By Isle of Wight Observer
The Isle of Wight Observer published on 2nd May 1857 reports on the views of a visitor from a smoky town. It also posed some questions that could still be deemed relevant more than a century and a half later!
THE UNIVERSAL REMEDY. – A gentleman of the name of Lomax, from the smoky town of Manchester, has been giving some orations in Ryde during the week, with a view of shewing how to make “the homes of the people happy, free, and independent,” and also to point out who are “the men for the times,” The propositions have a Quixotic air about them, and some timid persons were alarmed lest their solution was to be effected by the application of the principles of Socialism or Chartism; the sequel, however, proved that the panacea offered was – Teetotalism.
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Why, then, do not the advocates of total abstinence, instead of declaiming against temperance, and intemperance, offer instead of total abstinence some practical solution of the question, How the usages of society can be altered? Man is a social animal, and if he desire any society, how can he obtain it except through the medium of drinking? Literary Institutions are miserably cold and uninviting, at them one must read in silence and depart in silence; while private society is made up of exclusive coteries or of sectarian sympathies. Every kind of hilarity and geniality is studiously shut out from all public gatherings – dancing is sinful, laughing is vulgar, and talk sense is a fundamental breach of the laws of etiquette.
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All the preaching, therefore, of the Lomax school will be unavailable, until some scheme can be devised to reconstruct the fabric of society.
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As to who are “the men for the times,” our idea is that they should be such as are capable of taking on board views, and, as far as Temperance is concerned, thoroughly investigate the reason, why the two greatest and professedly-religious nations on the face of the earth – England and America – are also the most drunken?