MR THOMSON’S CAMPAIGN.

Evening Star, Issue 13099, 4 November 1908, Page 8

MR THOMSON’S CAMPAIGN.

LICENSE V. NO-LICENSE. A VERY LIVELY (MEETING. Speaking before a very large audience in the Oddfellows’, Hall, Albany street, last night, the Rev. \V; Thomson dealt sct urely with his critics. ■ The meeting was not wholly friendly. There was the usual small crowd at the back who attempted by hooting, interruption, and noisv contradictions to create disorder.; but Mr i homson s quick and biting repartee generally turned the laugh against these boisteroncs. Mr S. Gillies was chairman. —Tnat Challenge.— After referring generally to a few nsthc I ' ,icenso v - No-license fight, •Mr 1 homson proceeded to refer very pointedly to what he considered were ft number of deliberate untruths perpetrated by the No-license party. He said pos•sib y they had noticed Mr Isitt's challenge to him in the daily papers. Mr Jsitt had ottered to debate any aspect of the Nolieensc question Mr Thomson chose. He did not see the challenge until ho was going south, but he wrote from Orepuki accenting the challenge, and saving he would debate No-lic-onse in Maino/is compared with temperance in New Zealand. \\ b\ did he lake (Maine? Simply because .Maine, which had been quoted by the Noicense party for fifteen years,' was the 0 dot -No-heense State in America, and because both he and Mr Isitt had been mere. Mr Hitt was free to speak of anv aspect of No-lieense in New Zealand. He doubted it Mr Isitt was sincere.—{lnterruption. dissent, and something approaching a free fight at thc back/ He had now. Nt the greatest personal inconvenience, agreed to go to Christchurch to debate the Liquor question there, and he piopo.-ed t'i take with him all documents and papers under question, where they would lie examined, if necessary, by Messrs Taylor, Isitt. and Co. Jt was said th,it he ran away—because he was afraid o' S '* t '■ statement had been made bv the-No-license party. It was not true. He had made arrangements for bis s-uit.ien! tour before he was aware that -Mr i.-itt was coming to Dunedin. The announcements for his meetings had been made before he loft Dunedin. He had a.ready proved that. Why should the No-luim.-c party circulate untruths regardin''’ that matter? ° Messrs \\ esney and Laxter had eomo 1 tom Invercargill, and among other things had said tnat Invercargill people ha-d on Hospital Saturday collected £I,ICO, while .Dunedin people cn a like occasion only colic-ted ££oo. They put this down as a rcsint of No-license. Ho went to In\ercargill and tumid that that statement was absolutely misleading, wrong, and incorrect. 1 he people of Invercargill onlv subscribed £475 ; the balance of £675 had been collected in the smaller towns, such t’f Dipton, Riverton, and Woodlands, l.hat fact spoke for itrolt. It had been repeatedly asserted that the Invercargill '■vere in favor of No-license, and that the Southland limes,' which was at first opposed to Xo-license, had actually gone over and supported and ad\ocntcd that system. He had gone to some trouble to make inquiries respecting that, and ho found that the editor of the ‘Southland limes' had written to Mr Nn-holls contradicting the statement he had circulated so widely. The 'Southland .1 imes did not advocate. No-liconse • it lavnrcrl State control, which was an entirely ditieivrd thing, it had been said . ; u j l-^ l ' 1 homson) had deliberately t.ilsi.iod figures showing the amount of drunkenness that had taken place in Dunedin of recent years, and that he had attoiiiptDiJ t;j mi/livd them. Thc figures he had ()i:-dt*d wore from a Blue Took pubhsaed by f mnrmfsior.ov Dinnie, and in ia.rt year's records an error had been mane by tan officials that did not involve mm. He \v;*s not- responsible for the inisV* V' v,il? ridiculous. And the error did not. by any means, destroy thc argument that drunkenness In Dunedin was m-tii.-dlv decreasing, _ The No-liccnso people had levelled semens charges of misrepresentation against him in this connection, but when Me showed his hlamelessneus they had rot had the manliness to apologise. I lie Advertisements.— Exnyone vrs accustomed now to the wild state neii',; that appeared in thc dcilv pa-l-o’-s. Much of this had been shown to bo exaggeration—or. worse, half-truths. I here war; too much of that sort of thing in the Dunedin papers. ’J here wa.s one' example ha might refer to, which was the old story of a tmth hali lold. In a pnb'ication called • Public Good' there was an aboO.ut" -mt-iuth : that there were 40.0C0.000 people living under No-licensy there were during 1907 over 145,000.000 gallons of whisky consumed in the United otales, arid the revenue resulting thereHorn Mi owed ,-.n iucrei.se of £2.600,000 over that of preceding years. If all these I""* under No-license. or 1 rohibitio-i. the, revenue would show a, decrease instead of ~,n increase. It had been .said there were hundreds of towns in Mar-fiac-husert;, under No-litense. That was an absolute irirstatemeut. As e-oou a.s the towns rained No-luop.se. the chemists and druggists rei-eived a. license to sed liquor in small quantities, and they did sell it. lh.it was not No-lieenso. And the sumo conditions obtained m oth»r No!icense Stages. It, had been stated hi a No-license publication that a brewer's cart called :rly at sly ia Dunedia for order./. Re ha-d taken the trouble to investigate that charge, ansi found there was no tenth in it. 'Unit wa.s another sample of die tactics adopted hv the Nn--1 icon sc party. Then there was that publication lar.cly c.iculatcd called ‘A Brewer's Lie.’ This was a reference to a sta.tpme.nt made at the last election that were Nolicciise to 'ciii! into operation the City's revenue would decrease by some £4.055. 1 he other side called this a, lie. It war, not. He quoted figures to show that that statement war justified. Then the Invercargill No-iicen.-p advocates said that rater, had he-n reduc'd since No-liecnse was carried. 'lhcy attempted to give No-lieeu.se the credit or th:.-,. Bet on inquiry he earned tnat just about the time that Nolieen.v was care.-d values in Invcrca.ndll wore lumped ~p by full-- 50 per lent..'resulting, of ionise, in a. lowering of the rates. - Into-npernte Language.— He ’.vert cn to quote specimens of the language nr.-d duim; the present campaign. Here, nirtaiicc. was something credited -’ ,1 ‘ * r - XhliolL': ; ** Anv niiin r.v woman who was on the side of’the liquor traffic was cn the side of Icmiliscd de.-va-datmn. jegiilkscd cruelty, legalised "in\\hat did they think nf that? ! he iii.in win, said that was a poor fanatic, who. m-.tcad or hiring art rated by reason, was art anted only by ignorance. Mr i thornsr:;! proceeded to quote a number of i similar utterances made by No-license K-deio, ai/l reu nkyl that they a|ipearerl to he intoxicated with words aiid hysteii(lil phiar v; and fanaticism, as a dninkanl tie'imie in to.y dated with liquor. How tuii.tl ;t. pa:tv ri> itself in words, and employing such methods, hope to .set an example that might raise the classes to a higher level? —About Secret Drinking.— He had seen in Invercargill young men under the intiucnce of liquor, as a. ies.itlt of the keg parties that were now so common. Did they know what keg parties were? A number of young men put “ a shilling in" anil purchased a keg of beer. Then they sa.t around it and drank and drank until the keg was empty or they were helplessly intoxicated. That was a common occurrence ,in Invercargill. And if they wank’d further evidence of the drinking that was going on in Invercargill, h© would point to the Customs retnrnsT-which showed that no less than 20.000 more gallons of liquor were consumed there under No-license than under the same period of License.—(Voice : "Talk about Clutha.”) Yes. he would talk about Clutha. Had they any idea of the number of bankruptcies that had taken place among Bald at ha business people recently? Did they know that within recent years there had been in Clutha fifty prosecutions for sly grog-sell-ing.' Did they know that he held in his hand a, letter from a resident there com-

plaining of the amount of drunkenness': 1 — (Dissent.) Hud they any idea of the enormous quantities of liquor that wont into Ashburton despite No-license—lo3,ooo gallons in five years? They never realised the amount of drinking that went on in those places.. It was sly grog-drinking, and although there was drunkenness it never appeared. , The Moral Side of It.— He would point them to the moral side of the question. Could men be made good by compulsion—by striking out the lop line? It had been tried over and over again in the history of the world, and had invariably proved a failure in the long inn He gav*e numerous instances. When No liccp.se, for instance, was first carried ip. America there had been a decrease in dtunkenne.ns and crime. But only for a time. The people found the new conditions even worse than the old—and to-day socially and morally things - were worse than under License. It was human nature that rebelled against an interference with the 'ibarfy of the individual, and it would always be so. Ho gave numerous historical install cs of how the people, hound under such .in arbitrary law as* thijj Nolicense law, deliberately rose up and broke that law. —Conclusion.— Mr Thomson invited questions, and there was a ready response. Many questiom re, however, appeared anxious to cross-examine the speaker at some length, and these appeared greatly annoyed when the chairman insisted, in view of the number asking information, that each be limited to a few inquiries cacti. As the meeting drew towards a close the uproar increased, and Mr Thomson somewhat pointedly referred to the fact that whilst his party allowed No-liconse meetings to proceed with the utmost cainrr.es s, there wire nearly always many No-licen;;j persons present at his meetings apparently anxious to create disorder. When a vole of thanks to and confidence in Mr Thomson had been passed and the meeting ended, a body of University students created some disorder by entering into an altercation with Mr Thomson in the liody of the hall, while further entertainment was afforded by a heated dispute be- | tween two excited men in the doorway. Then the students left the hall and crossed the street. One of their number climbed on a fence and commenced to harangue the ctowd from this place of vantage. Two policemen, however, pushed through lit.-' audience, and ho was ignominiously dethroned. After a lively argument on the footpath the would-be orators went! away, and the crowd, with evident disappointment, dispersed. 4—4/11/08. * No-liccnve. the Cause of Intemperance, and No-license Falsehoods Kxpcsed ’ will he tlio subject of the Rev. William Thomson's lecture in the Cavereham Hall, -Main road, at eight o'clock this evening. Mr Thomson will deal with the subject as exhaustively as- pes-ible, and at tire ’close of the lecture those willing to ask questions will have an opportunity of doing so.