THE PROHIBITIONIST.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 4011, 13 January 1892, Page 2

THE PROHIBITIONIST.

Publiihei by the courtesy of the Editor of Waimraptt Daily under the auspices of the New Zealand Alliance for the prohibitum of the liquor traffic, Mastcrton Attxilim/. When ratepayers demand the entire a.Unction o; all places for the sale of liquors their prayer should be g 'anted. —Charles Buxton, Brewer. [Communications tor this column rauat bo addressed to "Tho Prohibitionist" care of Editor of Waiiurapa Dam.] In a recent address at Hyde, in. England, Sir Wilfred Lawson add Tbe Daily Telegraph had said about the liquor traffic that it whs a cove- , nant wiih sin and ,death,. (Hear, hear), He did not use strong langu* ago himsolf; he only quoted it, He thought that everybody ought to be agreed that there was no subject so important, and no e«il so sireat us the drink traffic, (Hear, heir), In his opinion a good trade which benefitted the community ought to be as free as the air, but a bad trade ought to be prohibited in the interests of the people, He challenged anybody to go into the question and look at it without coming to the conclusion that drink was an evil. Lord Randolph Churchill said it was a devilish and a destructive traffic. (Hear, hear). What would they do with such a traffic ? If a man had a tiger and applied to the town authorities for permission to ltjt it run looao uino hours' a day, and they granted the permission, he should think that everybody would try to shoot the tiger; and if it devoured some of their children the Mayor would have a very great chance of being shot, and lie did not think he should bo very angry with thorn if they did it. But what was the difference between licensing a tiger to run about a place and licensing adevilish and destructive traffic? The magistrates, who were oaHed justices of the peaoe-—(laughter) licensed the tiger, An old Scotch friend of his said justices of the peace were wrongly called, for they , gave them neither justice nor peace. (Laughter), What they wanted was that tho justices, wise men in their own conceit, should not be allowed their licensing power 111 places where people said they did not want to oxeroise the powers. That was the Popular Veto. The Veto was forbidding something, A man who in writing to his friends used at the bottom of his letters, the letters " W.P.," explained that he ineaut not weather permitting, but wife permitting. The wife there was the Veto, The House of Lords, who throw out iu three hours a hill that had. been three months in getting through the House of Commons ex» ercised the Veto, but that, was the unpopular Veto, (Applause), They wanted the people to stop the magistrates licensing public-houses where they did not want them in the district, The fight against the drink traffic was going on wherever the English language was spoken, because the people were learning that whero there was drink thero was danger,

The Countess of Carlisle, speaking at n ladies meeting in Manchester on October 28th, said :-A ourious thing recently happened in Liverpool, The magistrates in that city were very much exercised in mind as to their duty, and one of the number wrote a tatter to a newspaper saying it was very hard because they could not see their way out of the difficulty, It seemed there were five public-houses to 85 persons, and the justices could not decide whioli of the five, houses should go, bo they renewed the licenses to them all I. If there had been any women on the Bench they would have refused the renewal of all five. (Hear, hear, and laughter). Those magistrates acted very strangely, but she would give them ; a still stranger story. In a town in Yorkshire, a superintendent of police gave evidence to tho effect that when a man was drunk he could get more drink in almost any licensed house in the place. This was an indictable offence, and yet the magistrates in their judgment said that the police report was very satisfactory, and they, therefore, renewed the licenses of all the houses I (Applause.) In conclusion she urged than to second tho efforts of the United Kingdom Allianoe in no lukewarm spirit, they should put their shouldeis to the wheel and support the organisation) and all other Temperance Societies, by endeavouring, to the utmost extent, to rid of the drink traffic. (Loud applause.)

An English paper publishes a ohriousaccount of what is, we suppose,, the very largest hospital in the world -the famous London Hospital. The scale of the hospital is illustrated by tho magnitude of some of the items in its equipment, Thus the hospital expends annually If tons of "Spsooi salts, 8 cwts. of pills, 116 tons of ice, 5 tons of poultices, 6 miles of plaster, etc, I The hospital, with its enormous staff of 300 attendants, is a monument of Christian philantlirophy; and the human wrecks that 611 the vast wards bear mute but eloquent witness, in too many cases, to tlin physical cost of sin, To the most experienced sargeon on tho staff of the hospital the question was addressed; " How many of the oases dealt with are attributnble tointouoperance, thinkyou?" "All ("he exclaimed in reply, "it would be difficult to estimate the number, but it is unquestionably great. We sometimes find even children with drunkard's livers, due to the habit of giving infants gin to soothe them when teething. Drink is with us a source of much trouble, If the public, houses wot shut, we should km to close half our wards, or father, we should be able to take twice as many patients."