The Murder Out.

Hastings Standard, Issue 185, 1 December 1896, Page 2

The Murder Out.

PROHIBITION FOR THE MASSES; LIBERTY FOR THE CLASSES. At last we know the truth. The Prohibitionists .stand confessed of playing a double game. Like the rest of the community, we have credited them Avilih singleness of purpose. In perfect fuitk we believed then) to be warring against the drinking customs of the people in all their manifold forms. With them, we recognised and deplored the wide spread misery and vice and degradation that afflict and scourge every people among whom the drink tratlic is carried on. Prohibition was a daring remedy to propose, but as the issue was left to the people to decide for themselves, we studiously refrained from seeking to Influence their choice either for or against it, feeling that if the. people so willed it, there was no reason why the experiment should not be tried. But if if is to be tried at all, it must apply all round. There must be no exceptions. If Bill and Jack are to be deprived of their tankard of ale, the Fat Man must also be denied his wine-cellar and his stock of spirits. If the public-house bars are to go, tho sale of intoxicant liquors must also cease at the clubs. In short, if an embargo is to be laid upon the public vending of alcoholic beverages, their importation or home manufacture for private consumption must be declared illegal. Provision for all this was made in the Alcoholic Liquors Sale Control Bill as introduced to the House of Representatives last session to meet the contingency of the popular vote being cast for National Prohibition.

But apparently the Prohibitionists have no such end in view. Ail they aim at is the closing up of the licensed public-houses. Here are the facts. From the pnlpit of St. Paul's ProCathedral Church at Wellington on Sunday week, the Rev. T. 11. Sprott, M.A., announced that he had received a circular from the Prohibition Executive desiring him to appeal to the congregation to vote "No License " at the forthcoming licensing poll. The circular also instructed him to say that the carrying of "No License" would not in the least interfere with the private consumption of alcoholic liquors. Under these circumstances the clergyman very properly declined to preach "No License."

If the Executive to which the Rev. Mr Sprott referred are conducting the Prohibition campaign throughout the colony, the platform they have erected is in no sense of a Democratic character. They preach Prohibition for the use of the people, and at the same time they take the precaution to assure the favored, well-to-do classes that their privileges are not to be curtailed, and their liberty of action is not to be interfered with. In other words private tippling may go on with the full approval of the law among those who can afford to lay in supplies, but the man who wants a nip of whisky or a glass of beer must dodge the police man to get it. Could anything be more illiberal or unfair'? It is quite on a par with the conduct of a Temperance advocate, very much in evidence here lately, who ranted about the Drink Curse at the street corners, and then went in for a glorious carouse on his own account.

There must be but one law for the rich and poor alike. If the man who toils by the sweat of his brow for a weekly wage is to be dragooned into total abstinence by the public sale of liquor being penalised, the man of means must be prepared to forego his private bottle or cellar. There can be no half measures. As the Rev. Mr Sprott pointed out, any law that closed the public houses and winked with approval at private drinking would be rightly regarded by the community as tyrannous, and to be wherever and whenever possible..#ln short, Prohibition must bo absolutiT'or not at all. Let that be clearly understood. If it is to be less than absolute, the people will know where they stand.— N.Z. Observer.