TEMPERANCE COLUMN

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXIV, Issue 260, 4 November 1899, Page 1 (Supplement)

TEMPERANCE COLUMN

[Tais oolamn is published under Bp-p.h! arrang'ni'nt with tha Temper'<no3 Party, who alone are responsible ioc the opinion.' expreßßed therein.] REV. LEONARRD M. ISITT'S APPEAL TO THE VOTERS OF NEW ZEALAND. I am writing this appeal to the Electors of New Zealand from the heart of an English manufacturing town. "Within the last few days, the columns of its newspapers have been • disfigured by the records of a series of drink-induced tragedies, sad and terrible enough, one would think, to move the most apathetic to a white heat of enthusiasm. Nor is this all for side by side with those that have found public record as the fruit of drink excess, other incidents have occurred as shocking, and the part drink has played m these has been cloaked. Only last week the wife of the resident vicar died a drunkard's death, A few years ago, a godly fellow, a worker m the Primitive Methodist Church, came here to fill a business position. The drinking set lured him into their meshes ; he drifted into drunken habits, lost his appointment, and this week, m his despair, cut his throat. I have been away from New Zealand for nearly two years, but my brother writes to me, and asks me to plead with the men and women of New Zealand, and especially the Christian men and women, not only to vote No-License at the coming Election, but to join m work, that the land may be freed from the awful physical, moral, and spiritual degradation which ever follows m the wake of strong drink. Can I do this safely ? - Two years is a long time, and m the interim you have bad all sorts of influences at work. Have they transformed the liquor trade into a harmless — no, into a benificent business — a business ■which every Christian should rejoice to aid and approve ? You have had a Police Commission that was largely a Drink Commission, too ; you have had a new Commissioner, who seems sincerely anxious to do his duty thoroughly, and to stop the lawlessness of the drink traders. Have the Commission and the Commissioner so alarmed the liquor traders of New Zealand that have changed the character of their trade, and made it a power for good ? If this be so — if the public-houses are to-day no longer inducing drinking, poverty, and crime — if their victims are no longer being drafted into the hospitals, prisons, and lunatic asylums— if there are no longer wrecked homes and blighted lives— if there are no longer sorrowing women, and hungry, ragged, wronged, and neglected children^ m every city and town as the result of drink— then why not vote for the continuence of license ? But if there has been no ohange — if, to-day, things are as they have been ever since this poisonous drug was iirst sold m the land : if, while you cannot find one man or woman m all New Zealand who has been made a better, nobler, more Godlike character by alcohol you know that there are hundreds who have been robbed of all that is pure, noble, and true by this thing — it is not strange that you should need appeal from anyone to induce you to vote for the ending of a system so evil and so hurtful as the drink traffic ? It is only by confusing issues that you can be m any doubt as to what duty dictates. Can you doubt that the work these places have so long done — that, and none other, they •will continue to do ? Let the plea be what it may, vote for License, and every liquor-bar established by your vote will rob men and women of their own good, will rob homes of their happiness, wives of their husbands' love, children of all that constitutes the happiness of childhood and ministers to their future welldoing. You say your vote will not turn the Ecale, and secure the ending of the trade m your electorate ? This may be true ; but at least it takes away all complicity on your part; and whatever drink - wrought evils may occur m the years that follow, they will happen, not by your connivance, but despite your vote and your protest. Teetotaller or moderate drinker, we urge you, m the interests of God and humanity, to help us free the land of those dens of temptation that stud our every street. Can you hesitate ? On the one hand, vote for the liquor-shop, and you stand on the side of greed, cruelty, and indulgence, which flood the land with misery and sin. On the other, vote out the liquor-bar, and your vote is cast to redeem lives from the squalor and degradation of drunkenness, to restore scores of little children to an atmosphere of love, to give clothes to the ragged, food to the hungry, and new life and hope and happiness to many who will perish if the liquor trade lives.