THE DEFENDER:

a Weekly Magazine,

OF CHRISTIAN EXPOSITION AND ADVOCACY

Who knows not that truth is strong, next to the Almighty; she needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious, those are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power.-MILTON.

In their antagonism to the Sunday Beer Bill, the licensed victuallers of Newcastle seem not only to have lost their temper, but to have forgotten their logic. They have come forward as the tried friends of the working classes, and have denounced the said bill as a violation of their rights, and an infringement of their liberties. Under these specious pretexts they have succeeded, we are informed, in inducing a considerable number of men in some of the factories to sign their petition for the repeal of the law which limits the hours of their Sabbath-desecrating traffic. These hours, it would seem, are far too few for their liberty-loving selves, and their thirsty customers; they have, therefore, stood forth, as noble patriots ever should, in defence of the liberties of the people, menaced by the tyranny of a few cynics, who will not 'let well alone.' Pity it is that our drink-selling friends, waxed recently so warm in the cause of Hampden and of Russell, pay no stray visit to the homes of their customers, and contemplate the liberties, aye and the lives, still more precious, that are wantonly and wickedly sacrificed on altars erected amid the glitter and glare of the saloons and gin-palaces of their establishments.

Not satisfied with aping the patriot, they have recently placed themselves before the public as the friends of morality. In their new-fledged zeal they have issued a placard, posted all over the walls of the town, showing from a return, which they have obtained from the Superintendent of Police, how the No. 21, Vol. I.

indictments for Sabbath drunkenness have increased in Newcastle since the passing of the Sunday Beer Bill. This increase of crime, from such a cause, occasions them great alarm and much regret. They tremble for the moral safety of our families! The increase of intemperance fills them with sorrow! They stand aghast at the augmenting numbers that are caught in the meshes of ruin! It afflicts them with anguish that crime should be spreading in the community! And it sits upon them like a night-mare that the police reports should have so many Sabbath cases; and all arising from the acts of meddling legislators who force them to close their public-houses a few more hours on Sabbath than was their wont. They cannot bear the thought of it. They have wept over it in secret places. They cannot longer keep silence, and from the walls of the town they call upon the friends of morality and order to assist them in putting down this crying evil. With disinterested logic they argue that an extension of the time for drink-selling would diminish intemperance, and that the opening of their gin-shops till eleven o'clock on Sabbath nights would greatly improve the morals of the people. We have not rightly judged the spirit of the public if such audacity does not raise the loud and imperious cry, CLOSE THEM ALTOGETHER.

How is it that these gentlemen have so suddenly become advocates of morality? Whence has sprung this zeal for the welfare of the people? They would have us believe that it is because the commitments for intemperance at the Police Office during the last 26 Sabbaths of the present year are an increase of 55 upon the commitments during the previous 26 Sabbaths. Their astonish. ment and horror at the result are marked by two points of exclamation. Without any symptoms of sorrow or surprise they could bear that upwards of 600 persons could be apprehended on Sabbaths, on the charge of drunkenness in the streets, during previous years. This fearful demoralization went on unchecked so far as they were concerned. Their little finger was not lifted up to prevent it. No efforts were put forth by them to stay the moral plague. They came with no appeal to the public, no petition to parliament to enquire into the cause of the wide, wasting evil. No voice of sympathy was heard for the degraded drunkards or their wretched families. They knew right well that enquiry would trace the evil up to their own doors. And do they imagine that any man will now give them credit for sincerity? Do they think that the reflecting public will believe that their new-born concern for the morals of the community is anything but a pretence? It is to the Sunday Beer Bill that we must trace their conversion to the cause of morality. Theirs is the morality of the purse. They know not to what this restriction of the Sunday traffic in intoxicating liquors may grow, or rather, they know to what it will grow, and therefore determine to nip it in the bud. Their policy is but ill-concealed, and must meet with the denunciation and disaster which it deserves.

We take them on their own ground. They are alarmed, they would have us believe, at the degradation of the people, and at the increase of commitments for Sunday intemperance. Now will they tell us where the whole of the persons committed got drunk? Will they attempt to prove that the additional fifty-five during the last past half-year, for whom they show such suspicious solicitude, got tipsy at their own homes, because there was too little time allowed by law for drinking at the public-house? Can they deny that more than nine-tenths of the whole were brought below the level of the beasts from what was supplied to them over their own counters and in their own tap-rooms? Can they deny that their glittering places of rendezvous have poured forth upon the quiet streets of a Sabbath evening those who are a burden, and often become a curse to the community? And will they venture to tell us that the lengthening of the hours for the prosecution of their unholy traffic would diminish the evil? When it was proposed that their brethren, the beer-sellers,

should be admitted to the free privileges of the order, and allowed to sell ardent spirits, did not the licensed victuallers, with all their might, oppose it on the ground that it would greatly endanger the morals of the people? And with what consistency do men who advocate a restriction of traffic oppose a restriction of time? If an opening of the public-houses for a greater number of hours every Sabbath will diminish crime, will not the opening of a greater number of them tend to the same result? But is it not their conviction that the latter course would diminish their gains; and is this not the burden of their grievance against the present law?

These gentlemen who are now so anxious for the abrogation of the Sunday Beer Bill professed to admire and value the clause introduced into the Metropolitan Improvement Act (2 and 3 Vict. 47), by which houses for the sale of intoxicating liquors in the Metropolitan Police District were closed till one o'clock on Sunday. A similar clause, as subsequently incorporated in a local act for Newcastle, met professedly with their favour; and so marked and beneficial were its effects, that, in 1848, it became law to every part of Britain. There is no denying that throughout the whole country the commitments for drunkenness on the Sunday were immediately and largely reduced; and so obvious were the fruits of the enactment, that, in 1854, petitions with nearly half a million signatures poured into the House of Commons to secure the extension of the law to the whole of Sunday.

This loud call was met by a compromise, which the committee of the licensed victuallers accepted, to restrict the sale on Sundays from one to half-past two, and from six to ten o'clock. The law came into force on the 13th August last year. On that very week, Mr. Dunne, the present able and efficient Superintendent of Police in Newcastle, entered upon his office. And the increase of Sabbath commitments for drunkenness in the 26 subsequent to that period, as compared with the 26 previous Sabbaths, arises from the stricter and more thorough-going surveillance of the police under his rule. That gentleman, honourably for himself, has written to the committee of the Lord's Day Society in Newcastle, explaining the whole matter; and it is the height of uncandour in the licensed victuallers to publish the statistics and withhold from the public the explanation.

But were it proved, which it has not been, and, we venture to say, cannot be, that from some peculiarity in the bacchanalian disposition of the people of Newcastle, the diminution of the number of hours for the sale of drink on Sundays has led to the increase in the commitments for drunkenness, our new-fledged friends of morality, the publicans, should attempt a rather wider induction of facts ere they seek the repeal of the law. As honest men they should enquire whether, upon the whole, throughout the country, the tendency has not been greatly beneficial. They have furnished the public with some statistics from the police books: will they kindly furnish some from their own? It might better enable those to whom they appeal to judge of their own sincerity, and to ascertain the true state of the case, were they to give an account of the number of customers they have had on the Sabbaths since the bill became law compared with the number they had previously, and of the amount of their Sunday and weekly gains, as compared with such gains under the former law,

As they have become valiant statisticians, we beg to present them with a few facts which may be of service in helping them to a true conclusion in reference to the law of which they complain, if they have not been brought to that conclusion from their own experience. The Bow Street Reporter declares that the new act has exerted a marked effect upon the business of the Court on Mondays. Hitherto the proceedings of Monday have been almost exclusively confined to drunken charges; frequently as many as seventy have been heard in suecession, and generally about two-thirds of the offenders have been women,

while more than half the entire number have been taken to the police-station after ten o'clock on Monday night. On the first Monday only one drunken charge was received after ten, and on the following Monday not a single case was received, and the prison-van left Bow Street for the first time within the experience of the magistrate without a single prisoner of any kind.' William Corrie, Esq., magistrate of the Clerkenwell Court, states-'In the district containing between three and four hundred thousand persons, the charges against drunkards have, since the passing of the 17th and 18th Vict. c. 79, been fewer on Mondays, and they have not been more numerous on other days.' The Southwark Police Court' has spoken out plainly through the pen of G. A. A'Beckett, Esq., the presiding magistrate, in a letter to the 'Times.' 'Previous,' he says, 'to the New Beer Bill the business of this Court was not only considerably greater on Monday than on any other day in the week, but it consisted chiefly of cases of drunkenness, and of assaults more or less violent, that had been committed under its influence. From the day when the act came into effect I have kept an account of the number of charges of Sunday drunkenness, which have been brought before me on every Monday on which I have sat here.' The results' were thirty-seven cases in nineteen weeks.' The reporter of Marlborough Street Court' says:- Before the new act came into operation the Saturday night and Sunday night offences varied from sixty to about a hundred. On the first Monday after the act was enforced, the whole number of cases, drunken cases included, was only twenty-five, and not a single case was brought to the station-house from twelve o'clock on Saturday night up to Monday morning, thirty being the average previously.' Respecting Marylebone Police Court,' R. G. Brighton, Esq., the magistrate, testifies My opinion is that the act in question has not added to drunkenness in the middle of the week. And I may further observe, that the intelligent representative of the D division remarks that in the whole police district the streets have exhibited a marked improvement as to quietude and order since the act came into operation.' The Lambeth Court' is no exception. J. W. Elliot, Esq., who at first displayed a most unfriendly spirit towards the act, at length writes thus :-' My experience is decidedly in favour of the Sunday closing of public-houses. I have no doubt it diminishes drunken charges on that day, in itself a most desirable object; and I have not perceived any sensible increase on other days.' This surely is no unfavourable testimony from the metropolis; that of the provinces we shall discuss in our next impression.

ENGLAND WAITING.

England is waiting for a 'great man.' During the long peace, since the Battle of Waterloo, she has cultivated literature, science, and the fine arts, and extended her commerce to the remotest corners of the globe. Philanthropic institutions, to alleviate the sufferings of the sick, to relieve the distress of the poor, to promote education among the people, have increased on every hand. Steam and electricity, the wonder-workers of the age, have triumphed over time and space. Yet, notwithstanding all these improvements in her social relations, and all her increased scientific attainments, she has lost her prestige among the nations of Europe-her brave soldiers and gallant seamen almost quail before the hordes of Russia-brute force is ready to triumph over superior military skill, for want of a 'great man' to command and govern, one who is able to magnetize the world.

Wherever a 'great man' appears, he, like the magnetizer, makes himself felt; the world at once becomes susceptible of his influence. Whenever a 'great man' is born he becomes the representative of the epoch in which he lives. The

mind of Germany was in a transition state: 'the controversy as to the sale of indulgences opened the minds of Luther and his party; the Reformation was the result. Hampden's refusing to pay twenty shillings for ship-money wa the turning point in the history of England at that period; the close of peaceful endeavours for popular rights.' Cromwell is born, and becomes the representative of parliamentary power, and of middle-class influence. We may here just take one lesson of him-viz., that true religion is essential to success in war, as in all other great affairs in life. He impressed this great fact upon the minds of his soldiers; his troop of 'Ironsides' was never beaten-we learn they were men of religious principle as well as patriotic zeal, commanded by a great intellect.

There is within us a feeling of reverence for greatness-when a 'great man' comes, homage cannot be withheld; the cries in the street herald his coming; the people cannot see or know too much of him. His face-his form and figure -the glance of his eyes-the tones of his voice-become familiar to them. Washington, Napoleon, Pitt, Peel, and Wellington were know to the peoplethey were street celebrities. The common people heard the words of the Saviour gladly-the glad tidings of the Kingdom of Heaven touched their hearts; they cried 'Hosannah to the Son of David.'

We are in the midst of war, beset with many and great dangers, and, in this time of trouble and perplexity, want a 'great man, not of sectarian, but of cosmopolitan mind, to command and to govern. A Christian man-not an Autocrat--one having the spirit of true religion, charity, and love to all men firmness tempered with prudence-regenerate in morals and manners-having faith in the greatness of his mission, and possessing the power of impressing it upon others.

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Many will ask why such an one has not been vouchsafed to us? We answer in the words of a great author, The government of England is decidedly more irreligious than any other European government.' Again, when speaking of the Chinese Revolution, he observes: Nationally men are judged by the doings of their governments; and as our English government is professedly non-religious, non-apostolical, and it may even be said anti-Christian, in so far as treaties and international diplomacy are concerned, we have no right whatever to turn up the lip of scorn and say what sort of Christians will these new Chinese heretics be? What sort are we?' Another writer observes: At least two thirds of the House of Commons, like two thirds of the English nation, are heterodox.' How can we expect God's favour while we are practically as a nation denying him? What sort of Christians are we? Are we Christians at all? We ought nationally and individually to repent, for we have all come short of our glorious calling. The world is full of deceit and fraud. We want a great man' to regenerate us. If we really expect such an one to come to relieve us of our difficulties, let us cast away from us the works of darkness and ignorance, and put upon us the armour of light and knowledge, that we may be meet inheritors of Christ's Kingdom.

THE INTRODUCTION TO THE MILLENNIUM.

PHILOS.

The language which has been applied so generally to the fair sex, is doubtless applicable to a large number of 'the lords of the creation '-'O, man, thy name is frailty.' Think of Robert Owen promising the Millennium to the Londoners on the fourteenth of May, while the cannons were reverberating from 'before Sebastopol,' and nightly the deadly strife was going on for the possession of a few inches of ground. Imagine the old man declaring for the thousandth time