LIBERTY AND PROHIBITION.

Hastings Standard, Issue 175, 19 November 1896, Page 2

LIBERTY AND PROHIBITION.

[To The Editor.]

Sih, —Your bold, but misleading article on this subject in yesterday's issue merits a few words from the other side. This cry about Prohibition interfering with the liberty of the subject is one of the loudest the liquor ring can shriek out. But what kind of liberty do we interfere with ? The liberty of the savage who goes about with his tomahawk, seeking whom he may kill. "Is not liberty a mass of compromises ? " Free men are like dates crushes in a box. Each has to yield to the other, and not one has its natural shape. You are free till you touch me, and then we have to compromise. If a man wants to travel with women's apparel, the other men will stop him. Why ? A citizen of the town might wish to erect an economical shanty in the main street, but probably some building regulations will prevent him. Why ? Another might wish to build a wooden structure in a part of the town where only brick or stone is allowed. He might say " the land is mine. I am to use the building. Wood suits me. I don't ask anybody to pay for it. It's a free country." But they prohibit him. Why? He has to spend thousands to please other people. His neighbors say, " a wooden building will affect us ; for we will have to pay more insurance." Thus the man's liberty is restricted, not against, but in favor of the liberty of the subject. Another might wish to keep pigs in the town, and he would be prohibited. Why ? He might say, " I will feed them myself. I will take all responsibility. It's a free country." The answer is simple. Yes, but as a large majority objects to pigs, the liberty is for them, and you must be restricted. Now, this is true democracy and the only possible liberty. Prohibition is on all fours with scores of restrictions already imposed upon all by sufficient majorities. If the toper could carry in his own skin all the consiliences of his indulgence, none but a very large majority could reasonably interfere. But as drinking is the cancer in the body politic, and injures the whole nation, any majority has the abstract right to forbid. Pigsties are prohibited by bare majorities of the ratepayers : ii; the three-fifths majority of the people decide not to i have liquor shops, where is the undue interference with liberty in one case more than in the other '? You leader tell us that some Mr. I>agnail " presented unquestionable facts and unanswerable figures." I would like to see some of them. I read Mr. Bagnall's speech that he gave at Fielding, and there were precious few of either. But I would like the Standard to deal with the question as to whether a three-iifths majority vote is a tyranny of the minority ? If the prohibitionists are such an insignificant minority as you would have us believe, then why is it that the newspapers are up in arms against them? Why are the publicans spending such a lot of money to put them down'? Why are they noticed in every issue of the daily papers? This is mighty strange. As to whether Prohibitionists are better organised, and are stronger now than they were three years ago, the next local option poll will show. The Liberal party knows well that the Prohibitionists are a power to be reckoned with at the forthcoming election. Hence we find all' along the line, the prohibition question made the main plank in the speeches of the various candidates. Why should the prohibitionists have to pay heavy taxes incurred by the publican's trade ? Have the prohibitionists 110 right to cry out about the liberty of the subject ? We have to put our hands deep down in our pockets to pay for the misery incurred by this tra-.e. We have as much right to cry out about the heavy taxation as anybody else. What about our liberty being interfered with by having stinking beer cellars under our noses, and drunken men stumbling across our footpaths, as we travel along the streets ? What about the sixteen thousand people in this colony who have prohibition orders issued against them ? Is their liberty interfered with ? We are doing the very thing every day that the newspapers tell us we ought to do. A man, in a free country, cannot sell drink without a license. Surely this liberty is restricted. All law limits liberty. The anti-Prohibitionists have only to push their argument for freedom a little further, and they land themselves into anirchy, or the right to have no law at all. Whilst we have law, we cannot haveabsolute|freedom. Majority must rule. This is liberalism, that we hear so much about.—l remain yours, Ac., ■John Husking. Wesleyan Parsonage, Hastings, Nov. 18th, 1896.