The Gothenberg System.

Mr. T. P. Whitaker, M.P., speaking at a great public meeting at Manchester Free Trade Hall, said; —" I have one thing to say to some of those people who are giving us so much advice, especially to those who ask us to establish this Gothenberg system. Let us see to it that we maintain a clear hold upon this principle, that what good has been done in Sweden and Nor-way has been by cutting down facilities for obtaining liquor, The good that has been accomplished there has been by closing public-houses, find shortening the hours of sale, and thus diminishing the facilities for obtaining drink. We have no proof what-ever that any good has resulted in either Sweden or Norway from the management of this trade by public companies or the management of public-houses by special men. We find that results equal to anything that has been secured in the towns where the trade is under company management—equal, nay superior-have been secured in the country districts where the company management did not exist at all. When you recognise this fact, that in Bergen they have only thirteen shops in a population of 33,009—or one to every 4,000 people-when you recognise that these places are only opened at 8 in the morning, and closed again at noon; that they are not opened till, half-past 1, and close again at half-past 7 in winter and 8 in summer; that they are closed practically all day on Sun-day, and at 5 o'clock on Saturday night and before public holidays, and on public Holidays altogether, you will see that you have got an instalment of restriction and prohibition which would work wonders in this country, and which will account for what is going on there. Don't get led away with the idea that the putting of the Liquor into other hands will do any good. If you were to put a Bishop into a cathedral find allowed him to sell drink there, that drink would produce the same results those who took it."

The Gothenburg System has been worked on the most improved lines in Norway. And yet, under the Direct Veto-Bill which recently passed in Norway, six towns, in which liquor companies' live years' privileges to sell intoxicants expired at the end of last year, voted for absolute Prohibition, when a poll was taken under the new Act. Every man and woman 25 years of age had a right to vote.

"A little farm well tilled,
A little wife well willed;
Their good effects can all be killed
By a little corn distilled."

Hon. Neal Dow, so long Governor of the State of Maine, says that the Prohibition law now annually saves to the people of that State £5,000,000. After thirty years of Prohibition in Maine, in 1884, when Blaine had 13,000 majority, the people unheld Prohibition by a majority of 47,000.

Don't you Know!

"There are patient little women here below
Whose eons and husbands to the dram-shops go,
Who would like to gently drop
A ballot that would stop
The wrecking of their loved ones by this foe.

Don't you know, don't you know
Where all mothers ought to go,
When they have their little families
Depending on them so ?
They should cast a righteous vote
And their loyalty devote
To God and home and babies, don't you know."

It is intensely sad to know that before one generation of drunkards has died out an equal number of boys and girls have grown into such, and that we grant a permit or license to the traffic which is responsible for this result.

"The Temperance folk are waking up,
Throughout this favoured nation,
To put the Liquor Traffic down,
And drive it from its station.
The bars and drinking dens are doomed
To lawful demolition;
For all good men are going in
For voting Prohibition."

Webs and Flies.

To the friends of Prohibition in New Zealand,
Whisky spiders great and greedy
Weave their webs from sea to sea,
They grow fat and men grow needy;
Shall our robbers rulers be?

"Sweep the webs away !" the nation.
In its wrath and wisdom cries;
Say the fools with hesitation :
No—but educate the flies."

We do both—twin wings who sunders !
Let the schools fill out their sphere !
Let the church sound seven thunders,
But the webs must disappear.

Up ! the webs are full of slaughter;
Sweep away the spider's lair;
Up ! Wife, husband, son, and daughter
Make the vexed earth clean and fair.

Where now red-fanged murder burrows,
Let glad harvests wave sublime,
Sink the webs benesth new furrows
In the boundless fields of time.

How do you Vote?

"We ask not your party or creed,
We ask not your race of complexion,
Or how you have voted before—
But, how will you, vote next election?

You say you're a Temperance man,
That drink never tickles your palate;
We're glad, but we measure, you know,
Our friends by their acts at the ballot."