What of Compensation?

Taihape Daily Times, 27 March 1919, Page 5

What of Compensation?

AN IMPORTANT ASPECT. ( £4,500,000 MAY BE WASTED. POSSIBLE GIFT TO THE TRADE. (From a leading article in the "Lyttelton Timesj') . . . The question at issue is the cost of compensation; or, to be precise, the cost of prohibition starting next June as against its cost if postponed for one year. __ The Licensing Act, 1908, authorises a loan to be raised in the ordinary way and provides for the compensation to be paid in money. Every addition of £4,500,« 000 to the public debt means a liability for seventy-five years totalling £16,000,000, with the exception that war loans are to bo extinguished in a shorter period by means of a higher annual charge for sinking fund. There is no provision in the law for compensating the liquor trade by issuing bonds, but there is provision for paying the compensation money in cash. Our contention in this little controversy is clear enough. It is that if a majority of the people want to sweep liquor out of the country they have two opportunities. They may have it next year for nothing. . . That prohibition without compensation would be cheaper than prohibition with compensation is very obvious. But we are told that there is only an "oftchance" of getting a majority for prohibtjpn at the general election "in a three-cornered ballot." We take that to mean that if and when State control is among the issues before tnc people, the difficulties in the way o> getting a majority for prohibition wltt be enormously increase} - ]. Probably that is correct. If so, there is a strong moral reason as well as a large financial one in having the liquor question decided not next month Tjut, at the general election. . '"For out-and-out prohibitionists there will be no three cornered ballot. They will be free to abolish liquor from trie land if they comprise a majority o* the voters. By postponing prohibition for one year, however, they may save the country £16,000,000 and the? may also remain true to the establisned policy of no compensation which their leaders preached so strenuously until a few months ago.

Prohibition was repealed and liquor went back in Vermont, in New Hampshire, in Connecticut, in Rhode Island, in South Dakota and other States.

And the same thing can happen *u New Zealand. There is positively no guarantee that in the evnut of prohibition passing next month, the experiment may not prove ephemeral and the compensation money a girt to the Trade and a heavy public loss. In fact, on the bare majority scvera! of the existing no-license districts would not be back to licensed conditions, through the determination of the majority who struck out the bottom line. It ip your plain duty for the sake of your country and for your own and your neighbour's individual liberty to strike out the bottom line Un 'April 10th.—Published by arrangement.