THE LICENSING LAWS.

Evening Star, Issue 9155, 9 June 1893, Page 4

THE LICENSING LAWS.

TO THK EDITOR. Sir,--Mr Holder's reply to “A. C. Broad” and myself, though abounding in insulting expressions, does not contain one single line to justify or uphold Ids position regarding the direct veto and Prohibition. Leaving his language, I will turn my attention to his remarks upon what I regard as impartial authority upon such questions. First in importance, I place the voice of the people as expressed by their votes; next, the opinions of representative men ; and lastly, the effect of such measures upon the social and material prosperity of the people ; and I hope, sir, that I am well enough read and of a sufficiently “judicial mind ” to gather together and faithfully consider the superabundant evidence upon the matter. Mr holder is right when he says 1 distrust the quotations given from such journals as the ‘ Western Brewer.’ I have in my possession at present a quotation supplied from such a source to one of our daily papers by Mr holder himself, which set forth as "truth what they could not help knowing to be a deliberate untruth. Of course, Mr holder would not be aware of that fact until it was duly exposed, hut the lesson should have taught him, as it did me, to thoroughly investigate such evidence before accepting it as correct. I presume that you can guarantee your American correspondent to be at least fairly reliable and worthy of credence, so that I cannot do better than bring his remarks upon the question under Mr holder’s notice. He says :—“I observe in nearly every issue of the Star that reaches me some local correspondence bolstering up the liquor traffic by lying statements and misrepresenting the facts as to Prohibition in Maine, Kansas, and lowa. . . . The facts really arc that the Prohibition laws arc found to be so wholly beneficent, and on the whole arc so well enforced, that the people of these States will not have the laws repealed. . . . In consequence of Prohibition we have in lowa twelve counties in which there are no' saloons, not a single prisoner in their gaols, nor a single {iauper in their poorhouses. In the remaining counties, in proportion as the laws are enforced, the people are contented, happy, and prosperous. In Maine the people of all the parties maintain tile laws and have no thought of their repeal.” Then follows a vindication of the law in Kansas by a gentleman who, in the words of your correspondent, “opposed the enactment of the law until his party boldly championed it.” Mr holder doubtless knows who those are who contribute to your paper upon the liquor side, and I leave him to derive what comfort-he can from your correspondent’s description of them. In conclusion, I may remark that as Maine has for between forty and fifty years upheld the prohibitory law, that fact alone ought to convince any fair-minded man that it is a success, and not the farce which Mr holder would have your readers believe.—l am, etc., Truth. Dunedin, June 1.