Prohibition Condemned.

Hastings Standard, Issue 141, 8 October 1896, Page 4

Prohibition Condemned.

. U- -;£.-iKS OUT. v o take the following letter from ilif columns of the X.Z. Herald :—- -in, —It is time that a protect should b -ittered in the name of common--i-ji.se, common decency and common humanity, against the language used l»y some advocates of Prohibition, regarding a considerable class of our neighbors and fellow-citizens. It is bad enough to have God's good gift of wine, which was chosen by Christ as a high and sacred symbol of the means of our salvation, stigmatised as "liquid damnation.'' but when men go to aflirm that all who are in any wayengaged in the manufacture or sale of alcoholic liquors are trading upon the blood and misery of human beings, and are, therefore, such unclean pariahs and outcasts that their money should not be received by the* Christian Church, truth, justice and charity demand that such false, cruel, and wicked statements should be indignantly challenged. No one will deny that drunkenness is the cause of frightful evils. Most people will allow that reforms in the mode of conducting the liquor trade are needed, that the number of licensed houses might well be lessened, the law as to selling during prohibited hours more rigidly enforced, and, above all, the quality of much of the liquor improved. No doubt there are dishonest brewers and dishonest hotelkeepers, but to brand a whole class on account of the evildoing of a few is as dangerous as it is uncharitable. An aggrieved hotelkeeper might reply to Mr Isitt with the general statement, all ministers of religion are hypocrites, which would be quite as true and quite as capable of proof as the general statement that all makers or sellers of liquor are unfit to be members of the Christian Church. Such wholesale denunciations do unspeakable harm. The sense of justice in those against whom they are levelled revolts against them, their conscience refuses to respond to them. Those who are endeavoring to pursue honestly a calling which they know to be legitimate, are hurt and wounded by expressions which blacken themselves and their families. And the framers and improvers of such unjust accusations are taking one of the surest means of crushing their neighbors' self-respect and of hardening and embittering their own hearts, while at the same time they are impeding the cause of rational and moderate reform.

Mr Isitt objects to the Church taking money from brewers and publicans, because it is the product of robbery. If he will search the New Testament, which contains at least as many of the strong warnings against spiritual pride and censoriousness as against drunkenness, he will find one instance in which money was refused on account of a scruple as to the way in which it had been earned. But the example is not an encouraging one. Christ did not refuse the ofteringof an alabaster box of ointment from a women, whose sins He declared to be many : it was thief priests whose nice conscience would not suffer them to put into the treasury the reward they had not

hfe.sitn.tecl to give for the betrayal of innocent blood. The manufacture and sale of pure liquor is an honest, useful ancl respectable business, and for my own part I would a thousand times rather make and sell god beer than retail bad theology. And there are many persons engaged in the liquor trade who are quite as good Christians as Mr Isitt, and better than I can pretend to be. This fact needs to be broadly and plainly stated, fcr such persons cannot stand forth to defend themselves from attacks which they know to be unfair and unkind, and which they feel deeply as tending to imprint a brand on themselves and their children.

Again, suppose the Church authorities are bound to scrutinise the source of gifts which seem to be made in all good faith, where are they to stop ? There are persons who make money by lies and pull's, by adulteration, by extortion ; there are some who put on a cloak of religion that they may better cheat their neighbors, and some of their ill-gotten wealth finds its way into the coffers of the Church. Are we to examine every man's books, to question his customers, to test his goods, before Ave will receive, any contribution from him ? Are we to distinguish between what he makes dishonestly, and say that the Church will take tithe of the former, but not of the latter. The thing is absurd. What the Church has to do is to proclaim with unfaltering voice the need of strict integrity and fair dealing, the duty, the wisdom, the blessedness of doing as you would be done by, to denounce all attempts to profit by another's injury, and then leave every man's conscience to apply these universal principles to his particular case. 15ut to lump together in a common condemnation the person who keeps 011 orderly, comfortable hotel, and sells wholesome liquor, with the soundrel who encourages debauchery, and gambling, and drugs people with vile decoctions, is to compound good and evil in the most reckless and presumptuous fashion. Hut some of the advocates of Prohibition seem determined to shut their eyes to the plainest facts. They tell us that with the disappearance of alcohol would come the disappearance of the greatest part of our poverty, vice and crime. 2so doubt drunkenness is answerable for a shocking amount of misery, but Prohibition is no such panacea for human sin n' l,l wretchedness as its advofj't - have us believe. Thi . ?> * proof of t'-' : • - 1 .r .■ 1 i ; n>-< • inn . •hi ' * i.r!; J: < v I<' v M. . -SiijUi:; 'i , . e-C-r. (l i>*: 1. T3j ■ I . H ;■■■ ■ :l '-1; r-i' , Jif :i' '!t :U':d 1.1t:»i:•' 7*.f s:i .-juniries .i >'.i.jii:r and more ■ u. ,uiy which legal enact- ; i-> could produce in New Zealand ; and yet murder, cruelty, rapine, lust, ignorance, sloth, are rife in Turkey, though alc-hol is banned. I know that we have iniluences for good at work among us which the Turks have not; but the fact remains indisputable that you may have the vilest condition of things in a country which enjoys the advantages of Prohibition. And it is a questionable advantage to have the outside of the platter clean if the inside if full of filth. There are sincere and consistent abstainers who feel that the champions of Prohibition are making a religion of a political crusade, that they are invoking the law to restrain men's action instead of proclaiming the power which can renew their hearts, uplift their desires, and mould their wills. And certainly the suggestion made lately with all gravity, that for six weeks before the coming election ministers of religion should leave their work of preaching the Gospel, conducting the worship of Cod, visiting the sick and afllic-ted, and teaching the young, in order to embark in a political campaign, is a singular proof of the danger we are all in of thinking that in New Zealand Parliaments and policemen have more authority than Cod.—l am, itc., WM. Beatty. ltenmera, Sept. 14, 1896.