Anti-Prohibition Meeting.

Manawatu Herald, 3 December 1896, Page 2

Anti-Prohibition Meeting.

♦ The meeting at the Public Hall last night, called at the instance of those who desired to see both sidei of the question put before the public, waa a great success, much greater than had been anticipated. Mr J. R. Stansell, the Mayor-elect, was the only speaker, and he showed that the idea that drink wa9 the origin of the most of the crimes was utterly incorrect. He pointed out that some of the greatest villians and robbers the later years have known have been men who assumed the cloak of piety and temperance to cover their deeds. In referring to Jabez Balfour, the man who ruined thousands, Mr Stansell pertinently asked whether it would not have been better for him to have been a drunkard, he might have destroyed himself but he would have been beyond destroying so many others. The speaker quoted extracts from a standard authority on the statistics of drink as affecting heelth, proving that the evils said to arise from alooholism had been immensely exaggerated. It was a curious fact worth noticing that if prohibition was likely to achieve any part of that claimed for it by the prohibit tionists the result was not apparent in the state of those professing total abstinence in this town. He quoted the results of a canvas for oharity lately made, end without mentioning names, compared the subscriptions given by moderate drinkers, much to the disadvantage of the total abstain* erg. The Rev. Mr Low was quoted to show that the action of prohibU tion upon a State was the production of a race of sneaks. As an example of what drink would do to a man the ipeaker instanoed himself, who had been engaged in the liquor trade close on twenty years, and challenged any total abstainer of a like age to feati of endurance whioh he named. The audience was a very large one, and inoluded very many ladies, and the speaker was frequently applauded. Mr Stansell spoke fdr an hour and a half clearly and temperately, and astonished his audience, with his ready grasp of facts and of their application. Mr Thynne was chairman, but his office was a sinecure.