Every one who has given any thought to temperance as opposed to teetotalism, is agreed that what is wanted is the gradual elimination of bars and counters and the substitution of chairs and tables and big open rooms. In these must be provided tea, coffee, and all the usual lighter refreshments that you find in the better-class restaurants and hotels. In a big West End hotel you find every afternoon that the lounge is laid out for afternoon tea. I do not see why a working man and his wife should not have their tea in a lounge in their public house. I cannot understand why, if two friends after a day in the workshop want to have a friendly chat, they cannot find an institution where one can have his cup of tea and a muffin, and the other his glass of ale and a sandwich, and both sit at one table in a spacious room with comfortable surroundings, and if they do not heartily dislike it a gramophone to play tunes to them. That is impossible of attainment as the law now stands. If a millionaire was to offer to build in Manchester a dozen working-men's cafes on the continental plan where any decent citizen could be pleased to take his wife and children, as our French and German neighbours do, the brewers, the teetotallers, the police, the licensing magistrates and the law would see that it was not permitted. And yet we know by experiment that in proper surroundings, reasonable facilities for refreshment do not lead to drunkenness. In the Manchester Exhibition of 1887, it being a wonderfully fine summer, and licenses having been freely given for the occasion, there was an opportunity of testing whether under proper conditions opportunity led to excess. I never heard that it did. In the Franco-British Exhibition where reasonable facilities of refreshment were also given, it is said--and I have no doubt truly said--that though eight or nine million visitors passed through the turnstiles, yet there was not a single case of drunkenness.