on a popular day when the shilling
public was on hand? Let some Finsbury
voters inquire of the officers of the
establishment, and they will find that although
the visitors have the privilege of obtaining
as much beer as they like, they are not
in the habit of leaving Messrs. Bertram
and Roberts's counter and running amuck
down the centre transept, or getting up
fights in the Nineveh court, like Drury-lane
ruffians in a gin-shop bar.

Will they ask the worthy Alderman, down
in Finsbury, distinctly by what moral right
he stigmatises a well-regulated place for
the sale of beer in a park, as a Drunkery?
Will they ask him by what other word he
will describe the favourite places we have
instanced, and twenty more of a similar
kind for the recreation of decent people
grossly libelled, all over and about London?

In this Journal, and in its predecessor,
a conscientious and consistent stand has
always been made against the monstrous
extravagance and injustice of the Tee-Totalism
that persists in attacking and defaming
those who use and do not abuse. In our
knowledge of the darker ways of great cities
we yield to few men living, if any. Of the
miseries and vices that accompany drunkenness
—sometimes its causes, sometimes its
effects—we have seen woful sights. We
should be hopeless, alike of a drunken
servant and a drunken son. If either were
disposed to take the Tee-Total pledge, we would
urge him to take it, as a last trial. But we
protest, and always will protest while life
remains to us, against the restraining of the
moderate by the immoderate, against the
domination of the virtuous by the vicious. If
a hundred thousand people such as ourselves
were to become Tee-Totallers to-morrow, our
reason is convinced that every slave to drink
would still remain in slavery. In the last
hundred years, in the last fifty years, in the
last quarter of a century, drunkenness has
steadily decreased. Judging by all reasonable
analogy, it will, in the next hundred
years, in the next fifty, in the next twenty-
five, yet steadily decrease, though more
rapidly. By all means let all drunkards
who can be got to take the pledge and to
keep it, take it and keep it. Meanwhile,
let the sober people alone. And take well
to heart the truth that nothing will eradicate
the black sediment of drunkenness
deposited by poverty, misery, and ignorance,
save a gradual awakening of self-respect
in low depths, through a wise and beneficent
system pervading all legislation.

But, to return to the Alderman returned
by Finsbury. His nature is so delicate, it
seems, that "though he is not a Tee-Totaller
he sympathises with those who are," and
he "does not want needlessly to give THEM
offence"! Is there any logic down in
Finsbury? Some voters who profess Tee-
Totalism, there evidently are; but is there any
aldermanically- damaging fragment of logic
among those who are not? Are we sober
people, and our wives, and our children,
and our neighbours and friends, to submit
to be charged with frequenting a Drunkery,
because we choose to take a pint of beer
in Victoria Park? Are our characters
to be blackened by the imputation of a
shameful vice, and are the comfort and
convenience of us the vast majority to be
as nothing? A pint of beer in Victoria
Park may be a stumbling-block to somebody
who doesn't want it, and who won't
have it; and therefore everybody who does
want it, shall go without it! Cigars may
be sold in Victoria Park. Let us have no
Smokery there, or we may give offence to the
Anti-Tobacco League! Chops may be
announced in Victoria Park. Let no Flesh-
eatery be established there, or we shall never
be voted for by a member of the Vegetarian
Society! Is everything to be forbidden
everywhere that is offensive to somebody?
Why, some day it might strike some
members of the House of Commons that the
presence in that assembly ot some Alderman,
might be offensive to some persons in
Finsbury!

The combination of the Victoria Park
Drunkery, and the great Recreation theory,
suggested to us the expediency of a Saturday
visit to Victoria Park. Firstly, for the
reason that though we had seen many
Saturday half-holidays, our way had not
lain in a north-easterly direction; and,
secondly, because we were anxious to see
the Drunkery, and the stroke of business
done in it. So, on the Saturday succeeding
the brilliant parliamentary achievement of
Finsbury's Anointed, we proceeded thither.

There was no doubt, anywhere on our
road, about its being a holiday. Everybody
had a general look of being cleaned
up for the afternoon, and little hand-baskets
were being carried to the railway stations
leading suburb-ward, by many excursionists.
An eruption of flannel cricketing trousers
had broken out on the knifeboards of the
omnibuses. Volunteers, in uniform of all
hues and cuts, were hurrying toward all
points of the compass, to drill. Shops were
being shut up in all directions. But even
under these circumstances the public-houses