LOCAL OPTION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume X, Issue 14, 15 June 1885, Page 2

LOCAL OPTION.

Mr Booth, the Temperance Lecturer, recently addressed an audience m Wellington, and m the course of his remarks said that New Zealand had the same disease which existed m older countries. When any reform was advocated, they were met with the* cry. " We do not want local option we do not want prohibition ; what we do want is regulation." In England there were 400 Acts passed for regulating the liqnori traffic. The people of England were at length crying out for local option. h Moral 3uasion could not regulate the liquor traffic. It was the one thing which neutralised our educational advantages and silenced the voice of religion. In America local option was a success, and prohibition did prohibit the sale and -manufacture of drink. In all the large cities of Maine it was almost impossible for the uninitiated to get drink. In Maine they had only one prisoner to every 1000 of the population ; m California there were 60 to every 1000. Not a penny of compensation had ever been paid to the liquor sellers m the United States. He had been asked what he would do with the publicans when he took all their customers away, and he answered, " Let them go to work, and earn their bread by the sweat of their brow." He believed the day ' was not far distant when they would have a national prohibition law throughout the Union. The indictment had been read against the liquor traffic, just as it had been against human slavery. They had a law m New Zealand which was m advance of the public sentiment. What was wanted was a leader of the sentiment m the Legislature, and he would that night appoint their Chairman as the standard-bearer. He demanded for this Colony a prohibition law which wouid stop the manufacture, the importation, and the sale of liquor. He asked them to write their indictment against it, and to vote— when the time came — for a beautiful home, a purer Christianity, and a more ennobled life.