Almost everyone who proposes a toast at a public dinner commences his speech by saying that he feels himself to be the most unfit person who could have been selected to perform the duty. In this matter I am neither the most fit, nor the most unfit person to give such a narrative as the Editor desires. There are many advocates of temperance still living who have addressed far more audiences on the subject than I have done, and whose account of their experience would be far more interesting and instructive than mine can be. On the other hand-- "I've been about a bit in my time, And troubles I've seen a few; But I always found it the best of plans To paddle my own canoe." And I have sometimes had to paddle that canoe through tolerably stormy waters. For generations a "Temperance lecturer" has usually been viewed by the "respectable" classes with a mixture of pity and contempt. Drink was blended with all our ideas of real happiness and enjoyment. Doctors ordered drink as a potent medicine, and, at the same time, as a valuable article of daily diet. Clergymen, certainly at times, mildly hinted that their flocks might peradventure be more moderate in its consumption, but rarely indeed condemned the thing itself. Elections were won to the inspiriting cry of the "National Church and the National Beverage," while all those who had enriched themselves by the making and selling of strong drink were held in the highest esteem and veneration by the rest of the community. For anyone to enter on a crusade against drink was held to be audacious, vulgar, disreputable, and unconstitutional, and a man who took such a course was considered to be, if not a fool, certainly a hypocritical knave. I have always thought that Dickens' portrait of "Stiggins, the Temperance lecturer," did much to maintain this idea. Any way, it was in full force at the time when I ventured to launch the above-mentioned cause. But I did not start as a Temperance lecturer. The field was already well occupied. Father Mathew, Joseph Livesey, Samuel Bowling, and many other devoted men had said pretty well all that could be said in favour of abstinence from intoxicating liquor, and, where their teaching had been followed, had done a world of good. What struck me as very hard was, that these noble men should expend time, money, and labour at their own charges in promoting the Temperance reformation which Richard Cobden says "lies at the foundation of every social and political reform," and that all the time the Government of the country should appoint thousands and thousands of agents to promote the sale and consumption of the very article which causes all the drunkenness and misery. [Illustration: FATHER MATHEW.] [Illustration: AT EXETER.]