SECOND EDITION Wairarapa Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 1878.] THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 1894. THE LIQUOR RIOTS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XV, Issue 4687, 5 April 1894, Page 2

SECOND EDITION Wairarapa Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 1878.] THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 1894. THE LIQUOR RIOTS.

An old melody reminds us that " South Carolina hi a sultry clime, where a handsome nigger is bound to shine." .There has been a shine in that sultry State, and the Wellington liquor trade organs are jubilant, Just what might happen in Nu\v Zealand, they point out, if it had not been for the statesmanlike foresight of Mr Seddon, who, with his .three-fifths majority commanded the prohibition wave not to wet his royal feet. We really do not think that even- the New Zealand Tims ought to be quite so unpatriotic as to put this Colony on the same level as South Carolina. In the latter place the working man is a negro, and not a my high type of negro either. South Carolina is an old slave State, where, in former times rice was grown and tobacco cultivated under the lasb, and where tbe coloured population still predominates over the whito population, The social condition of the State is necessarily far behind the social condition of New Zealand, and it is absurd to suppose that because a radical cbango is.being carried out, and is attended with lawlessness there that a similar movement in this country would b9 attended by civil sedition and Btrife. There is of course much force in tbe argument that any great change such as tbe advent ot prohibition should not be too sudden. If it his to come in New Zesland.we would ourselves, sooner see it reach us gradually, we would prefer control to be followed by restrictions and the traffic to become small by degrees and beautifully less. till the final transition to absolute prohibition became but a step. Gladly would we see the movement stop at the restriction of moderation. It is a higher virtue to be temperate than to be a total abstainer! But if the women of New Zealand who have been the chief sufferers by the liquor trade, as by law established, cannot be protected without prohibition, they are entitled to claim it. We do not consider that recent events in South Carolina have much bearing on the liquor question here, and it is very probable that tbe reform which is being carried out in that State is a wholesome and a necessary one, In that mixed population which it possesses, and in a climate favourable to the development of hot and wild blood, tbe victory of the social reformers will be worth winning even at •hecost of temporary oivil disturbance. Obedience lo the law is enforced by public sentiment in the United States, and even in South Carolina rioting will bo sternly and effectually suppressed,