Correspondence.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 64, 12 September 1896, Page 2

Correspondence.

POHIBITION. TO THE EDITOR, Sir. — Allow me to point out that Mr Cocker's arguments are built on false premises. He assumes that if Prohibibition were carried that much good economically and morally would result therefrom. Let us examine his position by the light of experience. In Clutha, close at our doors, it has proved a failure. Drunkenness has increased, to which we may add hypocrisy aud lawbreaking. Surely our experience here is altogether against the Probioitive measures of our friends to meet the evil. They must, if truthful, themselves admit that in this particlar instance it has proved a lamentable failure. Increased drunkeness, increased crime, and a new and shameful national trait has been developed, namely, hypocrisy, by their action. Now, sir, if so much mischief has been done with one small experiment, what would be the amount arising from total Prohibition ? Why, sir, it would be simply enormous and ruinous. The .£450,000 raised by customs would be entirely lost, and tbe revenue would have to be raised from other sources, with no prospect whatever of abating the evil. Ou the contrary, sly distillation, smuggling, and illicit prog selling, would take the place of the legitimate traffic, which is now under police control, where the evil effects of drinking are reduced to a minimum, and the vices of hypocrisy, drunkenness, and law-breaking, instead of bein" confined to one little spot — such as Clutha — would spread throughout the length and breadth of the colony. 1 think under these circumstances I can safely say that the proposed remedy is worse than the disease. So much for the Prohibitive efforts ot my friends in New Zealand. Now let us look at the working of the movement in the States of America. Despite the assertions of interested lecturers of the party, Prohibition as a remedial measure has failed there as ( here. It is said in no State has it been really successful, and that ten of tbe seventeen States which first adopted it have abandoned it altogether, ancl are using other means to meet the evils of intemperance, which total Prohibition has failed to reach. In Maine, the parent State of the movemeut, after many years' trial under the most favorable circumstances, it has been but a partial success. General Neal, now the father of Prohibition, himself acknowledges that in this the mode! State so often quoted by our friends in this country, with all their aids to detection and depression, they have not been able to stamp out the evil. In short, an illicit traffic still exists mainly in the cities of tbat State. Why do our friends suppress these facts, and wish to force on us by the terrors of a crnel and arbitrary law a worn out and rejected American system? Mr Cocker, with a child like simplicity truly refreshing, says that the law preserving machinery would be greatly re duced, and that a reign of peace and plenty woald follow the introduction of Prohibition. Sir, the facts 1 have quoted alone abundantly show the fallacy of such views. It is said tbat in the town of Providence alone while Prohibition was on trial there that 2000 persons were engaged in the illicit sale of liquors which, in spite of the utmost efforts of the magistrates and at enor mous cost to the city, could not be sappressed. The evils of total Prohibition are increased drunkenness, law-breaking and hypocrisy, a catalogue sufficiently black to warrant its rejection by a virtuous and liberty loving people. I am, etc., J. B. Root-).