SIR W. FOX AND MR GLOVER AT CAMBRIDGE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2199, 12 August 1886, Page 3

SIR W. FOX AND MR GLOVER AT CAMBRIDGE.

In* spite of the disagreeable weather, the Public Hall at Cambridge was well tilled on Monday night, on the occasion of addreaNes, bemg delivered on the subject of tempeiance by Sir William Fox and Mr T. W. Glover. The chair was t'lken by Mr W. S. Stewart, and the Yen. Archdeacon Willis and the Revs. W. Evan*, J. G. Wilson and Percy Stnalltield, Inspector of Sunday tJchoolh of the dioce&o of Auckland, were on the platfoim. The Chairman announced that he had been informed by Sir \V. Yo\. that it was customary for them to open thoir meetings with a short religious service ; he thereforo called on the Ray. W. Evans to conduct that service. The hymn, " Rescue the perishing," was then sung, the piano accompaniment bsing played by MLss Nixon, af<|er which the Rjv. Evans engaged in prayer. The Chairman briefly introduced the speakers t.) the audienc3, and called upon Mr Glover. Mr Glover cmgratuhted the chairman on presiding over suclj an excellent meeting on such a night, a-> it .Mi owed that a stiong interesir wah taken m Cambridge in the temperance. cau-»s. He explained the object of the New Zealand Alliance, and was gUd to hear that te - npur.incu oigauisations existed in the town, and Lh.it a Good 'JLV.mplar .Lodge \v,b m exi^tjucj. The speaker alluded to the title ot the hymn ju-.t sMing, "Rescue the penciling." Ai had been well haid, it th^y undertook the ta*k of merely rescuing the penciling, they had a job that would las>t, but they had come to show how people eu.ild be pievented from peribhing. Tney weie come to .-how people how they might get lid ot the liquor traffic ; not to rrtgulitc it; that had bejn tried long enough, but to abolish it. The speaker related the anecdote of the Quaker, who, when \ iMted bj a bully who had determined to fasten a quauel ujion him, endeavoured to pacity his victor by offering him in turn a nirfat offering, a drink otfering,*aud a burnt offering, and finally, finding thess'of no avail, gave him a heave ottering by kicking.him out."' This drink is the bully. We've been trying long enough to keep it in bounds, and now we mu«»t kick it out. Three hundred Acts of Pailiament have been pas.sbd to regulate the traffic, and now wen in a worse mess than we were 400 years ago. Men have- offered everything up to this evil ; intelligent man, learned men, have sacrificed their families, their position in society, their wealth, and their happiness* on the altar <»f the idol, and now we're here to try the "heave ottering," and we shall soon get rid of the drunkards if we kick out the drink. ' Rescue the perishinh'—That's o-ily playing with it ; send away the cause and the ettect will .soon disappear. The New Zealand Alliance is fonfied for the purpose of prohibiting the nale'of strong drink absolutely. That's oui object ; its a big one isn't it ? People say it will take a good while to accomplish it. Wei), the publicans are getting hi a state about it in some places ; they are getting hard up, and beginning to squeak out about the compensation. 'Compensate us, and we'll go 'is the cry. They'll soon be glad to go out for nothing." As an hotelkeeper told him the other day, they were rightly called hotelkeeper.s at the piesent time as the hotels did not keep them. A man hired a jaunting car in Ireland, and the h»r->e ran away. The passenger implored the driver to let him get out, and ottered him' money if he'd only let him get out, till last the driver said, hold your tongue, you'll be out for nothing directly. So with -the publicans ; they are going fast enough. "The N.Z. Alliance was going for absolute prohibition. Now, did they expect to get it? They were living in a free country where the people believed in liberty. Everybody did not see the matter as they did, so they must wait a bit, and go as fast as public opinion would let them. After they had' gone round the constituencies, they would go to the Government, and ask the Government to clos-e the liquor shops where the people deaired it. Only where the people wished it. If they liked to keep theciuae in their midst, they must assume the responsibility, and not throw it on the Hhouldcrs of a Christian Government. It ahoitld not be left in the. power of any five gentlemen who formed a licensing committee to force liquor shops on a people whether they wanted them or not. "All we want is a little simple act of justice, and we are only asking for the Government to obtain the power from the people. (A voice— JJy what majority?) We have not raised that point yet ; wo have not yet introduced the bill. We want you all to become members of the Alliance. The subscription is nominal, 2s Gd per year. It was found necessary to have some subscription, as it is ex-pected to cost about £2000 a year to educate this colony in the direction required. We have no test of membership, either religious or secular, and the piesent Premier and leader of the Opposition are both vice-presidents of the Alliance. We don't even ask it you are a total abstainer, tor we believe that this is a question in which all can unite on the broad basis of citizenship." The speaker went onto say that prohibition had always been a success where attempts at regulating the traffic had -filled He instanced the State of Maine, iJLic for thirty yeais it had been unlawful . w liquor, Prohibition had been successful in Maine, for after trying the scheme Jor twenty-five years the inhabitants, by a majority of 50,000, made absolute prohibi Jion a law of the state, and the people who lived under that law knew more about it than outsiders. Mr Glover gave some interesting reminiscences of his visit to the §Seof Vine, and evoked frequent out-

bursts nf applause by his witty sind tolling anecdotes. He said that in Utah, among the poor benighted Mormons, the feeling was very strong against selling liquor. In Maine ho had been present at a Band of Hope meeting and the children, 700 in number, were asked that any one among them who had ever seen a drunken man should holdup his hand. Not one hand was held up. Would to God such a thing could be said of New Zealand, that they could make our country such, but they would not do it until Christ's Church was more united, and then they would, and he felt sure that the time was not far off. Mr Glover concluded by a fervent appeal to his hearers to assist to sweep away the curse of strong drink from this lovely laud. Mr Glover sat down amid loud and continued applause. The Chairman stated that he was informed that it was usual to take up a, collection about this time to defray expenses, but said that the General Gordon Lodge of Good Templars was a strong lodge, and stionger through the generosity of the public, and that the lodge took on itself to defray the expenses of the present irnVsion. (Applause). He now introduced Sir Win. Fox to the meeting. Sir William Fox, who was receiver! with applause, said he was much pleased in addressing a Cambridge audience, especially as he did not think they came out that night because it was wet, teetotaller's weather as it was usually called, but because they took nn interest in the temperance question. He was glad to hear from his triend Mr Glover that they were prosperous. They certainly puasesspd many advantages; a fine country, good land, and the railway to their door, and he hoped that by-and-bye they would have the advantage of cheap fares also. (Applause). They had at present got "hard times," aud where they previously had half-crowns and sovereigns had come down to fourpenny bits. What were those hard times owing to. He did not know. Their stateswen at Wellington talked of this great financial depletion with wondeiful unanimity, but wbsn asked for a remedy they were all at variance, ©ne well-known gentleman said, if they would only take the land from those who had it, and give it to those who had not got it, we should all bfi as happy as princes. He, the speaker, did not see where the happiness was going to come in for those who were to be deprived of their land. Another statesman says, all we want is protection ; and so make everything so dear that no one nan buy it. Another, Colonel Trimble, says: No, free trade is what we want, to make everything so cheap. Major Atkinson wants all the young men and women, aeed from seventeen to nineteen, to injure their lives, get married, and the Government would then bs able to give them two new suits every six months, aud a free railway pass. Suppose the inhabitants of this town found typhoid fever spreading among them; what would they do ? The inspector of nuisances would investigate the matter until he arrived at the cause, and so in Wellington they should endeavour to get hold of the right cause of tne depression, for if they did n<)t find the cause they would npver get rid of the effect, Ho (Sir William) was not in politic.il life just now ; in iact he was one of the "unemployed" (laughter), and he did not expect to go in to political life again. It was no treat to hit up until four o'clock in the morning to be abused in the House and misrepresented the next day in the papers. Still he had a good right to advance i\ political opinion. He believed the remedy for depression would be found in the prohibition of strong drink. But a great deal depends on the application of the remedy, and his remedy must be employed in thp light way. A boy in one of his school exeiciscs wrote that pin.s had saved the lives of many people, and when asked by his teacher how was that? s lid. Why by not swallowing them. That vv.s the way to apply his remedy. Don't swallow the diink, and there would be a remedy f (| r all the ruin and distress, financial and otheiwise. According to the Government returns £2,300,000 had been spent in dritik in New Zealand in 1885, and the total amount of taxation imposed on the colony is about four millions. Thus we voluntarily ta\ ourselves to an amount of more than half the taxation imposed by Government, and for what ? To be poured down people's throats. No country can be prosperous with such a waste-pipe. It was said that Government gets a revenue from the drink, and that would be lost if the liquor trade was dosed. He was sorry to s.iy that the Government did draw £">OO,OOO annually from that source, and would ask could his heareis conceive a whim' tax than one of that chai'acter. The Government wants £500,000, and to q t it encourages* the country to waste oxer two millions, If they want to rnit.e money let thorn raise it by income tax, property tax, or in any right way. No Colonial Treasurer would be worth his salt if he could not find dimii 1 other tax gatherer than the publican and bU till, and fur the country to pay over two millions to collect half a million was the height of financial folly. When Father Mathew laboured among the Irish ppoplp, for five years he had Ireland all in his hami.s, The brewers went bankrupt, but others were prnnporou*, and though the revenue from liquor fell oft' £80,000 in one year the revenue from other ontr-Hvs increased by £200,000. And so in Maine where in one day they turned the key on 3000 public houses. 'What did that do for tlieiesenue? Since that day Maine had been twice as prosperous. The gaol->, the lunatic asylum*, and poorhouses were empty ; thete wbim no police wanted, and no J.PV, and indeed Maine %vau ten times more prosperous than before it cut off its liquor. He had seen this result himself, and that was the best answer to the statement that prohibition would cause the revenue to fall off. In various other states of America and in the Dominion of Canada prohibition'exi.sted in some form or other, and in none of these places had the people felt the pinch for want of revenue. And what is the liquor traffic doing for us ? It is filling our gaols, lunatic asylums and hospitals. Judge Gresson stated years ago that crime cost the colony t'SO.OOO a year, and that sum added to the £2,300,000. besides a loss of an equal amount in unproductive labour, was enough to cause depression. He wanted to prove that prohibition was a .success by giving details of places that he had visited himself where he had seen the working of prohibition. There vveie two sorts of prohibition. Absolute, as they had in Maine, and local option, which left it to the people of a distiict to say if they would have liquor sold among them. This form, local option, is the one in which they hope to get assistance. In England certain private individuals, by the exercise of their own will, had effected prohibition in 1500 townships in Pjngland and Wales, big and little, in which no liquor was sold. In London thorp were three sections, containing about 12.000 people each, where in every lease there was a provision that no drink should be sold, with the result that in these parts of the town the police were not wanted, and it had proved an eminent and paying success. These places were, Shaftesbury, a town in the West End, and two^ other townships owned by companies. Edgbaston, near Birmingham, with 40,000 inhabitants, was another place, and was the most prosperous pa,rt of Birmingham, and in Liverpool a section nearly as laige, belonging to M,r Roberts and Lord Sefton, was another place where prohibition was an equal success. Saltairc, near Bradford, and Bessbrook in Ireland were instanced as places where, by the voluntary act of the propiietors prohibition had been enforced, with the ie->ultthat these places were prosperous, while the neighbouiing towns were not, and in these places the repot t of tho Convocation of Canterbury stated th.tt " the htate of .society was all that the most ardent social letormer could wish."' In Maine the prohibition was absolute, and had become a national law that could only be repealed by a plebiscite showing a majority against it of tvvothiids of the population. In the crowded state of Portland, a sea-port town, he did not see a single drunken man nor hear a bad word. A few weeks afterwards he wa« in an English cathedral city, Duihatn, with sU churchrs, eight or ten dissenting chapels, cathedral, university, etc. Surely that city would be mote orderly than rowdy America. But there, shortly after ten in the evening, he counted one hundred men go by one spot, curbing, blaspheming, <!kc. In the great Dominion of Canada, with its five million people, there was a, constitution as liberal as our own. The Canadians were a fine people, and jealous of their liberties, and a piosperonh people. They used to have a similar licensing law to th.it of New Zealand, but boing near neighbours to Maine, sent a commission to that State to enquire how prohibition worked. The commissioners recommended the adoption of the Maine l.iw, but the country would not hay c that, but tried local option. This had been in force five years, with the result that in si\ty-six big counties and cities one third of the Dommion,the public houses had been closed. Thousands of public houses were closed, the people were piosperous, and it had been a, real substantial success In the United States seven states

f besides Maine had absolute prohibition, f while lowa, Kansas, and others had local ; option. In all c.isos it had proved a sueI cess, •so great a success that if we had it : hero we ought to throw up our hats and sing " Hallelujah !" Sir Wjlliam went on to bpeak of the means by which the Maine law was evaded occasionally, but argued that proved its success. Some people said wo have local option in New Zealand in that we have the power of electing licensing committees. Only 20 houses have been closed in New Zealand during the last h'vn yeais out of 1580. He spoke of the pressure brought to bear on members of licensing committees that made it difficult for them to act according to the dictates of thoir reason, and gave several instances of how their sympathies and business intorests were worked upon. Was it not better for one publican and his family to suffer rather than a dozen men should go to drunkard's graves, a dozen women to poverty and wretchedness, and forty or fifty children t-j the gutter? Besides the fact of a man being a publican went to show that he was a clover, law-abiding, respectable man* and surely such a man could make a living. Then in f X> cases out of 100, the publican had absolutely no inteiest, as the hotel belonged to the brewer or the importer, and in any case it would be cheaper to the colony to keep every publican, his wife nnd his family in the benevolent asylum than to keep five hundred of his customers. The speaker gave an instance of an office-bearer in a Christian church in Auckland, who used his influence to prevent an hotel being closed becauso the landlord owed him £000. Ho was ready to allow that £(!00 to .stand between him and the salvation of ins fellow men. That's the kind of influence brought to bear, and that's what they wanted to get rid of, and get rid of by the ballot-box. They wanted not only the men but every woman in the district to have this power. It was time women had the franchise. Ladies of intellect and worth such as the women of the Auckland Ladies' Christian Temperance Union, could not lift their little finger in nn election, while any drunken man could have a vote. Was that fair ? Was it sense ? Was it chivalry ? Women would vote straighter than men, for many a man would like to vote straight, but his banker won't let him. He (Sir William) urged that a very small change was needed, only put them all on a footing of equality. Everybody in the hall, unless there was a publican in the audience, was prohibited from selling liquor ; treat them all alike th.it was all they v.uited. The speaker concluded by an earnest appeal to those present to form the nucleus of a branch of the Alliance, and particularly urged upon them the redding of temperance literature, as only so could they obtain a knowledge of what w.xs being done in the matter. , Sir William was loudly cheered as he sat down. In reply to a question by the Rev. P, Smalltield, Sir William stated that they did not propose to clo.se the hotels, but only one loom in thorn, the bar, so that no intovic.ung drink should be .sold. In Maine there were far better hotels all over the state th-tu any in New Zealand or New South Wales. Mr Glover announced that while the closing hymn was being sunglie would go round the hall to obtain the narnos and addresses of those wishing to join the Alliance. ' The Usual votes of th.inks wore passod to the speakers and the chairma)]. After the meeting about fifty people remained and gave in their names with promises of subset iptions to the New Zealand alliance, and Mr W. S. Stewart was elected .secretary and treasurer of the Cambridge branch.