NATIONAL PROHIBITION

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 212, 16 December 1910, Page 4

NATIONAL PROHIBITION

WILL IT BE CARRIED NEXT YEAR* MR. T. E. TAYLOR HOPEFUL. Christchurch, Wednesday. . In the course of an. address on the new Licensing Act, Mr. T. E. Taylor, M.P., said it was highly improbable but it was just possible that they could carry national; prohibition on a threefifths majority. "Hitherto we have always had to stop short in our appeal to the public," continued Mr. Taylor, "but now we can say that moderation is impossible, and that the smallest quantity, produces an ill effect. If after five years and a-half of prohibition it has not produced what we claim that it will, I shall be prepared to sit down with my opponents and design some system of licensing that will give good results, for i£ the people are prepared to make a great experiment, involving most radical (reforms, and the result is unsatisfactory, we must, as honest men, sanction some better system of dealing with the drinking custom. The trade has perhaps agreed to the inclusion of the national issue, believing in its cunning that it will prove an obstacle to further temperance progress, but it is quite possible that it will scourge it out of the temple ' for ever. The question of finance will not cause the country six months' anxiety,, and within six months, of the" carrying of prohibition there will be virtually clean criminal calendars, because the 90 per cent, of crime which is incited by alcohol will have ceased. While I do not think that it is likely that the majority will be reduced before the next poll you have a right to fight for it, and we shall introduce a Bill and take advice on it, so that even if it fails members will have an opportunity of expressing their opinions'. We intend to have the period of deferment reduced during next session." "There have been in times past very, remarkable crusades on behalf of great moral issues," said Mr. Taylor, in conclusion, "and I believe that it is within the bounds of possibility that the people \ of this country,' under a great impulse fostered by the pulpit and helped by the platform, may rise in 1911, and even by the three-fifths majority destroy the cause of more evil and more varied evils than are inflicted oipon mankind by any other one thing in, this world."