DEVIOUS DEVICES.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 10450, 14 September 1899, Page 2

DEVIOUS DEVICES.

There are many things connected with the advocacy of prohibition which excite surprise and disgust, and which certainly arouse the suspicion that the advocates themselves are no more restrained by refinement than they are bound by any moral consideration, to deal honestly with a great problem. In the interests of prohibition they adopt methods and stoop to devices which are, or at any rate ought to be, repellant to the crudest sense of justice. Professing to be moved by considerations essentially moral, they ply their calling with the most degrading means, for slander, abuse, misrepresentation and vulgar insinuation are their chief weapons, and those most frequently in use. The reason for the use of such weapons is obvious. More than half suspicious of the weakness of their cause, the coerdouist advocated endeavours to prevent any dispassionate consideration of facts on the other side, and this, by methods the most dishonest and contemptible, so that there is little room for surprise at the assertion made ■by Dr. G. R. Wilson, in. his admirable work on "Drunkenness," that among tie chief obstacles to reform is "the intolerance and narrowness of prohibition enthusiasts." From all this it is tolerably clear that the coercionists are determined, if possible, to intimidate anyone holding convictions different from their own from expressing them. Could there be more flagrant hypocrisy? For every clergyman, professional man or business man in favour of prohibition, ten will be found opposed to it, and their opposition will be based on no consideration of personal interest in the trade, but on the known disastrous effects of sumptuary legislation. Yet these are branded by the extremists with.the foulest of epithets, and thglr characters: besmirched with the slimiest of slanders. Truly, temperance might well cry to be saved from its professional friends.