The Hastings Standard Published Daily. WEDNESDAY, NOV. 18, 1896. LIBERTY AND PROHIBITION.

Hastings Standard, Issue 174, 18 November 1896, Page 2

The Hastings Standard Published Daily.

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 18, 1896. LIBERTY AND PROHIBITION.

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

At the general election of 1898 Prohibition was a question on which all candidates were asked to express definite opinions. A wave of extreme virtue leavened with tyrannical intent seemed to pervade the community, with the result that a very large number of Prohibition candidates were converted into members of Parliament. The enthusiasm of fanaticism is absent this election ; here and there Prohibition is paraded, but not with the same boisterous enthusiasm that marked the elections of 1893. Even the peripathetic Rev. Isitt is not so demonstrative, or if demonstrative is not impressive. A change has come over the scene. The gospel of Prohibition, as preached by the fanatics, has not made many converts; on the contrary, the signs of the times indicate a diminution of their numbers. The aggressive attitude of the Prohibitionists, as marked out in their violent and intemperate statements, has forced into existence another party which, acting like an antidote, is doing good work.

The Liberty League, small as it is and poorly organised as it may be, is in its own way doing a service to the community by laying bare such of the falsities and misrepresentation which even Prohibitionists are not above indulging themselves in. Under the auspices of the Wellington branch of the Liberty League, Mr J. J. Bagnall, of Feilding, a retired barrister and solicitor of Birmingham, England, delivered on Monday last in the Empire City an instructive lecture on what may be termed the evils of Prohibition. Full of point and pith, with unquestionable facts and unanswerable figures, the lecture was a revelation to an audience which apparently assumed that there was no evil in Prohibition. Mr Bagnall clearly demonstrated that abuse of anything was to be deplored, but the mere abuse did not constitute grounds for abolishing the thing abused. On that line of argument Prohibition may be described as the abuse of Temperance ; but because it is so, or may be viewed in that light, is no reason why we should condemn temperance. But the question of Prohibition, as analysed by Mr Bagnall, involves something moiv than mere extreme intemperance ; it assails the liberty of the subject. The constitution of all English-speaking communities recognises that the whole is made up of its parts, and that therefore the happiness of the whole community is made up of the happiness of the individuals who compose it. To secure | the prosperity of each individual is the i ultimate end and aim of the Government, and it seeks to secure that end by according to each individual perfect liberty and absolute freedom to seek and pursue his own pathway in life and work out his own destiny free, unfettered, and untramelled, without restriction or limitation ; but with one, and only one, condition, that he. shall extend to each and every of his fellow men that liberty and freedom which lie himself enjoys. It is this perfect freedom which has made our race and our nation what they are and what they have become, and upon the maintenance of this individual liberty our future progress must depend. Under Prohibition the minority would be subject to coercion ; efforts would be made to suppress ; individuality but without that moral force which gives to all laws a power and a meaning the prohibition state of the community would be conceivably worse than its previous condition. It amounts to this, that you cannot mould the tastes and habits of the people by Act of Parliament; to do so is to invite disruption in the State. Either the race will lose itself in the decay which follows loss of individuality, or anarchy will take the place of law and order. Every reasonable and right-thinking man will stand up for temperance; but temperance is one thing, and the abuse of temperance must be condemned as roundly and persistently as all other abuses. Mr Bagnall has done excellent service by throwing a flash-light on the evils of intemperate temperance.