Hawke's Bay Times. Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri. THURSDAY, JANUARY 18, 1872.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 19, Issue 1225, 18 January 1872, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Times. Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri. THURSDAY, JANUARY 18, 1872.

We yesterday referred incidentally to certain view* relative to the future of fhe liquor traffic recently enunciated by the London Times. As might be expected, the late action of the United Kingdom Alliance in raising £IOO,OOO for extending the prohibition movement has caused not only the Times, but almost the whole English press, to say something on the matter; but we ponsidor the utterances of the Time* \o be of more importance than the rest of the press, as indicating more closely |he direction in which public opinion is surely moving. The Times in the fu'st placei professes to accept "-all the main provisions of the Alliance," though it is not yet prepared to coincide with the logical conclusions flowing fpm them. It says :— <* No one ventures to deny that if drunkenness could put down the result would be a positive accession to. the national fund and capital, with a diminution $£ crimp ami pauperism, for which the Country might be well content to pay hundreds of millions; besides a gain to public virtue and religion beyond all human calculation." . . . "It is certainly not i\om any undue tenderness for.so-called * vestid interests.' that cannpt recommend the «£ 100.000 fund of the Alliance $> a safe

investment, either financially or socially. We have often had occasion to point out the essential distinctions between 'vested interests' in their true sense and the expectation of a public-house proprietor or liis nominee that a bench of magistrates will see fit to renew a license, which they may legally not only refuse to renew at discretion, but may depreciate to any extent by granting

licences to rival applicants. . . We

most fully admit it, however, that society at large has a vested interest in the sobriety and health of its members, which must in the last resort be paramount to all vested interests of individuals, even were ic necessary (which it is not) to destroy them without compensation. In fact, vjc accept —and who does not accept- I — all the main pre misss of the Alliance. It is their conclusion which, in common with a "vast: majority of reasonable uum, we t egret as profoundly and disastrously unsound."

It must strike the reader that the Times has not in this case followed quite &o logical a course as might be expected. The conclusions of the Alliance flow naturally from their premises, which the Times fully accepts as truths. The conclusion is in fact contained in the premise?*, and .tbe Times is not generally so illogical as to accept the propositions of a syllogism and reject the consequences. We may, therefore, take it for granted that it will not be long before it goes with the Alliance heart and soul.

Whut it says about compensation to the trade is well worth noting. Ft shows tiiat on this point at least it is far ahead of Mr Bruce, whose ten year monopoly proposal was rejected alike by all parties.

Tn speaking to « the trade " on a former occasion the Times was far more logical. It remarked —"The licensed victuallers have overlooked the hearing of their own, statistics. They have in formed the public of the amount of capital invested in the Honor traffic, of the number of public houses now open, of the returns enjoyed, and of the extent to which all their interests must necessarily suffer from the intervention proposed. . . What is felt by every person conversant with the subject is that a very large proportion of the expenditure upon intoxicating liqiiors is unnecessarily, wastefully, and detrimentally incurred. What is wished is to divert this money from the publichouse to some better destination, and yet this simple proposition . . would suffi.ce to effect all chat mischief to the trade, to avert which the members of the liquoi." trade are no desperately striving.' 1

It will be seen that the Times can cut both ways, and if on the one hand it considers the Alliance as extreme in its measures against the evils of the traffic, it can show the publicans that a reform which all reasonable men must desire would divert from their coffers the great bulk of their present receipts into channels more consistent with the well being of society, and that though this result were effected by legislation they could have no valid claim to compensation.