PROHIBITION AGAIN.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 30, 4 August 1896, Page 2

PROHIBITION AGAIN.

■ TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAB. Sir, — Mr Roots argues that Christ did not teach Prohibition, consequently it must be wrong ! Doubtless there were many other abominations existing in those days that were never specially mentioned by the Great Teacher. JHis mission was to lay down the grand foundation principles of conduct in such a plain way that even a child can apply them to daily life. Now for a few plain facts, for Mr Roots and others of the same mind to " Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest." There was £2,081,470 spent on intoxicating poisons in this colony during 1894. More than the interest on all our loans. In the city of Wellington alone, £100,000 was spent, enough to give £150 to each of the unemployed. The keeper of the Wellington Gaol .says that 80 per cent of crime is due to intoxicating drink. The Wellington Benevolent Trusttees attribute 90 per cent to the same cause. Fourteen hundred children in our Industrial Schools are said to be there through drink. The £300,508 paid to brewers, who employ 476 men, would give employment in other leading industries to between 800 and 1600 men, at the same wages (see Official New Zealand Year Book, 1895, page 209), Arrests for drunkenness in 1894 — 4594, or an average of 12 per day. The estimated number of deaths in the colony every year from drink is 1000. More than a Brunner disaster every four weeks ! I am, etc., " Strike out the top luce."