MR. PRICE'S LECTURE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XI, Issue 200, 15 August 1876, Page 2

MR. PRICE'S LECTURE.

[ COMMUNICATED."] Last evening a lecture on "The Local Option Bili" was delivered hy Mr Price at the Temperance Hall. The audience was small; one more proof that the Templars are of only cm .11 value in tbe fl^ht for the great principle now agitating the Empire The chair was taken by the Rev J Lei«hton, who availed him-.elf of the opportunity to state the position whhh he held in reference to he Temperance question. The lecturer commenced by stating that he would not discu-s the subject from a teetotal joint of view. Ie was pur.ly a political question, find as such it must be treat e '. He showed that the liquor traffic was a permissive trade at present, that it ba i been the subject of legislation and restriction for more than 1000 yeai-s. Yet it grew and spread, and its evils were greater t > day than ever be.'oreat any period of our history; that the logic of cucumstauces had brought the question to its present pisition; that the conviction had fastened itself upon the minds of the people in every English speaking community that there was only one way of dialing effectually with it, which was its prohibition; that this was shown by the fact that in every Legislature of almost every State of America and

Dependence of the British Empire there was a Bill to this effect before it, and that the grantiog of a denund so invariably made was only a question of time, and that very short. Alter clearly showing the duties of a State ia reference to this question, the lecturer met with great force the objections which are urged against the measure. 1. That it was not a sumptuary Jaw. 2. That it did not profess to make people sober by Act of Parliament, although he mahtainei that an Act of Parliament was, nest to the law of God, the greatest moral force in a couitiy. Yet the Permissive Bill was not a positive but a negative Lrce; it nude no pretension to regenerate society, but to free it from temptations to wrong, and claimed that the inherent moral power that ever reaides in law should be thrown into the scale of morality and sobriety. 3. That it did not interfere with vested interests. He showed first tbat, properly speaking, there were no vested interests to cona'.rve; that the license only extended to twelve mouths tenure, and its renewal was always a conditional matter, but admitting tho principle tbat compensation should always be made to those whose private interests have to be removed for the general good, it was shown that that question did not belong to the Permissive Bill any more than to the Bill for abolishing tb© provinces, and whenever tho question of compensation to the trade has to be considered it will have to be dealt with by the Legislature on its own merits apart from every other question. He then graphically described the vital interests that were destroyed by the trade; monetary, and social, and political; moral and religious interests paralizsd by the evil flowing from it,— lv the pnsenceof which it was an insult ti tbe virtue of the world and tho common sense of men to talk of vested interests in that which waned with every interest of life. 4. It was shown that the Bill advocated, introduced no novel principle into our legislation, that the publicans' trade was now as always a permissive trade. All the Bill proposed to do was to pltce the powers of licensing in the hands of tbe ratepayers. This was shown to be a reasonable proposals, inasmuch as the publicans' trade is specially one for public convenience, and so was protected by this from prohibition where erer the public, who were ihe best judges of their own wants, deemed the accotnuiodition necessary. The lecture was brought to a close by allowing the place tbe question he'd in the political programme of the age, and how Government was interfering more and more for the protection of the weak and helpless, from the greed of tho capitalists, and all that can in a way prove inimical to the general weal.

The lecture waa warmly received by those present, and general regret expressed at the smal/ness of the attendance.

Cordial votes ef thanks were given to the chairman and lecturer. The choir rendered some pieces of music very nicely.