LOCAL OPTION BILL.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2640, 25 June 1877, Page 2

LOCAL OPTION BILL.

(To the Editor of the Evening Star.) Sib, —In your issue of June 12th M? Fox, speaking at public meeting, Bays there were one or iwo slight variations of opinion as to how the will of the people should be expressed re the above Bill. Sir, what I should like to know is, who are the people P for Mr Fox and Mr Stout seem only to recognJse ratepayers for the purpose of voting on this Bill, s'^ming to ignore the fact that signatures have been got from hundreds that have no votes who coincide with their views; and if ratepayers only are allowed to have a vote, those who have no vote at d drink intoxicating liquors cannot be people according to their ideas. Before any Local Option Bill is considered, this question &s to who are tbe people should be settled, for it would not be fair aod eqitable to let people decide this question whose business interests are involved, such as Good Templars, grocers, doctors, &c, for they are too much interested to listen to reason—in fact, no one should have a vote whose business the liquor traffic would injure, on the same principle that a juryman or judge is not allowed to try a case in which he is interested.' Sir, as an argument for doing away with the liquor traffic, it is said it causes crime, disease, and poverty. I am very much afraid if we are to do away with everything that causes these things we will have to do away with a great many more things than liquor, or the traffic in it; for according to the Gooti Templars' line of reasoning they ought to be abolished, as they cause crime by advising men to join 1 their society, who, by so doing, break their pledge, which they could not was there no society. Then we ought, according to their ideas, do away with steam power, or the use of it, for it certainly does not cause men to drink less; it tends to lower the price of wages, and the use of steam power causes more deaths in frrelve months than drnk docs in twelve years. Sir, the evils are too numerous that cause poverty and cime besides drink that I cannot enumerate them all now, but would the Good Templars confine themselves to the work of keeping men sober without interfering as a body in politics, I should not say a word against them, and would allow the:n fullswing, but directly they try to forward their views on the people they show that • it is not for the general good they are working, but onlr for themselves as a class, the same as any other secret political society; in fact, they show conclusively by interfering in politics that the amelioration of the drunkard is a «econdary consideration, merely a cry to raise their society in importance as a political power. I certainly cannot believe a drunkard could commence business in debt £20, live at the rate of £40CD per annum, and get into debt to the trie of £18,003, all in four years, as described in your issue of June 12th, It is more than likely Mr O'Shea (I think wrs the name) was a Good Templar than a drunkard, for were he a drunkard I do not think he could b~e trusted to that extent, or victimise his dupes so successfully. I might point osfgjfto the Gtood Templars that there has been movS poverty,-crime, and disease since their formation than before, and that the greater the number of political societies, the mere crime, &c, seem to increase. _ Pbo Bono Publico. June 25th.