PROHIBITION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume C, Issue 11665, 23 August 1898, Page 2

PROHIBITION.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, Your correspondent “Louisa Blake ” says that prohibition is dead. I do not know who the authority she speaks of is, or what he or she may base the con-

elusion arrived at upon. I think that facts point in the opposite direction. However, whether it is dead or not, I think that there is more need than ever for this reform. The drink traffic is doing, its murderous work in this colony just as much, if not more, than ever before. Why, just think of it, a comparatively youngman found dead in our streets “slain by drink.” By the way, I should like to know which was the correct verdict. Tour contemporary reported that the jury brought in a verdict of “ death from syncope, accelerated by intoxication,” while you- reported that the verdict was “ death from syncope.” Somebody’s boy, if this traffic is allowed to continue, will take this man’s place. For the first five months of this year there were 115 first offenders before our courts. I say that it is a perfect scandal that a large number of clergymen are doing nothing whatever to prevent our boys, aye, and girls too, being ruined by this accursed traffic. 1 am, . COLONIAL. [The verdict referred to by our correspondent was correctly reported as “death from syncope, accelerated by intoxication.” Unfortunately, this journal was, not' represented at the inquest, and the particulars we published were supplied by the police.— Ed.

t TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —In .this morning’s “Times” I see a letter by Mrs Louisa Blake, in which she asserts that prohibition is dead. She writes a lot of nonsense about its ghost abolition, courage in fighting the foe, etc., and winds up -with something about com-mon-sense and State control of the liquor traffic. I have no doubt this lady is a good soul and very courageous, but it seems to me that she is far too sure that her pet theories will work out all right, while she is evidently unacquainted with the practical surroundings of many matters which she settles so readily in her own mind. With regard to this question of State control, I have read all that you have published of late years in reference to the Gothenburg and similar systems, and the latest, you give us from. Russia does not show much for a good woman to jubilate about. But as Mrs Louisa Blake believes thoroughly in the common-sense of the thing, I would like her to become practical, and to give her the opportunity I beg to suggest that the Premier take means to establish State control in one of the West Coast townships, and that Mrs Louisa Blake! be placed in charge of the new institution. Her firm belief in the idea would ensure its getting a fair trial, and after a couple of years behind the bar I think she would be able to tell us all a little more about it. Prohibition under any other name will smell just as sweet to those who see the moral benefit to mankind that would be brought about by its application. The principle is not dead, neither is it likely to die, but there is no doubt it has received the hardest blow that could be- dealt it, and that, too, from its own champions, who, in the late division on the reduction yote, walked into the same lobby with Seddon and Russell, by which action the power to vote reduction is taken from the people. A few years back the totalisator was recognised as a semi-State institution, relied upon to do away with gambling, hut to-day you pronounce its doom, and inform us that an anti-gambling society is being formed to fight the evil which has grown with its use. Is not this significant? Prohibition is not dead.—l am, etc., A FIGHTER FOR REFORM.