ALCOHOLOGY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 296, 9 May 1911, Page 3

ALCOHOLOGY.

".SOME ONE HAD BLU,\DER'D."

(Published by Arrangement.)

That was what Tennyson said; and still men blunder. Professor Salmond said that prohibitionists blundered; now Mr. A. S. Adams says that the Professor has blundered. The public will now be able to outsider the question in dispute for themselves, for Mr. Adams has issued a pamphlet in reply to that of Dr. Salmond; and with both sides of the question stated by men of ability the peonle must judge. It is to be hoped that the mass will not blunder, too.

Mr. Adams' reply is entitled, "'Professor Salmond's Blunder," and the booklet will be on sale in a few days. The author deals with Dr. Salmond's arguments in detail, nnd, lawyer-like, he puts his witness into a tight place very often—so tight that it is to lie hoped that the Professor will return to the contest and give us, what he half promised, his constructive policy to take the place of what he so strongly condemns. In the first place Mr. Adams shows that Dr. Salmond, while claiming to he a democrat — a friend of the people—is really an individualist, and that when he (the Professor) speaks of the poor weaklings who can't resist the temptation to drink, ho shows himself what he is—a pure individualist, with no heart to feel for others' woes and temptations. Mr. Adams calls in question the statement that total abstinence is a new thing and the product of last century. He shows that "the practice of abstinence was so widespread amongst. Christians and prized so much that in some cases scandal was given if Christians were seen to depart from it": he is quoting from Baronius, an ancient historian. 'Perhaps the most telling part of Mr. Adams' booklet is where he deals with page 42 in Dr. Salmond's pamphlet where it reads, "Prohibition must lie limited to acts . . .

inherently bad," and shows how regulation, which the doctor advocates, really amounts to. a measure of prohibition. Now we have prohibition—with exceptions. The mass of the people are now prohibited from selling liquors; the regulations on those who are licensed to sell arp', and must lie, made more and more strict in accordance as the risk becomes greater or is more generally realised. It is to be hoped that a great many readers of these interesting books will be found, and that then a right decision will lie come to, and no blunders when we conic to the poll.