THE PROHIBITION QUESTION.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 116, 14 November 1895, Page 2

THE PROHIBITION QUESTION.

TO THE EDITOB OF THE STAR. Sib, — It was with much pleasure that I noticed the amendments made by the Legislative Council on the Alcoholic Liquor Bill, and I am more than ever convinced of the necessity of a second chamber whose stability is sufficiently assured to enable it to practically veto, or otherwise alter and amend, the insane Acts which from time to time pass through the lower House. Sir, I must say that the present Council has proved worthy of its position by preventing the passage of the Bill in a form which would have placed in worse than Egyptian bondage a very large section of the New Zealand public. Prohibitionists are, no donbt, for the most part, earnest and well-meaning. That much, however, can be said of every persecuting power, whether religious or political, that has appeared on the world's stage. What religions or political body who have cruelly oppressed their fellows have not, from their narrow and bigoted standpoint, powerful reasons for their inhumanity. From tbe persecutions of the combined Jewish sects down to the Puritan oppression of the Quakers of New England, they have felt that they have had good reasons for their actions. The Puritans who had themselves fled to America in order to obtain freedom of worship were no sooner in possession of power than they turned on the harmless and peace-loving Quakers and persecuted to the death men and woman whose only crime was some little difference in creed and a quaint religious phraseology. I am thankful to say that our friend the Christian Liquor Prohibitionist has not reached that stage ia his downward course, and I sincerely trust never may. He has, however, made long strides in that direction. From moral suasion to monster fines and imprisonments is a sufficiently startling change to raise grave doubts as to the point these strong repressive measures reach. Sir, in the interests of our common humanity and for the sake of our common weal, it is the duty of every true-hearted and right-thinking man, to uphold that portion of our Legislative institutions which serves as a check to those sudden and hasty demands for legislation which, if passed, would be really hurtful to all, and which are the outcome of persistent agitations of men who, however earnest and well-meaning, are utterly unconscious of the mischief they are doing. They forget that the demon of intolerance once aroused may pass from the region of moral and political reform into the sacred and more important realm of religious thought and worship. What could our friends if do the forces adverse to the Christian's creed were to join and by a majority vote seek to compel an abandonment of those principles and that faith which they profess to believe necessary to our salvation ? Combinations as strange have taken place ere now. The rival aecta of Pharisees and Saducees, though cordially hating each other, temporarily threw aside their enmity and joined forces to crucify Him whom they deemed their common foe. Sir, as strange to me seems the Stout • Christian Prohibitionist Union. That the erstwhile leader of the Freethought party should become the idol and chief exponent of the repressive views of Christian men is an anomaly as great as the friendship of a Herod and Pilate, or the unholy alliance of the rival Jewish sects. What answer can our friends make to the scriptural inquiry of " What concord hath Christ with Belial ?" or " What part hath he that belie veth with an infidel?" I am, etc., J. B. Roots. Stanway, Nov. 11, 1895.