TEMPERANCE ITEMS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XIII, Issue 4142, 18 June 1892, Page 3

TEMPERANCE ITEMS.

V- . .. --. ™ • Twice within a week in the month of March tho Birmingham police have intervened and forbidden boxing contests taking place, There appears to be an impression that the police aro making a dead set against boxing contests in public houses. The contention is that under the Marquis of Queensberry rules it is permitted in all other parts of the country, and therefore cannot be held as illegal in Birmingham alone, In these circumstances those publicans who are interested in sporting look upon tho action of the police as inflicting a grievance, and. a meeting has been arranged for in order that some new move may bo made in the matter, Liquor and fighting have always been close friends. We ure not surprised to see the Birmingham publicans Btanding up for the bruisers and smashers of human flesh. One good turn deserves another. By drawing pcoplo to publicans' premises the boxers often help the sale of liquor,

The Canadian Royal Commission

on Prohibition, announced somo time Wago, has now been appointed under •'tho authority of the Dominion House of Commons. It is to collect the most trustworthy data obtainable respecting the effects of the liquor traffic upon tho intoreste affected by it in Canada, and the measures adopted in this and other countries with a view to lessen, regulate, or prohibit the traffic, with the results in eaoh case. The Commission is also charged to enquire what effect a prohibitory liquor law would have in tho Dominion in respect to social conditions of agricultural, industrial, and commercial interests, and revenue requirements of the municipalities and provinces of the Dominion, and also the existing capabilities for the effioent enforcement of the measure. The Commission is generally regarded as a strong one, the members consisting of Sir Joseph Hickson, late manager of the Grand Trunk Eailway; Mr Clarke, ex-Mayor of Toronto; Judge M'Donald, of Leeds, Ontario; Mr G, A. Gigault/of Quebec; and tho Rev, Dr. M'Leod, of Fredericton, New Brunswick.

The Rev Hugh Price Hughes, of had to pass through Maine in November last, and he tells what he saw of Portland, as a result of the Liquor Legislation;— The oity of Portland seemed to him to possess ideal beauty. Everybody seemed to be healthy, prosperous, and oheerful, As wo went through tho oity we felt that it was one hundred years in advance of anything we have ever seen in England. Vulgar and degraded men have been able to get intoxicating liquors by submitting to all sorts of humiliations, creeping about in dark collars and exposing themselves to the penalties of the law with more or less Buccess. But if that is to bo regarded as a failure of the law, we must say that the law agaioßl stealing is a failure in London, because there are thousands of men and women in London who are perpetually and professionally engaged in defying the law, in evading it, in outwitting the police, and in plundertheir fallow men.