AN ABERDONIAN IN MAINE.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 16, Issue 861, 8 November 1870, Page 3

AN ABERDONIAN IN MAINE.

An Aberdonian has settled ia Dix Land, in the State of Maine, He writes to a friend in glowing terms, of the home of his adoption. He says:-—" But if the grace and gifts of the old country are beyond the reach of young America, the freedom and wealth, or rather the distrisbution of wealth in America, are beyond the reach of Britain. In the State of Maine the people are wealthy to a degree beyond my expectation. And now for a word on the liquor laws, and this takes me back to a meeting of the Reform League held in St. Paul's street, Aberdeen. The address which that association presented to the worthy member for the city, Colonel Sykes, contained a reference to the Permissive Bill, which I found it was -difficult at that meeting not to oppose. It was argued that the people were better judges of their own wants than the magistrates, and that if they were capable of voting against a Tory, they were surely .capable of voting against a publicau. This I could not gainsay; but I had no faith in the prohibition as a practical measure. But-then I lived under the •corrupting influence of tht 'iquor laws, and did not understand their true relation to the people. I question if any man who has not seen the results of prohibition can do so. Liquor is outlawed in Maine, and the people are sober, prosperous, and happy. Drunkenness on a large scale can only be contrasted with sobriety on a large scale, and this my residence in Maine has enabled me to do. I feel confident that were Colonel Sykes here he would be a convert to prohibition. Those who were not opposed to the prohibitory hill on account of their interest in the

traffic, and all those who were passive, are now to a man in its favor. As a medicine it is not popular. The doctors find it impolitic to prescribe what the people proscribe. As to the clergy they are almost to a mau atiti liquor. Sir Wilfrid Lawson ought to move in the House of Commons for a commission to inquire into the working of the prohibitory laws in America. The result is far beyond the sanguine anticipations of Neal Dow and bis friends. I never was a teetotaler, nor had I any faith in the prohibition till I saw it with my own eyes. - The right of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done;* the establishment of liquor-shops makes drunkenness common, and the shutting of them up produces the opposite effect. * * * The Yankees are a logical people. Britain is too slow for them. Lord Brougham called the Alliance ' The Grand Alliance,' but in ten years the Yankees would pass by acclamation a vote of no confidence in it. A coadjutor of Neal Dow's said to me that the Alliance either had no faith in its principles, or no faith in the common sense of the people. There are no round about roads with Jonathan. If he wanted a bill to stop the manufacture of drink he would not be so impolitic as to frame it as to include only the common sale of liquor In this instance I give way to the system of the Yankees. The manufacture of the liquor must be stopped if the people are to be blessed instead of cursed with the bounties of the Almighty.