ME. FOX ON STRONG DRINKS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 113, 7 April 1870, Page 7

ME. FOX ON STRONG DRINKS.

On several occasions Mr. Fox, M.H.E. and Premier of the colony, has addressed large audiences in the North on the above subject. The following summary of a speech, delivered by that gentleman in the early part of last month to an Auckland audience, and reported by the "Thames Advertiser," will give our readers an idea of his reasoning aja this important subject : —

Mr. A Clark, M.H.E. President of the Auckland Temperance Society, presided. Mr. Fox was received very heartily. The honourable gentleman spoke for an hour and twenty minutes, so that we can only report some points of "his address. He said he had not been all his life a teetotaller, but he had at various periods abstained, from personal reasons. It was only recently that he had become a pledged teetotaller, and he was induced to become one by the train of thought, and the course of inquiry, into which he was led by having found himself, as a magistrate, sitting and acting at a licensing session, and having a few days afterwards, still as a magistrate, found himself called upon to punish people for drinking the liquors, the sale of which he had taken part in licensing. During 1867, the G-overnment of this colony actually received in hard cash, as duties upon spirituous liquors, these sums : — On ardent spirits, £351,000; wines, £39,000; ale in the cask, £14,000; ale in bottles, £25,000 ; maldng a total of £420,000. lam certain that those who know anything of the retail trade — who know how many "glasses" are sold out of a bottle — who understand what is meant by "dashing" — who know at all what goes on in smuggling and other iniquities — will say that is no exaggeration to put down, as the total paid by the consumers of those drinks, is a sum equal to three times the duty. We have, therefore, the enormous sum of £1,287,000 per annum spent in intoxicating drinks in this little colony in one year. But we must add the "ale brewed in the colony, if we would get the total of what goes down our throats.. In 1867, no less than 2,749,000 gallons of ale were brewed in New Zealand ; which, \ at 3s a gallon — a moderate price as I have been told by a brewer — represents i £412,000 ; or a total of £1,699,000 paid for drinks by the people of this colony. The ordinary revenue in that year was £1,225,000, and the ordinary and territorial revenue together amounted to £1,775,000. So that within £100,000, we drank to the value of the ordinary and territorial revenue, combined. The population of the colony was, in 1867, 256,000—218,000 Europeans, and 38,000 natives ; so that, on drink, we spent at the rate of £6 10s. per head of the population. Not £6 10s per head, for adult males, but £6 10s. a head, including women and girls, and boys, and sucking babes ! Striking out those who cannot be supposed to drink at all, we get, I have no hesitation in saying, the result of £50 per head per year for what may be called the adult drinking population. I was once told. " The statement is absurd ; it is an amount more than equal to wages in many cases !" And do we not know, all of us, cases in which men do drink, not only their wages, but their ploughs, their horses, their carts, and their little farms ! Eoads are left unmade — public works are not undertaken —be cause we have not money for them. Would it not be a great thing, if, by inducing the people to become teetotallers, we could get the £1,699,000 a year for public works? It would make for us 1,640 miles of first-class metalled roads, at £1,000 a mile— or roads nearly twice the length of the whole of this island, and three times across it. It would make 3,280,000 chains of fencing, at 10s. a chain, or sufficient for 5.126 square miles of separate farms of 640 acres each. It would purchase 260,000 cattle, at £6 a head ; or perhaps, almost as many sheep as there are now in New Zealand. We are in trouble with the natives, and we want European regiments to help us. What the colony spends in drink would supply us with 40,000 men, at £40 per head per year, which was what we understood we should have to pay — 40 Queen's regiments to fight our battles ! Some people think that they must be right if they got champagne and Moselle ; and so thatf the " swells" pay 7s. or 10s. a bottle for such mixtures, and what they call " No. 2." When I went home, some four years ago, there was going on in the Queen's Bench a trial between two gentlemen. One of them had agreed to supply a quantity of wine for sale at Epsom Eaces, but had failed to do so ; and the action was the loss of pro- ! fits on the sale. The summing-up of Lord Chief Justice Co ckb urn amounted to this :—lf: — If you want champagne for a supper party or ball, you will give 50s. or 60s. a dozen, and you will get an article made from rhubarb. If you pay 20s. a dozen more, you will get something " very choice." It will be made from gooseberries ! If you know the Emperor of Eussia, and are in the habit of dropping in to smoke a cigar with him, you may get some real champagne, but you will not do it otherwise! Such was about the summing up of Chief Justic Cockburn. in that case. Except in the hands of the highest people in the old cities of

Europe, real wine is not to be had : a very large part of all the rest is made up of the basest mixtures and decoctions. And yet we are told that wine such as we get it, is one of Gt-od's good gifts, and it is to be accepted with thankfulness !

The honourable gentleman made a series of forcible appeals, especially to ministers of religion and to women, for aid in promoting the total abstinence cause, and so putting at least a check to the huge gangrene of drunkenness, which, was, he said, destroying the very vitals of the country. He spoke very graphically of public-house keepers and the victims of drink ; and he urged the "moderate drinkers" to consider whether their position was as sound as they pretended to think it. As a remedy for drunkenness and its evils, he would, if it was in his power, provide that no public-house license should be granted or be renewed, in any part of the colony, except upon a requisition signed by four-fifths of the married women and mothers of the town or district. (Loud applause.) He had made that statement elsewhere, and it had always called forth the loudest applause during his address. It was the men who had just applauded ; and, if they would give their assistance, the wives of the colony would have the power of making men sober. (Applause.)