Manawatu Herald TUESDAY, MAY 15, 1900. Prohibition.

Manawatu Herald, 15 May 1900, Page 2

Manawatu Herald TUESDAY, MAY 15, 1900. Prohibition.

Mr Stanford, the S.M. of New Plymouth, has ruled that a prohibition order issued in Wellington applies there and all over the colony. This telegram has surprised some of our contemporaries by the loose way it has been worded. /The order made in Wellington will only apply to the licensed persons named in such order whether they be in business in New Plymouth or Auckland or the Bluff, but it is possible that it might be made to apply to every licensed person in the colony. The Act is simple, a greatdeal too simph, as the clause relating to prohibition declares that " when it shall be' made to appear in open Court that any person by excessive drinking of liquor misspends wastes or lessens his or her estate or greatly injures his or her health or endangers or interrupts the peace and happiness of his or her family the Justices residing in such Court shall by writmor under the hands of any two such Justices forbid any licensed person to sell to him or her any liquor for the space of one year, and such Justices, or anyother two Justices, may at the same or any other time in like manner forbid the selling of any such liquor to the said drunkard by any such licensed persons of any other city, town, or district to which the drunkard shall or may be likely to resort for the same." Thus Mr Stanford's ruling is quite in accord* with the law. What has always struck us as being amiss with ,the Act is that though everyone may not sell to the drunkard the liquor yet the person most concerned is not prohibited from obtaining it if he can, by purchasing it in some outdistrict from persons who are not prohibited from selling it to him We wish, however, the fact to be clenr that within the district in which licensed persons are forbidden to supply the drunkard he would be liable to the law by endeavouring to obtain liquor, as the person who obtains it for him is liable to a fine, and the drunkard is liable to the law for inciting such person to do an illegal act. There is no such punishment in the case where the drunkard procures his liquor outside of the I prohibited area, as not being personally prohibited from drinking he does not incite the licensed person outside to do an illegal act in sending him drink. To our mind this is the weak point in the law for it is a notorious fact that many prohibited men are often drunk and that from no fault of their neighbours or of the licensed persons. It is the drunkard who should be held answerable, and it would appear but reasonable that ! if it is legal to prevent licensed per- j sons from selling drink to him it ■ should be equally legal to prevent the ' drunkard from purchasing liquor elsewhere As the law stands at present the prohibition acts as a help to a man who ia not wholly given i over to drunkenness, and whose ban from entering a licensed house is a protection from his thoughtless ! friends ; but to the man who has ; soaked himself in liquor the local prohibition merely entails a little more expense on his part to obtain the liquor he covets.

We desire to draw attention to the unfair conduct of issuing prohibition

orders in one town to apply to some other town, as the public run a risk even if seen enterr. g a licensed house with a prohibited person. Under such conditions the public are unaware that the drunkard is prohibited, as only the licensed persons are notified of the fa^t, and if sucii o,n order having been made is not noted in a newspaper, it is placing all under unfair conditions. Everyone who has had a prohibition order issued against him has s bad a good previous- warning and ihus there is little use in privacy on account of the feelings of the erring one. A badge, as some of our contemporaries suggest, would be most objectionable as the fact of his degradation would always be before the prohibited person, but we do not see why, when an order for prohibition is sough •!;, the person himself should not be prohibitod by a personal bond which should involve a term of imprisonment on the breach of it. If the drunkard, at the date of the application, was not in his proper state of mind to understand his responsibility in signing the bond he should be detained in custody until he was, and if he refused to sign such a bond he should be detained somewhere until he did. This would be a practical prohibition and no innocent person would get into trouble on his account, as every day they run the risk of as the Act now stands.