LYING IN BOND.

Auckland Star, Volume XVII, Issue 98, 24 April 1886, Page 3

LYING IN BOND.

Of late years a vigorous popular reaction in favour of sobriety has (the "Daily Telegraph " points out) made itself manifest throughout these islands. Excise returns, which are stubborn things, conclusively demonstrate the satisfactory fact that wo are far from being, at the present date, as : deep-drinking a people as we were in anteSchool Board days, or even half a decade ago. Set it would appear that no fewer than fifty million gallons of British spirits arejustnow lingering in bond, awaiting, we may assume, a retail summons to fulfil the obvious purpose prompting their manufacture. If this bo so, tbe recorded docline of consumption, iv the matter of alcoholic liquor, has had the paradoxical effect of promoting, instead of chocking, the production of ardent stimulents, for at no previous period of our financial history has no large a quantity of home-brewed spirits been withheld from circulation by its fabricators. Can it be that hope springs more vivaciously within tho distiller's breast than in the bosom of any other man impelling him. in tbe very teeth of adverse and warning statistics, to make provision for a coming revival of national inebriety ? Has it been revealed to him, by some occult and unerring agency, that his fellow countrymen, weary of total abstinence and suddenly insensible to the charms of moderation, are on the eve of calling spirits from tho vasty doep cf the alcoholic ocean above referred to ?