THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 249, 19 October 1881, Page 4

THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.

THE GOVERNMENT TEE SUPREME PUBLICAN.

The publican whatever his faults or his responsibilities, is merely the servant of the State. The state is the supreme publican ; and if there is any o-reat evil in connection with the drinking traffic it must lie at the door of the legislature. The temperance problem is generally regarded as complicated and difficult. The statesman usually approaches it with the air of a professor of legerdemain. He prefaces and interlards his philosophic dissertations with mouldy truisms about tho impossibility of making men sober by Act of Parliament, forgetting that the indictment against the State is that they aro made drunk by Act of Parliament. He roundly abuses the publican, distiller, and brewer, but he draws the line at grain-grower although he assails tho maltster. He sheds crocodile tears over human depravity, and paints heartrending pictures of homes in ruins, famishing families, crowded gaols and overflowing lunatic asylums. If he is asked to point out a remedy, he evades tho point eloquently denouncing the curse without assailing its origin. He talks glibly of poverty and crime, but he forgets that it is wise and gifted statesmen, of whom he is an example, the gushing patriots to whose fraternity he belongs that are chiefly responsible. He forgets that the drink he denounces so strongly goes through a filtering process and that although the publicau has the hard work and receives nearly all the blame, the Government receives nearly all the profit. The politician consistently endeavours to throw dust in their eyes by confounding cause with effect. When taxed with the enormous revenue derived by the State from the liquor traffic he replies, " Ah, no doubt the hard drinker is heavily taxed, but look at the gaols, the asylums, the police and police cells that we have to provide for him." Now this is simply dust-throw-ing. The fact tbat drunkenness produces crime, insanity, and poverty, with ii • countless train of evils, is tbe best of all reasons why the State should abstain from holding an interest in drunkenness. In JNew Zealand nearly half the revenue of the colony is derived from stimulants. The reform that is wanted is a fiscal reform. A better system of taxation would speedily emancipate the people and their representatives from the yoke of intemperance. Destroy the incentive at headquarters and other reforms will follow. If the State could approach the nuisance with clean bands, just as it approaches small-pox or any other epidemic, it would soon discover a method of stamping it out. So long, however, as the revenue of this colony is chiefly derived from the sale of alcoholic beverages, these beverages will be forced down the throats of the people, and honest humanity will be shocked by the spectacle of a Legislature existing on the net proceeds of dissipation, crime, and insanity. — Wairarapa Star.