ALLEGED FAILURE OF THE MAINE LAW.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 134, 1 September 1870, Page 7

ALLEGED FAILURE OF THE MAINE LAW.

The following letter is addressed to the " Auckland Weekly News " upon a subject which is attracting considerable attention at present in Oiago. We find a place for it in our colmuns, believing that it will be interesting to our readers : —

Sir, — You have more than once endeavoured to impress your readers with the belief that the Maine Liquor Law has been a complete failure, and, if I am not mistaken, this is a very coinmom impression among the people of this colony generally. Knowing your love of truth and fairy-play, I venture to ask you to give insertion to the following extract from a speech delivered a few months ago at a public meeting in Birmingham, by Mr. J. B. Gould, American Consul for that

town. He says : " I am from the State of Maine. The question is often asked if the Maine Liquor Law be not a failure ; and you can judge for yourselves when I state certain facts with which I am perfectly familiar. Like all the laws against crime in Great Britain and other countries, there are violations of this; but it cannot bs counted a failure when it is understood that in all that State there is no open bar. There is no hotel or public-house which sells drink openly to customers : no sign with gilded letters advertising the traffic : no decanters displayed at the windows : no brilliant lanterns before the door giving evidence that drink is to be obtained. If obtained at all, it is in some private apartments of the hotel, or through some back-door of the shop. There are drunkenness and crime, yet the one is disgraceful, and but seldom seen among those who are considered respectable people, and crime is so lessened that only in a few of the largest towns is it necessary to maintain a police force. Windows are never closed with shutters at night, and there is a feeling of general security. Pauperism is confined to the young and helpless. Many of the towns have no poor-houses nor poor rates. It may be considered oppresive to enact such laws ; but a system which banishes the sickening scenes and revolting crimes that result from drink, which empties poor-houses, ard gives security to life and property, without the omnipresence of the police officers, is not especially objectionable in its oppressiveness." To judge from Mr. Carleton's proposed motion, " That it is desirable to amend the laws relating to the sale of liquors," a change of some kind in that law may be anticipated shortly. Mr. Fox, in a l'ecent communication to the secreretary of the Drury Alliance, has also stated that he finds the subject of a legislative remedy against drunkenness is awakening much interest in the Middle Island, and not a few of the colonists there entertain sound views on the Permissive Bill, though but too many of them treat it with a levity or indifference which it is painful and surprising to witness. He clings to the hope that a Permissive Bill will ere long be passed in England ; and that the British colonies in the Pacific will follow suit, and reap the blessed fruits of such a law. ILKA.

A singular trial is down for hearing. One journal has been disputing the alleged extent of circulation of a contemporary, asserting it was only so much. An advertiser has taken an action for 100,000 francs damages against the accusing paper, because he patronised its rival on the strength of a definite, useful circulation. — Paris letter.

A walking match, the " Court Journal " says, is reported to have come off for a thousand guineas, between a noble lord and a baronet. The thing to do was to walk up a high mountain in Scotland, the nobleman walking backwards with heavy boots on, the baronet walking forward, but with an open umbrella, the match to come off on a windy day. The umbrella man was defeated.

From the London " Sportsman" we learn that the result of the Derby was telegraphed from the Grand Stand to the central f tation in Telegraph-street at 3.29 p.m., and was immediately transmitted to all parts of the kingdom. It was made known in Limerick at 3.32 p.m., in Penzance at 3.32 p.m., and in Wick at 3.36 p.m. The result was telegraphed to India by the IndoEuropean route, via Teheran and the Persian Gulf. The telegram announcing the first, second, and third horses reached Bombay at 5.57, and Calcutta at 6.25 p.m., Greenwich time, thus travelling from the Grand Stand at Epsom to Bombay in two hours and 34 minutes, and to Calcutta in three hours two minutes, the race having terminated at 3.23 p.m.

Hollovoay 's Pills — Hospital practice. — It is supposed, by the uninitiated., that hospital patients have the advantage of skilful treatment and careful attendance. The truth is, they are too often merely the subjects upon which raw students try their " prentice hands." The best hospitals for the sick are their own homes, and the only medicines they need are Hoi' loway's disease-subduing remedies. Let the weakened, broken-down, attenuated, and hopeless sufferers from liver complaint, indigestion, asthma, hemorrhoids, or any of theinternal maladies which baffle the profession, supply themselves with Holloway's Pills, and they can speedily work out their own cure, and smile as they Temember the doleful predictions of the doctors.