LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. lv 



public part in the Temperance movement, at a meeting of the 

 National League held in the Oxford Town Hall. In 1868 he 

 became a Vice-President of the United Kingdom Alliance, and 

 threw his force into the line of the Permissive Bill, in support of 

 which he argued — ' If I look out of my window, I see no public- 

 t house at every corner of my strip of garden, but I know that 

 many a poor man sees that temptation constantly before him, 

 and many a poor wife as constantly sees that temptation at the 

 bottom of the alley she lives in. I claim for the poor man the 

 same right which Providence has enabled me to purchase for 

 myself.' He felt so strongly that nine-tenths of the misery and 

 vice of England was ' attributable to drink and nothing else,' that 

 at a Temperance Meeting in his own parish of Holywell in 1880, 

 the last meeting he ever went to, when questioned about com- 

 pensation to publicans he went so far as to answer, 'that if 

 several persons suffered through the ill effects of one man's trade, 

 it was hardly reasonable to expect that compensation would be 

 offered to the few who caused much suffering to fall on the 

 many/ As to the hygienic question of intoxicating liquors, he 

 approved of abstinence on medical grounds, a favourite example 

 being the wonderful power and endurance he had witnessed 

 among the poorer Turks, ' too poor for drunkenness.' Always a 

 most temperate man himself, he became eventually a total 

 abstainer. His medical reputation gave weight to his speeches, 

 which may be found reported in the Temperance journals, and 

 especially noticed in the sketch of him by Mr. S. Insull. 



Among the various letters written by Dr. Rolleston to the 

 'Times' is one of Sept. 18, 1879, where, on his return from a tour 

 in Scandinavia, he gives the result of his examination of the 

 ' Gothenburg system/ under which the Municipality itself carries 

 on the public-houses. The letter is too long to insert as a whole, 

 but the following extract is a good example of Rolleston's argu- 

 mentative humour : — 'The information which I obtained in 

 Gothenburg prevents me from denying that since 1876, the year 

 in which the Gothenburg system came into full operation by the 

 final disappearance of the outstanding independent licences, 



