INTEMPERANCE IN FRANCE.
By T.
UNDER the caption of “Temperance in France,” the Northwestern Christian Advocate of April 5 has the following:— The interest in the temperance question is not confined to the United States. There is scarcely a country in the world but has reason to be anxious over the effects of strong drink, and to feel the desirability for action to restrain the use of liquor. France, whose people seem less disposed than those of almost any nation to take a serious view of moral issues, is now engaged in an interesting, if not almost urgent, temperance agitation. The saloons have increased so rapidly during the recent years as to cause alarm, and a bill has been introduced in the French Senate for the avowed purpose of checking their increase. The bill is accompanied by statistics which show that, whereas in 1830 the saloons in France numbered 281,847, in 1869 they had risen to the number of 364,875, and to-day to 424,500, exclusive of the 30,000 grog-shops in Paris. That means 1 saloon to every 85 inhabitants, or 1 to every 30 adults. In the Department of the North there is 1 to every 46 inhabitants. It is hardly probable that a law can be enacted now that will effect a material change, but it is significant that the French people feel the need of restricting the traffic. They may, before many years, be willing to absolutely prohibit it. Intemperance in France, instead of temperance, would certainly have been fully as appropriate a title to stand at the head of such an array of facts. And it is hardly probable, as suggested by the Advocate, “that a law can be enacted now that will effect a material change.” When there is so much drinking that every eighty-five persons on an average support a saloon, and where even in some localities there is a saloon to every forty-six inhabitants, it will certainly be very hard to get the drink-shops either restricted or abolished. If France had never had any light, we might hope for different results from the agitation of temperance reforms. But France rejected the great Reformation of the sixteenth century, and yet she enjoyed the benefits of the mighty intellectual awakening that attended the Reformation. When she rejected the Heaven-sent reforms, she received in their stead a reckless infidelity that has driven her into the most abandoned vices and drunkenness. Now since France has taken this course with her eyes wide open, can it be hoped that reforms of any consequence can reach her? She has an intoxication that is more to be dreaded than the drunkenness that comes from wine and whisky. She is stupefied by her errors, and so engrossed in her rounds of hilarious pleasures that it is not likely that many of her people will be aroused until the sounding of the trumpet of Jehovah in the great day of the Lord. It is certainly a sad condition to be in, but still let us hope, work, and pray to the end that many of her people may be awakened to that true sense of their condition and needs that will work the most thorough reform in their individual cases. T.