THE SHOP ACT and PROHIBITION.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 98, 22 October 1895, Page 2

THE SHOP ACT and PROHIBITION.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAR. Sir,—lt will probably be remembered that in a letter of mine on the Shop and Shop Assistants Act (which you published some months ago and in which I strongly protested against the grossly arbitrary nature of the Act). I suggested that it would not be amiss if some half-a-dozen publicans were fined for infringing the prescribed half-holidy b} r opening their bars during the prohibited hours, it being my opinion, although it was generally doubted, that the Act applied to them. My object in making the suggestion was that if the publicans in the colony found themselves persecuted and fined under the Act they, with the assistance of the frequenters of their bars, would rise up and agitate for its repeal. I, therefore, hail with satisfaction the amendment to the Shop Act Amendment Bill to place hotel bars on the same footing as shops which was moved by Sir R. Stout and carried, as is reported in this evening's Star, verbum sap. With reference to those fanatics (I cannot refrain from calling them such) who are agitating for total abstinence and Prohibition to be enforced by Act of Parliament under heavy penalties and imprisonment, Mr Roots points out in his letter, which you publish this evening, the non-utility of their proceedings although, as he says, they may be perfectly sincere in their efforts. In reference to Mr Roots' letter I should like particularly to draw the attention of all Prohibitionists and total abstainers to the latter part of it where attention is drawn to the fact that total abstinence has been on trial for ages among millions of people without producing the results expected by a compulsory resort to total abstinence. Mr Roots' letter is altogether, in my opinion, the hardest nut which the Prohibitionists have to crack, without reference to my general objection to all kinds of infringement of the liberty of the subject. I am, etc., SAML. GOODBEHERE. Feilding, 18th October, 1895.