he broke up his establishment. Now, I don't mention this to show particularly that the ladies have the gift of the g-, have strong conversational powers, but that they have perseverance. And now we want them to engage in this movement. I believe, if the ladies of this metropolis, if the ladies of Great Britain, should declare, "I will drink no more intoxicating liquor, I will give no more intoxicating liquor," the drinking customs would fall into disrepute in six months. I tell you, it is the women of the country that can regulate and control the social customs of the country. It is of no use for some young men to say, 66 I don't care what the women think;" you do, you do you cannot help it. It is unnatural for a man not to care what the women think. I know it is very fashionable sometimes to speak contemptuously of woman. 1 never heard a man speak contemptuously of a woman, but I think that he never had a good mother, or a good sister, or a good wife; for I defy any man that ever kneeled at his mother's side, and felt her soft warm hand resting on his head, and who can remember the little prayer his mother taught him, to speak contemptuously of woman. I have strong faith in woman's influence. "O woman, lovely woman, Nature made thee to temper man ; We had been brutes without ye; Angels are painted fair to look like you; There's in you all that we believe of heav'n, Eternal joy and everlasting love." 66 That may be a little extravagant; but I feel that woman's influence is almost unbounded. As a gentleman told the story at one of the meetings in Scotland-that the husband said to the wife, "Now, wife, you know I am the head in the house." 66 Well," said she, "You can be the head if you wish; I am the neck." Yes," said he, "You shall be the neck." "But don't you know," said she," the neck turns the head?" And yet, with all my respect for womankind, I say the women of England are fearfully culpable, and they are terribly responsible for much of the evil of drunkenness. Now, what do you think of a woman whose husband beats her; and a good glorious teetotaler goes to her and says, "Exert your influence and get your husband to sign the pledge." "Well," Dr. Mudge, "I should like to see my husband a good many things, but I should not like M him to sign the pledge exactly; for I must have my pint of beer." What do you think of such a woman? I think the beer must have stultified her better feelings. And I have been very much shocked, in this city and country generally, to find going into public-houses and sitting in a public-room young girls with young men. What can they expect it to come to? Now, does such a young girl think what will be the result of sitting there with that young man that tells her he loves her, and yet will ask her to drink a glass of hot spirits and water with him? Does such a man love you? Oh! if that woman would get up and say, "If you offer me that I have an idea of the estimation in which you hold me !" It may be that there are servants here. Servants are writing letters to me, and making complaints-of what? One servant says "I have suffered terribly and cruelly through the drink, and I am in the family of a professing Christian, and every night I am sent to a low public-house for beer, and the language there is so horrible that I can't bear it, and the temptation is so strong, I will go into any teetotal family for half the wages, if I can get a place. Now, any professing Christians that can dare to send any servant into a low public-house for beer, ought to be ashamed of themselves. You would not dare to send your own daughter there; and I say that if you dare to send a servant girl where you would be ashamed to send your own daughter, you are doing that servant girl a wrong, and she will rise in judgment against you. You may think this is plain talk; but we are apt to think that because they are servants they are nobodies. I say a servant is as good as I am. We are all brethren before God. You pay that servant for her labour, and she pays you with her labour for your money, and it is a fair equivalent, and you have no right to impose upon that servant by sending her to a low public-house for beer. If you want the beer you ought to go and get it yourself. I say there is a great deal of responsibility resting with the women in view of this terrible evil of drunkenness. And let me give the young ladies here a piece of advice in the shape of a fable. Å mouse once fell into a beer-vat, and cried to a cat that was passing by, "Mrs. Puss, help me out of my difficulty, if you please." "If I do I will eat you." "I would rather be eaten by a decent cat, than be drowned in such filthy stuff as this." A very sensible remark; for a more horrible 66 death could not be conceived. The mouse agreed that if puss helped her out of her difficulty she might eat her. "You promise?" Yes, I promise." So puss fished her out; and while she was preparing herself for the meal, the mouse darted into a hole, and just peeped out. “Well," said the cat, "I am ready to eat you now, Miss Mouse." "I shan't come." 66 Why not? You promised me that if I got you out I might eat you." "But when I made that promise," said the mouse, I was in liquor." There is many a promise made in liquor that is not found to be binding by-and-bye; and I know of nothing that should sooner turn a young girl away from him who promises to love her, and cherish her, and protect her, and make her his wife, than the smell of that which intoxicates from his breath. I say, that our young women have power if they will only use it. 66 My friends of the Temperance enterprise, let us persevere in our work as if we meant it, and never mind the sneers and opposition we may meet with. I heard a man say-and I am very sorry to tell you he was a minister of the Gospel-that because he heard a sentiment advanced at a Temperance Meeting that he did not like, he went home and began drinking again. That was just as silly as the boy that said, "Mother, if you don't give me a penny, I know another boy that's got the measles, and I'll go and catch 'em." We have to meet with many such contemptible things. But the time is now coming in which no man can take neutral ground, with regard to any enterprise; the time is coming when we shall have a drawn pitched battle; and God speed the day when we shall go right at it, argument with argument, and fact with fact, and logic for logic. We are afraid of no bold, open, manly opponents; for if we are right we shall succeed. And I tell you that we are gaining the influence of the strong-handed and the strong-nerved workman. Why, scores of hard-working mechanics, with as noble intellects as any on the face of the earth, literary men, lawyers, ministers, are aiding us. I know there are a class of men that stand aloof, that never will come into the movement till they are forced into it; but the public sentiment will by-and-bye force them into it, and the mighty stream will soon wash away the banks on which they stand, and we shall all go on conquering and to conquer in this enterprise, because it is based on truth and righteousness. Will you help us, brethren and friends? Will you help us, working-men? To-night we are ready to receive your names. If you never appeared on any stage, to-night, if you appear here, and give your names, it will be the best debut you will ever make in your lives. We ask working-men to do it; we ask these young clerks to do it; we ask these young shopmen to do it; we ask these ladies to do it. Will you not? Will you not? We are warring against drunkenness; and is there not every thing in drunkenness revolting to the purity of the female character? We ought not to have any trouble to get every woman in the land to put her name to the pledge-to say, "I will have no more to do with it, I will dash it from my lips, I will keep it from my table." I wish I could hear you say, as I heard a woman say, coming out of a meeting, "If any young man has been tempted at my table to drink heretofore, so help me God not another shall; for I will remove it from my table for ever." Oh! if we could bring the ladies to feel thus, how gloriously would this enterprise go on! I will detain you no longer. You may say, Is all done for to-night? No; it is all to be done. It is all said; but you are to do it. AN ORATION BY JOHN B. GOUGH, Delivered at Finsbury Chapel, on Monday Evening, August 7th, 1854. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,-In speaking to you to-night on the subject of temperance, I do so with some degree of hesitation and tremulousness, not altogether usual with me on such an occasion. I feel as if, having spoken so often to the people in London, it must be to them very much an old story; but, as has been said by others, it must be the same old story year after year, and we must tell the same truths to the people, until the people act up to those truths. Our enterprise we claim to be a benevolent one; and I maintain that all benevolence springs from the gospel. We read that there is one great commandment-"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, might, mind, and strength; and the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself; on these two," not on one or the other, "hang all the law and the prophets;" and I maintain that my professions of love to God are not worth a straw, unless they beget in me love to my neighbour. Then the question is, "Who is my neighbour?" I will take you by the hand, and lead you through Seven Dials, and St. Giles's, and Lambeth, where men on Sunday noon and night are clinging like bees to the doors of your dram-shops; I will point to the poor little miserable ragged children who follow you begging, who are lying in wait to steal, and who are sent into the streets to lie, and I will say, there, and there, and there are your neighbours. And what are you doing for them? Our enterprise, we maintain, is calculated to remove one of the frightful causes of suffering to the innocent. Ladies and gentlemen, if there was no evil growing out of the use of intoxicating liquor, but the evil as it rests like a cloud of curse upon the innocent women and children of this country, it would be enough to rouse the red-hot indignation of every man, and send the blood tingling to the tips of the fingers with fierce desire to battle with the |