ARCHBISHOP MANNING ON THE PERMISSIVE BILL.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 52, 20 January 1872, Page 3

ARCHBISHOP MANNING ON THE PERMISSIVE BILL.

In the course of his address at the annual meeting of the supporters of the United Kingdom Alliance, held in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, Archbishop Manning congratulated the friends of the Alliance on the great change in the public opinion of the country on the subject of the liquor traffic, and on the effective assistance rendered the movement in Scotland and Ireland. Combating the objections that the Permissive Bill was at variance with free government, liberal principles, and the Constitution, he said that, if free government meant unbridled license to the manufacture of drink, he only hoped that our free government might be brought to some rational liberty. (Hear, hear.) If Liberal principles meant a free trade in drink, in which the capitalist was to double or turn over three or four times the money invested, by the destruction of men, women, and children, by the destruction of home and domestic life, morality, and religion, the sooner they looked for better principles the better. (Applause.) It was said that the Permissive Bill, if it were good at all, ought to be made compulsory and not permissive. It was said, further, that it ought to be made impel ial and not local; there was not enough of it—(laughter)—that if it were good anywhere it was good everywhere, and that if they were honest they ought to go in for the Maine law at once. He said that there was no inconsistency in a bill which was to be applied where it was needed, which was not imperial—to be enforced upon the unwilling—but which was given as a boon and as a protection to those who had the free will to use it. (Applause.) Further, a friend of his, describing a public man with great powers of mind, said, “ That man has got an intellect like the proboscis of an elephant—laughter—he can pull up a tree and pick up a pin.” Parliament was very like the proboscis of an elephant in this —it could pull up a tree,but he entirely denied that it could pick up a pin—(hear, hear, and laughter)—and beheld that the bill of Sir Wilfred Lawson was not a bill that the Government could administer. The Government could lay down the principles uiion which the bill could be applied, but the administration and application of that bill could only be effective in localities. (Applause.) As to the working men, he hoped they would make a strike against drink; and he hoped the statesmen had given up or would give up the chatter about political economy in connection with the subject of drink.