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training schools, and the holding of drawing-room meetings The annual breakfasts to the members of the British Medical Association have mostly been presided over by him, and to his genial manner they have owed much of their success. During fifty years of public life Mr. Bowly has not been sustained by the public purse, nor is he the possessor of a large private fortune. His income has been drawn mainly from business, and it is rare that the successful merchant and the disinterested public advocate are united in the same person. In this respect Mr. Bowly has sacrificed in his service for the public much of what so many feel to be the chief aim of life, and he has made this sacrifice cheerfully and without complaint under circumstances which are the severest test of character.

But the confidence in Mr. Bowly's business character has been manifested by many public appointments. As chairman of the late Birmingham and Gloucester Railway, deputy-chairman of the Gloucestershire Banking Company, director of the Gloucester Gas Company, and the Temperance and General Life Office, he has won confidence and esteem, and if Mr. Bowly has not amassed wealth there has been freely accorded him in his town and county the position of a gentleman.

The cynic delights to depict men who engage in public life as having no other pursuit to claim their attention; but Mr. Bowly's great delight is in the country and in country pursuits: in the laying out and management of a garden he is supreme. Mr. Bowly holds the position of a preacher of the Gospel in his own religious body, and in his platform addresses, especially of late years, there has been an unction and a depth of Christian feeling which has been very impressive. For one still living and active amongst us this brief testimony to a good man's life and labours must suffice, and we conclude with the earnest hope that God has yet years of service for him before He calls him to Himself. "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give glory, for Thy mercy and for Thy truth's sake."

THE JUBILEE OF TEMPERANCE REFORM.

DURING the past year, a notable feature of the movement has been the celebrations of the Temperance Jubilee, which have taken place in several parts of the United Kingdom. Following these celebrations in their chronological order, we should have first to deal with the Irish Jubilee held at Belfast, which was quickly succeeded by the National Jubilee at the Crystal Palace, the Scottish Jubilee at Greenock and Glasgow, and the Jubilees held respectively at Bradford and Leeds. Other Jubilees will doubtless follow, as the time becomes fully ripe in the various localities that organise them. That of London should take place this year (1881), inasmuch as the first metropolitan temperance society was called into being on the 29th of June, 1831, although the formation of temperance societies was distinctly suggested by the Rev. G. C. Smith, of the British and Foreign Sailors' Society, in a book upon intemperance, published by him in 1829.

THE AMERICAN JUBILEE.

Before dealing with these Jubilees in the United Kingdom, it is of the highest importance that we should notice at some length the American celebration which took place in connection with the centenary of the United States in 1876; for, after all, it was from across the Atlantic that the first germs of the temperance movement came to these shores.

The facts connected with the movement from its very commencement-not only in America, but throughout the world— have been collated from a multitude of sources, and have been published in one great work of 800 pages, under the title of "The Centennial Volume"-the most perfect record of the temperance movement down to 1876 that has yet been published.

In America, as here, when the evils of intemperance became all but intolerable, relief was at first sought in legislation, without, as now, the idea suggesting itself that if there were no drinking there could be no drunkenness. In this respect Great Britain was

the pioneer, for we may go back to the later days of the Norman line and still find in old musty volumes the records of the pointless shafts which were directed at the liquor trade by means of the law. Without, then, inquiring too closely into the results of our experience, America followed us, and so early as 1651 the people of East Hampton, Long Island, endeavoured to put some restraint upon the common sale of intoxicating drinks. In 1760 the religious societies began to protest against drinking at funerals, and soon after the Friends-ever foremost in every good work -abolished this practice in their community, and clergymen began to refuse to officiate where strong drink was introduced. The first attempt at anything like organised effort was that made by the farmers of the County of Lichfield, Connecticut, who formed an association to discourage the use of spirituous liquors, and who resolved not to use any of them in their farming operations during that season of 1789. A series of discourses by Dr. Rush, a medical man, and the forerunner of such worthy descendants as Dr. B. W. Richardson, Dr. James Edmunds, Dr. Norman S. Kerr, and many others, was published, and aroused such attention that it led, in 1790, to a presentment on the part of medical men, in which they said, "A great portion of the most obstinate, painful, and mortal disorders which afflict the human body are produced by distilled spirits, which are not only destructive to health and life, but impair the mind;" and they went on to say that "the use of distilled spirits is wholly unnecessary, either to fortify the body against heat or cold, or to render labour more easy or more productive." Four years later Dr. Rush issued his "Medical Inquiries into the effects of Ardent Spirits upon the Body and Mind," and as the Rev. J. B. Dunn, in the exhaustive paper he prepared to enrich the centennial volume, says, “At that early day he flung to the breeze the flag of Total Abstinence, as the only one under which a successful rally could be made against the foe of intemperance." But Dr. Rush stood almost alone in this idea, for the prevailing impression, even of Temperance reformers, was that if spirit drinking could be dispensed with the drinking of malt liquors would prove innocuous. The process of reasoning by which this conclusion was arrived at would not repay the time or trouble of analysis.

The first Total Abstinence pledge was drafted by Micajah Pendleton, of Virginia, and his abstaining example was soon followed by others. Hitherto there had been nothing but scattered individual effort; but there soon came to be organised the Union Temperate (not Temperance) Society of Moreau and Northumberland, which permitted its members to drink at public dinners. This Society met quarterly for fourteen years, and the members were fined for drinking-when they were found out.

Meanwhile sermons were preached, presentments made, and every effort put forth, short of Total Abstinence, to save the people from their besetment; but as yet a thick veil seemed to exclude the true remedy from the sight of the early reformers, though by painful steps and bitter experience they were groping their way towards it. The various societies that had been established down to this time recommended, with but slight variation, abstinence from ardent spirits; but in 1812 the Rev. Heman Humphrey went so far as to tell the people that if they wanted to reclaim drunkards they must perforce adopt total abstinence, though he appears to have been silent as to the desirability of abstaining as a matter either of example or prevention.

It would be to no purpose to recount even the names of various societies that were subsequently formed, all upon the anti-spirit basis. The light dawned upon the Rev. Calvin Chapin in 1826, who wrote a series of articles entitled:-"Total Abstinence the only Infallible Antidote." About the same time the question began to suggest itself to others: "Of what avail is it for a man to abstain from one kind of intoxicating drink if he can take the same quantity of alcohol in another?" As there was no one to answer this question the attention aroused by Mr. Chapin's articles led the way to better things. In the same year the Rev. Dr. Hewett was sending his total-abstinence arguments "like a rolling ball among ten pins," and Dr. Lyman Beecher was preaching his "Six Sermons," from which time the Americans date the commencement of their temperance campaign. In the following year the Massachusetts and New Hampshire Medical Societies passed resolutions in favour of temperance, declaring water to be the only proper beverage for man.

We must pause to notice the American Temperance Society,

which, even on the old anti-spirit basis, did an enormous work. At the end of 1833 it was estimated that there were 5,000 temperance societies, with a membership represented as a million and a quarter, of whom ten thousand had been drunkards. It does not say whether these latter abstained or went upon the moderation plan-a plan which in this country never works for inebriates, and a plan which, as we have shown, the Rev. H. Humphrey said would never work there. It was reported that 4,000 distilleries had been stopped, and 6,000 persons had given up the sale of ardent spirits, whilst over 1,000 vessels were sailing without strong drink on board.

But it was becoming more clear almost every day that the true remedy for intemperance was total abstinence. Some of the anti-spirit societies began to adopt the total abstinence pledge, and in 1836 the American Temperance Union was formed, at which the temperance pledge was henceforth declared to mean total abstinence from all intoxicating liquors. A leading part in bringing about this change was taken by Mr. E. C. Delavan, a retired merchant, who gave his time and money without stint to spread the new propaganda, and who died, universally regretted, in 1871. In 1842 Mr. John B. Gough came upon the scene to tell for the first time the simple story of his own deliverance-a story with which he has since touched the hearts of countless multitudes, and awakened in the hearts of thousands the desire after self-reform.

From 1845 and onwards began those various Orders with ritual and insignia in which America has been prolific, and the contagion of which has spread in a modified form to our own shores. These organisations have done a great amount of good, though it is open to doubt whether, upon the original lines of total abstinence pure and simple, they would not have done equally well or far better.

During all this time the law was not idle in curtailing the drink traffic. Instead of being as here almost wholly against Temperance reformers it was quite the reverse, and a large number of very stringent measures have been passed, the chief of which finds its embodiment in the much-extolled and much-abused Maine Law. According to some it is a perfect failure, according to