PARSONS AND POLICE. The Parsons as Critics.

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 281, 18 November 1905, Page 6

PARSONS AND POLICE. The Parsons as Critics.

ALL the lecturing parsons and Prohibitionists in New Zea land at this moment are agreed that the police should look after hotels better than they do. There are fewer police than parsons m New Zealand, and the police might retaliate by blammg the sins of the people on. the parson, who should be in several places at once, preaching and curing souls, and being a bit brothely to the fallen "drunk," and a little more temperate of word and a little less bitter about thmgis generally. The police are not perfect, and the parsons don't get any nearer perfection than the police. It is easy enough for one person to tell another person how he should run his business. It is harder to show by example how things should bei done. And the parsons don't, by their example, show the police a way out of the difficulty. The parsons talk. The pobce must not talk. They must act. The parson sees a squad of alcoholic unfortunates, and he either rushes away and preaches a scathing sermon about it, or saya that Wellington, or somewhere else, is the most drunken city in the world. He doesn't make it less drunk by saying so. It is a clean and easy way to' get along by insisting on other people working a deal harder than they themselves work. It is a way they have with the Bible-in-Schools business, as well as the beer question. If the police looked after the licensing business as well as the parsons say they ought to, the police, who are few, could do nothing- else. As it is, the force m New Zealand is more versatile than any other fore*} we know, and is called upon to perform duties that m other countries would not be given to constables. * • « The obvious duty of the parsons is to get sworn in as special constables to do pub. patrols. The decent licensees would welcome it, as they would have nothing to* fear. As for the licensees who break the law, well, the parsons could run them in. On the whole, the parson might growl less and hustle more. One Anglican Synod condemns the open bar, and another condemns the whole business. The house is divided apamst itself. If the open bar is done away with, the poliro will have their work made sti'.l greater to* cope with the secret tippling. # # « The clergy are paid to talk, and the police are paid to work. The parson don't purify the country by dashing about making furious allegations about publicans' wives and daughters, and Prohibitionists are not fitting themselves for the Kingdom of Heaven by speaking of the "epilectic and idiotic" children of publicans A little less venom, a little more elbow-grease, and a little less tongue, a little fairness, a little less parsoniflage and Pharisaism, a little more pity, and a little less blame. We want parsons who are sober of speech. Insobriety uf speech is often as harmful as alcoholic insobriety.