"PROHIBITION " IN CLUTHA.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 8991, 2 January 1895, Page 3

"PROHIBITION " IN CLUTHA.

TO THB EDITOR OF THB PRESS. Sib,— The-prohibitionists ought really to be grateful to you for the words of welt meant counsel you addressed to them in your closing Issue of the old year, and if your article on the working of the direot veto in Uutha did fall like a bombshell into their,camp, all I can say is that I neither heard the explosion nor the cries of the wounded.

Wbyy.Suyl can show you a score of letters, from the residents in the Clutha electorate, which would prove to you that we know perfectly well how disgraoefally the police were neglecting their duty in that district. Some of our membere, however, were perhaps scarcely prepared to i find you , ' so. much in sympathy with the law tweakers. Here was a district in which 2219 people voted on the subject of license or no license. Of these 1642, or ' nearly three to one, declared against the , retail sale of drink. '

Yoarrepresentative went down **as a complete stranger," and "was able without any great difficulty to get as much liquor as he.requhed.' . You say, "This proved that tae law was a complete farce." We say it; reflects discredit on those charged with lte administration. It is clear that' police! agents who were "complete strangers" could have done this thing as easily^'.your representative could, and, in our "Opinion, it would have been a much more reputable thing that it ehould have been .done for the purpose of enforcing law than>with the de&ign of bringing law in§> contempt.

Had this, however, been attempted, your article would have committed you to brand* ing such police agents as «• informers and street corner eneake." Why you ehould apply these epithets to those who attempt the detection of a demoralising illegal trade ifc,ia difficult to say. Not a week since a policeman said to mc, '* Yre hare no difficulty in getting evidence when a theft has been committed, but when drink is concerned they all try to shield the offender." If. email sums of money were systematically pilfered in your office, would you brand those, who tried to detect the offender as ** informers and street corner sneaks?" If nob wonld you seriously assert that the crime of such theft was so much more grave than that of a publican who supplied drunken men, permitted gambling and otherwise - set the law at defianoe, as to justify ° you in drawing such a distinction. Let mc say in conclusion that you can point to no instance in which, we have ," sneered at the religious views or church work of .any men limply because we disagreed with them a& to tine amount of alcohol which it was fright and proper fora man to take," but we refuse to make any distinction' between :the wholesale importer- and the retail seller.

, It has within the last few days been shown that men and women in this city obtained liquor at ceitain drinking bare and went straight to their death. . We do not know of a single instance in thia, colony of a man who thus retails sfcremg drink and at the same time poaee as a prptnineno Christian worker. We simply ask, then, how much less responsibility rests <rathe shoulders of the men who import the? liquor which leads to tbeae{reeulfce.—Yoimm , .'* Fsakk W. Israr. let January, 1895. ,