Waiapu Temperance Reform League.

Gisborne Times, Volume VIII, Issue 570, 14 November 1902, Page 3

Waiapu Temperance Reform League.

(To the Editor ot the Times.) Sir,—Your columns of this morning contain an announcement o£ the formation of the above League, and its objects, under the foster care of the opponent of nearly everything proposed in the district. It also announces the names of various individuals who have been influenced to join through the casuistry of the legal gentleman who is its foster father. Ilis long columns of arguments must he fresh in our minds as to the Point being the only right and proper place for a hand rotunda. The verdict given lay the puolic votes showed how little they headed his positive statement on that head. Then we may remember how lie, a presumed adept at engineering (from his own statements j, challenged ail Mr Alestayer’s counsel and judgment, in respect of our water supply. Many columns in the local press were occupied by him to prove his case, and Ins , mountain at last Drought lorth the wonderful mouse that he had consulted the Government expert (Ur h'mch, 1 think) as to the splendid supply and quality oi water obtainable from the Waimata. It ended with the little fizzle that he promised to send a sample to be analysed, that he bought a bottle and paid lor it, but failed to send the water. The curtain having closed over that act, he is now the champion of the devotees of alcoholic liquor bars. In his advertisements, he invites Prohibitionists, but gags discussion, being so intoxicated with the exuberance oi his own verbosity that he talks against rime, and so prevents an opportunity for discussion Egotistical in the extreme, he adopts the saying oi lawyers in the Old Country, “If you have to defend a hail case, abuse the plaintiff’s attorney.’’ He is a past-master in using personal abuse, and appears to act on the principle, “ throw plenty of r.tud ; some will ho sure to stick." There are none so blind as those who don’t want to he enlightened. _ The late Major-General Neal Dow, father of the Maine law, wrote me in reply to newspaper statements criticising the working of the Maine law : —“ We used to have two distilleries and six breweries in the city of Portland, and imported several cargoes ot West India nun yearly. Now, there is not a brewery or distillery in the State, o>any rum imported, and in every respect our State is in a most prosperous condition.” Those, Mr Editor, are the facts reported by a gentleman who lived in the State most of the !)0 years oi his life, not from a 40hours’ visit to Clntha as Mr Lysnar s was reported in the pamphlet-,, in wine i he contradicts his own statements rc Prohibition effects. As to the effort to produce temperance reform, the Statute books of (treat Britain show more than -.no Acts ot Parliament to produce that effect, but Kiev have proved inefficacious. The physicians don’t try to reform fevers, but to stamp out the germs which cause them, and prevent a recurrence. Alcohol, creating as it does in so many cases an appetite a d craving for itseli. cannot lie regulated as to its action, being ruinous in the extreme to many who partake ci it. Cut down the upas tree oy closing the supplies at the liquor bars., and free our countrv from its curse. —1 am, etc., JAMES PECKOVLK. Gisborne. Nov. 13th, 1902.