The Westport Times AND CHARLESTON ARGUS. In the cause of Truth and Justice we strive. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1871.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 864, 21 September 1871, Page 2

The Westport Times AND CHARLESTON ARGUS. In the cause of Truth and Justice we strive. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1871.

A movement, whose supporters are iufluential in point of numbers, and evidently actuated by a spirit of ardour and zeal, has sprung up in various parts of the colony, by which it is sought to obtain a legislative enactment giving to the [majority in any district the power of suppressing the liquor traffic. In asking for a Permissive Bill, the friends of prohibition request the right to suppress that which they say manifestly results in vast injury to the general welfare. Two questions arise in considering the proposal. : —ls the liquor traffic injurious to the prosperity of the people ? Have even the majority the right to interfere with the independence of personal action ? The first point, we think, is generally conceded, though we fail to find any vivid illustration of its injurious effects in this colony. A reference to the police record for this district furnishes the somewhat insignificant total of thirty convictions for drunkenness during the current year, and a large proportion of these convictions have been obtained against individuals who have been guilty at least twice of this offence ; and who would not be restrained, short of prohibition, from a too free indulgence, except by a law that would intrude into the domestic circle and exercise a most intolerable scrutiny into personal habit. The temperance advocates claim that a law of prohibition would not intrude into the domestic circle, and they also claim that the right which lies at the basis of all legislation would justify the enactment, if demanded by the popular voice. In support of the benefits which would be derived from prohibition, they point to the results of this principle in America, showing that wherever enforced, it has been followed by a diminution of 75 per cent, in drunkenness, and its concomitant evils. They state that the necessity for compulsory vaccination in order to stay the ravages of a perfectly preventible disease, is not greater than for active effort to free the people from a social burden they have begun ;to find intolerable. An important, though secondary, consideration in dealing with the subject is the fact of how large a proportion of our revenue is derived from the spirit duty; yet to this the prohibitionists advance the unanswerable argument, " that it savours very much of national degradation to derive a revenue from national demoralisation."