The Lyttelton Times. MONDAY, APRIL 6, 1896. LICENSING REFORM.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCV, Issue 10924, 6 April 1896, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. MONDAY, APRIL 6, 1896. LICENSING REFORM.

Thebe is no more unprofitable occupation than attempting to argue a point with people whose enthusiasm, or prejudice, or both combined, render them incapable of correct observation or discriminating judgment. Such persons divide humanity into two classes—those who agree with them and those who do not. In the latter class they are unable to see any good thing, and no matter how far some of those composing it may go in company with the enthusiasts, if they do not go the whole way, they are denounced unsparingly as enemies of the cause. It is instructive to observe the ingenuity and pains shown in trying to prove that everyone is a foe to reform who cannot pronounce the party shibboleth in a manner that is letter-perfect—that, in fact, anyone who seeks to regenerate society in any other way than the one approved by the zealot is a more dangerous adversary than the man who is openly undermining the public weal. As a typical sample of this method of criticism, we invite our readers’ attention to a letter from Mr C. Palk which appears in our correspondence columns this morning. If we had thought that our correspondent’s misrepresentation and distortion of our opinions on the temperance question were deliberate and wilful, his letter would have received very curt treatment. It is because we view his communication as a pronounced example of unconscious bias—an evidence of a judgment that has become lopsided by habitual dwelling on one aspect of things—that we propose to patiently analyse it and show its fallacious reasoning to he based on very fragmentary “ facts.” It is satisfactory to learn that Mr Palk is a constant reader of this journal, but we cannot say that he has read it to good purpose. Ail the quotations that he has managed to rake together froni our columns with any sort of bearing on the prohibition agitation do not in the slightest measure support his conclusion that we have systematically opposed temperance reform. His error lies in confounding things that are quite distinct. We have always felt and expressed the most genuine sympathy with the prohibitionists and their principal aims, which are the sobriety, good conduct and welfare of the people; but we have never pretended to agree that prohibition by Act of Parliament was theffiest means of achieving those aims. We have frequently found fault with the methods of prohibitionist agitators, but have ever been ready to admit the excellence of their intentions. Our plans for the reform of the-liquor trade would not stop with securing pure liquors. We have advocated a strict enforcement of the existing laws ; we have urged a reduction of the number of licensed houses ; we have contended for the right of the people to say how the trade shall be conducted or whether it shall be allowed to exist at all. These and other reforms we have advocated quite independently of what Ministers might propose, and on a number of details we have frequently gone much further than the Government. If Mr Palk had been half as careful to hunt up our favourable utterances as be has been to collect our criticisms on non-essential points, be would never have reached the conclusion that we are antagonistic to the prohibitionists. And when it comes to enumerating our “sins of omission ” in the way of failing to comment upon certain aspects of the liquor question, we are only surprised that the list is not a larger one. Surely our correspondent must he aware that we cannot applaud or condemn every utterance and act of politicians and magistrates that bears upon the liquor law or the prohibitionist agitation ; and he must be aware of the utter unfairness of constructing for ua a policy and an attitude from what we failed to write. It is unnecessary for us to go hack over our files to quote statements in disproof of what Mr Palk has asserted, but to deprive him and other prohibitionists of any excuse for misrepresenting our views regarding the prohibition agitaion, we may, in a few sentences, state what these are. The agitation,'by the way, is rather unhappily named, for it is not just now concerned with the enactment of prohibition, hut with the power to obtain that enactment. We fully recognise the ultimate right of the democracy to legislate directly on every question, including that of the traffic in intoxicants, and we have indicated our preference for a referendum vote as the best means of ascertaining the wishes of the people ; hut we believe that it is of the first importance—to the prohibitionists as well as to the rest of the community—that every reform should be clearly supported by a majority of the people. It is, in our opinion, desirable, until the introduction of the referendum has aroused more interest in all public questions, that great changes in the law should he introduced only after such an expression of the popular will as should leave no doubt that the general body of the people were prepared to .loyally

help in upholding the new order of things. The prohibition of the sale of intoxicants is one of those measures that could only succeed under such conditions, and for that reason we are prepared to accept for the present—in the absence of any better proposal—the safeguard that is provided by the existing law. We are well aware that all tills explanation may be quite lost upon extremists like our correspondent, who cannot, apparently, distinguish between advocacy of prohibition and advocacy of temperance reform by other and safer means —who cannot even recognise that one may believe in the people’s right to settle the question, and yet hold that prohibition is not the right way to settle it, without being a hypocrite or a pretended friend. But the hostility of the extremists on both sides of this question is the best assurance we could possibly have of tbe soundness of our position. We have been often enough too often, indeed denounced by individual prohibitionists; but they as a body have never gone quite so far as their active opponents. To have incurred the enmity of both sections of extremists is a very high testimony to the fairness of our attitude, and a satisfactory proof that on this great social question we are faithfully leading public opinion along safe and constitutional lines.