NEW ZEALAND ALLIANCE

Wairoa Bell, Volume IV, Issue 141, 14 April 1892, Page 6

NEW ZEALAND ALLIANCE

At a recent Alliance meeting at Helensville (Sir Wm. Fox in the chair) Mr Walker passed in review the recent remarkable progress of the temperance movement in this country and also in the home land. A larger number than ever of members of Parliament are pledged to local option ; the Alliance measure passed its second reading last session, and will be brought in again ; the woman’s suffrage bill was only lost by two Maori votes in the Upper House, and will again be introduced ; the late licensing elections showed larger polls for prohibition than ever had been recorded before ; the attitude of the press was greatly changed towards the movement; and the ‘ Prohibitionist ’ newspaper had a more extensive circulation and distribution than any other newspaper of any sort in the Colony, the fortnightly issue being upwards of twenty-five thousand, and the readers probably upwards of seventy-five thousand. These were signs of the times most encouragingly significant. So far as what Mr Walker called the stupid argument about prohibition interfering with the liberty of the individual was concerned he said there might be something in it if those who did the drinking confined to themselves and absorbed in themselves, the consequences ; but as this was not the case, and never had been, and never could be, but the rest of the community had to pay the cost of the pauperism and crime, share the commercial depression and loss, alleviate the misery, and endure tbe social demoralisation which sprang from the drinking, they had, in sheer self-defence a right to a voice and a vote respecting it. Mr Walker then showed how enormously this Colony had suffered by the drink traffic in a variety of ways. The public would learn to distinguish between the statements of disinterested observers, or philanthroiDists who had no interest bat the public welfare, and the statements of those who were financially interested in maintaining at all costs a traffic the fruit of which has indisputably been disastrous to the public welfare. Mr Walker said that the object of the Alliance was to secure a power of local veto at the ballot box, which should be final, without the intervention of licensing committees, and in this the Alliance relied upon the cordial support of all friends of the temperance cause. The usual vote of thanks terminated the proceedings.