Side Lights of Prohibition.

Hastings Standard, Issue 109, 1 September 1896, Page 4

Side Lights of Prohibition.

In a sly grog-selling case heard at Balelutha on a recent date some witnesses (says the Gtago Daily Times) displayed a fecundity of resource which would not have disgraced the best Irish witness depicted in literature or on the stage. One went to the house (after 3 o'clock in the morning) for his coat and boots, but instead of those indispensable articles received a blow from a stick wielded by a muscular groom. The condition to which this reduced the victim necessitated the internal application of some whisky. Providently a doctor happened to be present, he having dropped in to tell a man of the condition of his brother, who had met with an accident. By a still further interposition of Providence a barber was also present (he having gone there for some matches), and he cut away the hair from the wound so that the doctor might dress it. While they were engaged iu this work of humanity, cruel fate in the shape of a policeman became cognisant of the proceedings, and, instead of being moved with pity for the wounded man's condition or with admiration for the conduct of his benefactors, . coldly regarded the whole incident as a vulgar breach of the law, and laid an information against the proprietor of the establishment for selling grog on the sly. Now this was too bad. If this kind of thing goes on no person will lie able to enter a house in the C'lutha, even to '• see a man about a dog," without laying the owner of the premises open to the pain and penalties of a prosecution for illicit dealing in grog. It is a well-known fact that in medical jurisprudence that drinking impairs the memory. Physiologists will note with interest that abstinence has the same effect. Prohibition does not prohibit, t-n/o the people of the I'lutlia do not drink. Hence, when any un regenerate person from outside "the pale proceeds to quench his unhallowed thirst, not a single one of the residents who attend him seem to remember anything at all about the circumstances. If money passed it dil so without their knowledge. They drink hop beer, and straightaway become oblivions to all mandane things. Such are some of the results of prohibition. Another result is that persons who happen to have liquor on the of their premises seem to live by giving -it aw»y. 01 the Tapanui cases we do mimre tospedt at present.