must do harm to our cause and hinder our aims.

I have come upon references to another and even more plainspoken
petition, signed by 1,280 clergymen; but war-time facilities for
research have not enabled me to find the text. In Prof. Henry C.
Vedder's "Jesus Christ and the Social Question," we read:

It was authoritatively stated a short time ago that Mr.
Asquith's temperance bill was defeated in Parliament through
the opposition of clergymen who had invested their savings
in brewery stock, the profits of which might have been
lessened by the bill.

Also the power of the clergy, combined with the brewer, was sufficient
to put through Parliament a provision that no prohibition legislation
should ever be passed without providing for compensation to the owners
of the industry. Today, all over America, appeals are being made to
the people to eat less grain; the grain is being shipped to England,
some of it to be made into beer; and a high Anglican prelate, his
Grace the Archbishop of York, comes to America to urge us to increased
sacrifices, and in his first newspaper interview takes occasion to
declare that his church is not in favor of prohibition as a measure of
war-time economy!

#Anglicanism and Alcohol#

This partnership of Bishops and Beer is painfully familiar to British
radicals; they see it at work in every election--the publican
confusing the voters with spirits, while the parson confuses them with
spirituality. There are two powerful societies in England employing
this deadly combination--the "Anti-Socialist Union" and the "Liberty
and Property Defense League." If you scan the lists of the organizers,
directors and subsidizers of these satanic institutions, you find Tory
politicians and landlords, prominent members of the higher clergy, and
large-scale dealers in drunkenness. I attended in London a meeting
called by the "Liberty and Property Defense League," to listen to a
denunciation of Socialism by W.H. Mallock, a master sophist of Roman
Catholicism; upon the platform were a bishop and half a dozen members
of the Anglican clergy, together with the secretary of the Federated
Brewers' Association, the Secretary of the Wine, Spirit, and Beer
Trade Association, and three or four other alcoholic magnates.

In every public library in England and many in America you will
find an assortment of pamphlets published by these organizations,
and scholarly volumes endorsed by them, in which