DRINK—REVENUE—AND DEATH

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3193, 18 September 1917, Page 6

DRINK— REVENUE— AND DEATH

Sir,—ls it true that tho Finance Minister is worried about liow the people will dispose of about six millions of money in tho event of the publican taxgatherers being prohibited from culleeting a million of revenue? Surely revelling in scores of millions must have upset Sir Joseph's judgment. The following littlo fable may interest him:—ln the good old days gone by .roe Child was out of work, and times were hard, and job got very worried and despondent, but one day ho arrived home in great glee. Hβ wife greeted him with, "Ob! you ve got work at last." No, I have not, said Joe, but it's the next best thing. George North has promised me ,Is. every time I. purchase a pound of tobacco from him. "What's the pood of that?" said lire. Child. "Why!" said Joe, "that will keep the wolf from the door-the wore 1 smoke the more shillings I'll get!" His wife wad astonished, but said nothingshe wondered if he was "all there.' A fo\i days afterwards he came home_ with tears streaming down his face. "We are ruined," said he. "George North has cleared off to America, and I'll get no more shillings." Poor old Joe, the strain was too great for him, and ho went off himself—to Mount View—shortly afterwards. ■ About a million of money is collected from the trade in one form or another, it is true, but it produces a ■α-op oi drunkards with hundreds of convictions for drunkenness and crime. What a drunkard suffers nobody knows but himself, but those members of Parliament who have a little regard for humanity and whose hearts are not made oi steel will be interested in tho following word picture by the .late Dr. Sloxon, or Guy's Hospital :-"When the sot has descended through his chosen course of imbecility or dropsy to the dead-house, Morbid Anatomy is ready to receive him—knows him well, at the post-mortem she would say 'liver hard and nodulated, brain dense and small, its coverings thick.' And if you would listen to hor unattractive but interesting tale she would trace throughout the sot's body a series of changes which leave unaltered .no part of him worth speaking of. She would tell you that tho once delicate, filmy texture which, when he was young, had 6urround«Ulike a pure atmosphere every fibre and tube of his mechanism, making him litho nnd supple, has i-ow hecomo rather a dense fog than a pure atmosphere—dense stuff which, instead of lubricating, has closed in upon ana crushed out of existence more and more of tho fibres end tubes, especially on the brain and liver, whence the imbecility and tho dropsy." >It is impossible to bnild up a healthy country with revenue derived from such a rotten source; retribution will come sooner or later, yea, it is here. 0, foolish Treasurers, "who hath bewitched you?"—I am, etc.,

JOHN PLOWMAN