The Hastings Standard Published Daily SATURDAY, MAY 30, 1896. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.

Hastings Standard, Issue 29, 30 May 1896, Page 2

The Hastings Standard Published Daily

SATURDAY, MAY 30, 1896. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrongs that need resistance. For the future in the distance, And the gooVl that we can do.

During the past few days we have had the liquor question brought prominently before us. The Prohibition Council at Palmerston North set forth five demands as follows : —(1) Requesting the Government to amend the Licensing Act so that the issue of Prohibition be decided by. a bare majority of the votes polled ; (2) renewing the demand for a State poll on the' question of colonial option at the next licensing election, a majority to decide; (3) demanding that clubs be placed on the same footing in regard to Sunday observance, limitation of hours, police supervision, and popular control as public-houses, and that no new charters be issued; (4) that public-house license fees should J>e paid to the Public Treasury, instead

of the local bodies; (5) that conditional licenses and packet licenses to steamers trading on rivers and within harbors be abolished. The Premier, in the speech ho delivered here last week, stated that the liquor legislation would not be complete until clubs were brought under the same law as public-houses; also, that he favored national option. The Premier is thus in accord with the Prohibitionists on two points, supposing that the minor details of the points are satisfactorily arranged. The Prohibitionists, however, appear to us to be in too great a hurry to secure their ends, and will probably miss the mark through hastiness. Temperance has made wonderful ■ progress during the past fifty years, and the Rechabites and blue-ribbon brigade may well claim a share of the beneficent work. A generation ago drunkenness was a national vice, and many British citizens were accustomed to get drunk with great diligence on every possible occasion without the faintest sense of shame. It was the most daring of English poets—Byron —who wrote the famous line :—•

'• ilan, being reasonable, must get drunk." But a marvellous change of habit has passed over society, and tho statistics of to-day show the progress made. In a recently published magazine there appeared an article on " The Decline of Drunkenness," from which the social reformer may iill himself with gladness. The writer of the article gave .side by side the number of "drunks" in the London Police returns for 1883 and 1894. Then, as now, the police only dealt with the disorderly drunk and the dead drunk. Sixty years ago the proportion of drunks in London was one to every forty of the population ; to-day it is only one to 21G of the population. There were 4-1 publicans in every 1,000 of population in 1831 ; the proportion in 1891 was 2.8 per 1,000. Thus, in little more than a generation, publicans as a trade have shrunk nearly 50 per cent. But there is no need to quote statistics to prove how remarkable has been the change, and in what a short period of time it has been effected. The national vice is being killed quickly, but not quickly enough for the Prohitionists who wish to see it destroyed by a single Act of Parliament. The subtle change of morals which is killing the habit of drunkenness is still at work, and the Prohibitionists would be doing their cause more good by " going slow." The House of Commons Committee set up in 1834 to inquire into the whole subject of drunknness, was told by one witness that in Scotland " drunkenness forms a part of the domestic education as much as learning A B O at school." The Temperance party should aim to reverse this, and mako sobriety a part of the domestic education. Parliament can no doubt do a great deal, but the awakening of the social eonscience to the evils of drunkenness will do more lasting good.