IN REPLY TO "S."

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 74, 21 September 1894, Page 2

IN REPLY TO "S."

TO THE EDITOR OP THB STAR^ Sir,— Your correspondent Mi S "in your issue of the 17th instant asks, "Who, if hot the Temperance Societies, are to take up the duties of procuring prohibition "• orders against men who are, often all too willingly, committing slow suicide with drink, and sending their wives and families to the dogsT In reply, I may point out that the public would not stand a , society, holding extreme views, -flaunting their banner and interfering with the liberty of the subject, because that subject may be just as intemperate in the opposite direction. Your correspondent is right in assuming that there are objections to wives doing it, nor do I consider that the average policeman occupies a social status to render it decorous for him to act as a censor of manners; SStil t ; the fact reniaips that a man jnay^grre way to extreme guzzling \ habits i which jeopardize his business and^tae ■" Welfare of his family, yet, except at the request of that family, it would at present be obtrusive for anyone to interfere. If the Department of instice appointed, or requested, one or two of the senior Justices of the Peace in each place to take action whenever good and' sufficient grounds called for it, I think., it would b« a sensible move and one which would lay no person open to the charge of being unjustifiably meddleaome. In signing, I will paraphrase a Latin proverb to the point, ,y A " Middle of ths Eoad is Safest.'.