POISONING THE PEOPLE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2813, 12 February 1908, Page 13

POISONING THE PEOPLE.

Referring to the evidence of Mr P. Daly, secretary of the Victorian United Licensed Victuallers' Association, given before the Tariff Commission, the Australasian said : — "'The publio have long suspected that they were being slowly poisoned, and it will be consoling- to receive the official assurance that their suspicions were perfectly well founded."

The following- extracts are from the second report of the commission : — Mr William B. Jackson, representing Peyton, Dowhng, and Co., wine and spirit merchants, said : " A lot of the whisky imported here is the vilest stuff — stuff that I would prohibit if I had the right to do so." He added : " They undoubtedly are not fit to drink."

Mr Henry Hogg, of Hogg, Robinson, and Co., wine and spirit merchants, said: " I travel a good deal about the country, and I go by coach to the outlying parts, and my" experience is that never at any time, and never in any place in the world that I have been, is there such bad spirit sold about the country as there is here at the present moment." The Chairman asked : " Are we to infer that the people are all being poisoned?" — "That is tho truth of it."

And it Cannot be Prevented

John Francis Deegan, president of the Licensed Victuallers' Association of "Victoria, said to the Inebriety Inquiry Board : '• You cannot eliminate sin from the world, and you cannot prevent hotelkeepeis selling bad liquor."