimulants,
approves of moderation, and is averse from
total abstinence.

In Boston it seems that a “Woman’s
Whiskey War ” is rendered unnecessary,
or is averted, by the activity of the authori-
ties in enforcing a Prohibitory Law. Not
only have grog-shops been suppressed, but
the Police have invaded the hotels, seizing
and carrying off the stocks of cellars, in-
cluding choice and old wines, to the value
of from £600 to £2000. Let us hope that
they and their employers in this exploit
did not get very drunk upon their spoil.

The Freedom of the United States for
the United Kingdom ! There is a toast and
sentiment for a Temperance dinner. It
could be drunk in toast-and-water.

Instruction for Islanders.

According to news from Australia:—

“ Advices from Fiji state that the majority of
the Fijians were in favour of annexation to British
dominions.”

The Fiji Islanders have experienced, and
had enough of, the blessings of Home Rule.
Their case, and their conclusion, might be
a warning, if not an example, to others.

EMPEROR AND EXETER HALL. FILTER AND FEVER.

The contemptuous observations with which the late meetings in
London, assembled to express sympathy with the German nation in
its struggle against Ultramontanism, were noticed by genteel
ecclesiasticism, will be seen to have had their sagacity attested by
the letter which, touching the demonstrations of vulgar British
Protestants above referred to, the Emperor oe Germany has written
to Earl Russell. It cannot be supposed that this was composed
without the supervision of Bismarck, who must, therefore, share
with his sovereign all the scorn which cultivation and refinement,
combined with a sneaking kindness for Popery, can, in the choicest
language, cast on such an effusion as this —

“ I thank you sincerely for this communication, and for the accompanying
expressions of your personal good will. It is incumbent on me to be the
leader of my people in a struggle maintained through centuries past by
German Emperors of earlier days, against a power the dominion of which has
in no country of the world been found compatible with the freedom and
welfare of nations—a power which, if victorious in our days, would imperil,
not in Germany alone, the blessings of the Reformation, liberty of conscience,
and the authority of the law.”

Of course the shallowness, the historical ignorance, and practical
impolicy of all this will be duly shown up and ridiculed, by criticism
which will not fail to treat the foregoing passage as an extract from
a speech at St. James’s or Exeter Hall.

The following declaration, doubtless, will be unanswerable, if not
conclusively refuted:—

“ The latest measures of my Government do not infringe upon the Romish
Church or the free exercise of their religion by her votaries; they only give
to the independence of the legislation of this country some of the guarantees
long possessed by other countries, and formerly possessed by Prussia, without
being held by the Romish Church incompatible with the free exercise of her
religion.”

It will, of course, be sufficient Condemnation of the stuff above-
quoted to remark that it is written in the spirit of the Durham
Letter and the Ecclesiastical Titles Act. But perhaps, also, the
United Kingdom will be congratulated on not having an Emperor
William and a Prince Bismarck to deal with Ultramontane Irish
Bishops and Home Rule.

“ A Free Breakfast Table.”—No more Reports of the Tich-
borne Trial.

There is certainly some truth in the advertising announcement
that:—

“Typhoid Fever is allowed to be caused mainly by impure water. This
last is entirely obviated by using the Filters manufactured by,” &c., &e.

Undoubtedly Typhoid Fever is allowed to be caused mainly by
impure water. It is allowed, and more, ordained, in the constitu-
tion of the natural laws, it is also allowed by people who, without
doing all they can to obtain pure water, use impure. But this last
is not entirely obviated by using any filter of any kind. Filters
only serve to strain off the feculent matter which thickens water
and discolours it. No filter will avail to purge water of soluble filth.
“ Your water,” says the Gravedigger, in Ilamlet, “ is a sore decayer
of your dead body;” and, when a churchyard adjoins a well, the
drainage which percolates the intervening soil gets filtered already
in its passage into the well from the churchyard, and can be but
little improved by further filtration. The best way not to allow
typhoid fever to be caused by impure water is not allowing Corpo-
rations and Vestries to constitute the sewers, over which they pre-
side, tributaries to rivers, whence people derive their drinking-
water. Typhoid fever is, indeed, caused mainly by impure water,
which flows in the mains laid down from waterworks supplied from
contaminated streams.

The Reward of Merit.

“We Rave much pleasure in announcing that Mr. W. B. Gurdon, prin-
cipal Private Secretary to Mr. Gladstone, has received the distinction of a
Companionship of the'Bath. Mr. Gurdon held this confidential post for two
years during Mr. Gladstone’s tenure of the Chancellorship of the Exche-
quer up to 1866, and throughout the duration of the late Government.”

Will any one say that the new C.B. has not fairly earned his
guerdon ? _

LITERARY COINCIDENCE.

There is a special fitness in most things. As an illustration of
this profound remark, take the fact of the Author of The Complete
Angler being also the Biographer of the great Hooker.