The Manawatu Herald. Tuesday, October 19, 1909. DOMINION OPTION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 496, 19 October 1909, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Tuesday, October 19, 1909. DOMINION OPTION.

Thr demand for.a Dominion, or as it was then called, Colonial or National option vote as well as a Local Option vote, dates from the year 1893, when the licensing districts and franchise were both extended. Its reasonableness is based on the fact that it is the only final and efficient way of dealing with the evil of the liquor traffic. There has been abundant proof that it cannot be mended, and it must therefore be ended. Judges and Magistrates, and criminal and social statistics all declare it a principal source of the crime, destitution, demoralisation, National waste in wealth and manhood, and personal and family misery that exist, and science is teaching us that it ministers no good to the most moderate of its patrons. Universal experience is teaching us that it does evil, and only evil, continually, everywhere, and under every form of its existence. It is so lawless, that, even where under Local Option powers the people suppress its legal existence, it boasts of its own violation of the law and pointing to its own work, and the work of those whom it has demoralised therein, defies the law and llaw-abidiug people. It not only will not keep the law where it is permitted a legal existence, but promotes lawlessness in any neighbouring area where such existence is denied it. The only hope of effectively dealing with it therefore, is to abolish it throughout the country as a whole. It is that the people may say if this is their will that a Dominion option vote is sought for them from the legislature. That part of the legislature which is representative of the people, the Lower House, on two occasions, namely in 1895 and in 1896, with practical unanimity, supported provisions proposed by the Government for conferring such a vote upon the people, but on both occasions these provisions were thrown out by the non-representative chamber. Since then the personal of the Upper House has considerably changed, and it is doubtful whether that House would have the audacity to again thwart such a popular demand so unanimously supported by the House of Representatives. When in 1895 the Upper Chamber threw out the above mentioned provisions, the Lower House appointed a committee which consisted of Messrs Seddon (Premier), McNab, Mitchelson and Meredith, who drew up reasons to urge upon the Upper House for disagreeing with them in their rejection ol these and other provisions of the Bill, and on October, 18th as recorded in Hansard, Mr Seddon moved in the House of Representatives :

The adoption of the following reasons for disagreeing with the amendments made by the Legislative Council in this Bill

. . . Clause 3, sub-section 4: The words struck out should be retained. The question of National Prohibition has long been exercising the public mind, and being a question largely affecting the social well-being of the, people, it is necessary that every facility should be given to the electors to express freely and unfettered their opinion thereon. It is contended by a very large section of the community that National Prohibition is the only effective method of dealing with the liquor question. Under these circumstances, to deny an opportunity being given for an expression of the opinion of the people of the Colony at the ballot box is an undue restriction and an interference with the liberties of the people. It has been conceded that the voice of the people should be taken on local option, and it therefore follows as a natural consequence that the same course should be followed in respect to National option. Further, the principle of National option was affirmed by the Bill last session, and this session it has been' further confirmed and unanimously approved by the House of Representatives Motion agreed to.

Those arguments unavailingly urged upon the Upper House under those conditions are more forceful than ever to-day, with the growth of public opinion that has taken place in the intervening years, and it remains for the electors, to determine how long their force shall be refused legisla-

I tive recognition. In the last ten \ years over fifty thousand separate persons have been convicted in our law courts, for the first time, of drunkenness. With our limited population and relative sobriety, it seems impossible. But in the Police Reports we have the terrible record. Who shall say how many more such offenders escaped the police ? It throws a lurid light on the effects of “the trade.” “The tree is known by its fruit.” In multitudes of instances National Prohibition would mean restored manhood, youthhood saved from ruin, and blighted homes blessed with restored peace and honour and love. It would afford such a happy illustration as the world is waiting for of the moral, social and material well-being of a whole country relieved from the legalised blighting curse of the drink demon.