NO-LICENSE CAMPAIGN.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1270, 27 October 1911, Page 7

NO-LICENSE CAMPAIGN.

ADDRESS BY KKV. KNOWLES SMITH The J!ev. Knowles Sniitli, a .Methodist minister from Diinedin, delivered an ad<lre« last night on the No-Liceuso <iuostion in the Salvation Army liarracks. The liev. W. i>. l'otter presided. .Mr. Smith said that the drink traffic here seemed to him to bo a very near relation to this drink trade in England, but it had not grown quite so large. It had not showed tho full eli'oels oi what it could do as it had in tho Home land. Jn both places alike the results of "Ihe trade" were moral degradation and civic ruin, lie had no quarrel with Hie man selling the drink; he was not interested to know whether that man was a moral man or an honest man, or whether ho was what was called a "wowser." It was not tho man, but his trade, that he was out to light all the time. Refr-rring to liishop Oossley's slalcmcnt that he Vas not quite sure whether every method had been tried which could lie tried before such a startling experiment as absolute prohibition should be adopted, ho Paid that .Bishop Oossley ought to know (hat every experiment had been tried. Ever since l.').")[ England had bosn trying cxlierimeiits in the endeavour to regulate the drink trallic. An Act was passed even in those far away days to regulate Hie evils associated with the drinking habits of the people, and England had been trying to regulate those evils ever .'■incc. 'They had gone on passing .Act alter Act,- trying remedy aficr remedy, but now Old England was in a worse iix than ever. They had now got lo tho position that the drink traliic was regulating'tho political life of tho country. It -was, ho thought, absolutely impossible to regulate the traiiic. because it was to rvgulato the appetite for alcohol in the man who had once tasted if. He believed that there were publicans and brewers wiio were djsgusted with the finished article of the trade. They didn't like incii to get drunk; they preferred that men should stop one glass short of drunkenness. Ho wont on to argue that tho drink trallic being incontrollable, ougbt to be eradicated, and ho urged that I his could Iμ done by Dominion prohibition.