CHURCH AND LIQUOR

Gisborne Times, Volume LXI, Issue 9854, 6 November 1924, Page 3

CHURCH AND LIQUOR

ARCHBISHOP RILEY OUT-

SPOKEN

UNFAIR TACTICS CONDEMNED

PERTH, Oct. 20. Archlvshop X? i 1 oy- spoke on prohibition and 1 quor reform on Tuesday night when lie declared Ids charge to the Anglican diocesan synod. Archbishop Ri’ey said that fie believed that what we had to do as a Church to promote temperance was to try to bring tho power cf the spirit of Christ to hear on the lives of people and the thought of the world. He deprecated the appeal to force—the civil law—to compel men to be sober. Even if we could do it, the cost would be too great. To buy sobriety at the cost of freedom 'was not by any means a good bargain. Prohibition for a free people was wrong in princ pie, and lie would not do anything to bring it about. One very unfair way of trying to bring about prohibition was to call drink by the disgusting name of “boone,' and to say that on ono side the prohibitionists had all the’ moral people and the good (their own description of themselves) and that on the other side there was the trade. He had nothing to do with the trade, neither had millions of others who believed in having a- drink. “Wo only fight for personal freedom,” he said. “To try to make out that it is only those who are intersted in the sale of beer and wine and spirits _ who are opposing prohibition is a wicked and contempt'b!e lie, and they who say it know it, hut they think that it is a good electioneering cry.” The last liquor reform bill had done much good. He advocated the appointment of a vigilance committee to which information about infrir gements ,ol the law might be sent and the committee could pass it on.