if not immediately fatal, are apt to leave the sufferer a wreck for the remainder of life. CHAPTER XXI. ATTEMPTS TO ARREST IT. _The Permissive Liquors Bill_—_Its Advocates and their Arguments_—_The Drunkenness of the Nation_—_Temperance Facts and Anecdotes_—_Why the Advocates of Total Abstinence do not make more headway_—_Moderate Drinking_—_Hard Drinking_—_The Mistake about childish Petitioners_. THERE has recently appeared on the temperance stage a set of well-meaning gentlemen, who, could they have their way, though they would sweep every public-house and beershop from the face of the land, are yet good-natured enough to meet objectors to their extreme views a “third” if not “half-way.” Sir Wilfred Lawson is the acknowledged head and champion of the party, and its news on the all-important subject are summed up in a Permissive Prohibitory Liquor Bill. It may be mentioned that the said Bill was rejected in the House of Commons by a very large majority, and is therefore, for the present, shelved. It stands, however, as an expression of opinion on the part of eighty-seven members of parliament, backed by 3,337 petitions, more or less numerously signed, from various parts of the kingdom, as to what should be done to check the advancing curse of drunkenness, and, as such, its merits may be here discussed. The Permissive Prohibitory Liquors Bill, as Sir Wilfred Lawson describes it, provides that no public-houses shall be permitted in any district, provided that two-thirds of its population agree that they should be dispensed with. If there are thirty thousand inhabitants of a parish, and twenty thousand of them should be of opinion that public-houses are a nuisance that should be abolished, the remaining ten thousand may grumble, but they must submit, and either go athirst or betake themselves to an adjoining and more generous parish.