MORAL SUASION AND THE TEMPERANCE CAUSE.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 35, 3 November 1911, Page 17

MORAL SUASION AND THE TEMPERANCE CAUSE.

Sir, —I was glad" to notice from the recent issue of your paper that you were throwing your columns open 'for the discussion of the licensed traffic in alcoholic liquors in its relation to the people, and seeing this I thought the attached clipping might prove interesting and profitable to your readers :— "In an address delivered some years ago, the late Dr. F. R. Lees said: 'The temperance cause has depended largely upon mora Isuasion, That has not failed, hut we are asked to be content with the triumphs we have won and to stop at moral suasion. What is moral suasion but learning for' ourselves and teaching others tho duty of the individual relations of life? And what.is duty but action? We know the truths, but we want the instrument. How shall we get it? We shall make it. We shall make it by a Parliament that will give us powers to protect ourselves, our homes and our country, and tell us. to stop here is to defeat the ends of our life and the glory of our movement. What is the history of the drink traffic? Do you want to know? You can easily satisfy yourselves. Go to the Rolls Office in London ; turn to the reign of Queen; Elizabeth ; the beginning of this most enormous and damnable evil—where is it? I will read it. It i 3 a petition from the Conservatives of that day to Sir William Cecil: "The wealth of the meaner sort is the foundation for rebellion, the occasion for insolence. It must be cured by keeping the people in awe, and by providing, as it were, by some sewers or channels to "draw or suck from tho people their money by subtle and direct means." Such was the petition, and the means they ultimately adopted was the establishment of ale houses all over the .-country. That was like a breath from Hell. The people were so prosperous that they were turbulent under unjust laws, and means must be devised to make them poor and impotent. Through the spread of ale houses and wine houses all over the land the people were debauched, and 80 years afterwards the Goverainiifc found the mischief so great that it. fell upon themselves, and then they started the system of modern licensing. This raav point a moral; it cannot adorn a tale. Your duty is to see this great political and social fact —that any party that will bolster up and abet this evil traffic is not a friend of the people.' " With relation to this, I might mention that Sir William Cecil was an ancestor of Arthur James Balfour, who was Premier of the late Conservative Government in England, and who in 1904 tied the liquor traffic more tightly round the necks of the -people by the passing of the iniquitous Compensation Bill, which literally put back the clock of progress and had the tendency of making the rich richer and the poor porer. It is high time for the working-classes to wake up to the fact that the .licensed traffic in alcoholic liquors is their deadliest foe. —I am, Oamara. . EYRE EVANS.