“WILL PROHIBITION PROHIBIT?”

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 26, 23 September 1893, Page 10

“WILL PROHIBITION PROHIBIT?”

TO THE EDITOR. Sxh, —Let me have at “ Spectator,” and I will make shreds and tatters of his arguments against Prohibition, 'i hese arguments contain within themselves the elements of their own destruction. In his opening paragraph “ Spectator ” concedes all that prohibitionists build their claims on for Prohibition, and all that is necessary to condemn all that he says against Prohibition. The drink evil, he says, is a gigantic evil, from which half the poverty and crime in [Britain and the colonies arises. Then, he asks, will total prohibition remedy this evil, or put a stop to or decrease drunkenness? In replying to these questions it may be said that total prohibits n does not appear to have been tried yet; th« sale of alcohol as medicine at least has been allowed in prohibited States, but that the decrease of drunkenness, with its attendant evils, follows prohibition there is the best authenticated evidence, of which none will doubt except those who are determined not to believe. That prohibition is a thorough and immediate cure for drinking is neither claimed nor expected by those who advocate it. They know too well the power of the drink over its victims to expect such a thing. When men have become so enslaved to the drink as to be willing to pay, as “ Spectator” says, exorbitant prices for poisonous liquor illicitly supplied, it would be idle to expect to suppress drinking altogether whilst such characters live ; but, on the other hand, who but men so enslaved would ever pay these exorbitant prices and incur the risks of a broken law to obtain an article which other men would net swallow as a gift? The great fallacy which underlies all arguments against prohibition is the assumption that the craving for alcoholic stimulants is a natural one and not artificially created. If the desire for such stimulants was to satisfy a real want of our nature, as so many people pretend to think, the attempt to suppress it might well be regarded as useless, but every teetotaller gives the most emphatic denial to such an assumption —a denial which no amount of sophisticated argument can affect. There!ore it follows that our first duty should be to stop public drinking by which this unnatural appetite is created. Then we may get to the end of final suppression some time, but with legalised drinking going on, never. “Spectator” brings what he regard as analogies to enforce his arguments. He refers to smuggling in the last century, and says the British Government was powerless to"put down smuggling till it died at. the birth of free trade. There is as much inducement to smuggle wines and spirits now as ever there was, and public sentiment had very little to do with it; but there was a real incentive to smuggling. It appealed to one of the strongest traits in human nature —self, which is entirely wanting in the case of the drink until an interest in it has been created in men, so the analogy fails. “Spectator” next refers to Government s failures to put down agrarian outrages in Ireland, but this is not strictly true. A measure of success proportionate to the efforts put forth always attended the attempts at suppression ; but there is no analogy between a people fighting for what they believe to be their just rights‘and people fighting against the suppression of what is allowed on every Hard to be the greatest evil in the world. In concluding this point “Spectator” says the ultimate sanction of law is physical force. That may be, but what is physical force in this connection? It is a sword wielded by another force, which is public sentmient or opinion, which includes women, and is not made up wholly of a majority of the men of a nation, as claimed; and when women are enfranchised their opinion will be as potential when they choose to enforce it as that of men. “Spectator” next falls into an egregious absurdity in giving an explanation of what a fad is. He says that what is a fad when held by the few becomes a glorious principle when advocated by the many. A fad never becomes a glorious principle, but remains a fad for ever. Neither is a glorious principle ever a fad, even at its earliest stage, when it is most derided, but is a glorious principle from its birth to its full fruition. Numbers do not make principles, but principles beget numbers to their side. The abolition of slavery in the British dominions, at a cost ox £2 ',000,000 to the nation, which proposal was laughed to scorn at its inception as the most visionary of fads, is a case in point. “ Spectator ” is equally at fault in his next point. He says if prohibition becomes law in New Zealand it wdll bo the work of a compact minority, and not because it is demanded by a majority of male electors. “ {Spectator ” dwells too much altogether on male majorities, ignoring the rights of that sex which gave him life and being. Prohibition, when it does come in New Zealand, will be in response to the voice of the majority, not of males only, but of females also. The direct veto, by simple majority, may be obtained by such a compact minority, and here is where we prohibitionists stand. Like Shylcck in the play w r e stand for law as we find it, which gives power to rule to bare n ajorities ; but, unlike Shylock, we want law that we may, execute justice and mercy — mercy to those who are robbed of all that

makes life worth having by their natural protectors, and justice to those who have to bear the burdens brought upon society by the crime and poverty which flow from the drink. It is by the will of a bare majority that the drink traffic, with the incalculable evils which result from it, exists, and should not the same majority suffice for prohibition, or should those who are standing for this equal justice be handicapped with a three-fifths majority, and be charged with the thousand and one offences against law and morality which “Spectator” and his class predict will be committed by the drinking class if prohibition becomes law ? What sort of principles arc these, and whence came they ? But 1 must not stay to comment, although there is room for declamation of the strongest sort here.

“ spectator ” innocently remarks that only men with consciences will obey the law of Prohibition, and, by implication, that laws should be made to suit men without consciences. Then he calls Professor Goldwin !>mith to his aid. The Professor, he says, writing on prohibition in Canada, dilates on the serious iuju y done to national morals caused by making laws that forbid actions in themselves innocent. Query, is a thing innocent frf'm which evils arise of such magnitude that it is difficult to exaggerate them, as “ Spectator ” says, and if these evils are not to be debited to those whose actions perpetuate the cause of them, to whom are they to be charged ? Is the sanction which custom long established and habit long indulged gives to an evil to be regarded as claiming more consideration at our bands than efforts put forth for the suppression of the source of those evils ? Stop and think, “ Spectator,” before you write again on this subject. You say that magistrates will not convict for breaches of a law that has not the sanction of the public generally, and then you instance the .English game laws, which do not receive this.public sanction, and say that country magistrates regard breaches of these laws as a more serious offence than half killing a wife, and of course punish it accordingly. What sort of logic is that ? The poacher, the professional one, is not regarded as a hero—a champion of poverty and labour, as you say, but as a low vagabond too lazy for work. I lived for some time in a country district where game was preserved, and that was the opinion entertained of poachers. You say that the breach of one law results in contempt for all law, human and Divine. According to this dictum every man and woman is a reprobate, for there is not one but has broken a law some time in their life ; and you are equally wide of the mark in assigning a reason for the distinction men make between stealing a penny and defrauding the Customs revenue, viz., that the first is an offence against a Divine law, but the other an offence against a human law. I rather think it is because the first is regarded by all men as an offence against the laws which bind society together, and therefore must he supported by all, whilst the latter is regarded as a venial offence in comparison. It is consideration for the bearing these laws have on society that influences men’s actions, and not regard for either divine or human origin. The law, “ thou shalt not steal,” is emphatically human, because it is only for man’s protection and benefit, and having regard for laws in proportion to the benefit they confer on society, we claim first consideration for the law of prohibition. But I must stop. But before dropping “Spectator ” I may tell him that I regard his philosophy and his moralising about law-breaking and the distinction he makes as a conglomeration of absurdities, and I would strongly advise him to employ his leisure time in cobbling shoes. —Yours, etc., T. Buxton.