THE PROHIBITION PLEBISCITE IN CANADA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 11129, 31 July 1899, Page 3

THE PROHIBITION PLEBISCITE IN CANADA.

TO TnE editor. Sir,—You have given publicity to a letter written by Mr. Alexander Dowar, in which that gentleman refers to a recent controversy between myself and Mr. R. French relative to the plebiscite taken last September in Canada, at a oost, I may add, of £60,000! Mr. Dewar's object obviously was to discredit my statistics, to asperse the Canadian Premier (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) and his Government, and, lastly, to mislead the people of New Zealand as to the actual position of prohibition in Canada at the present time. With your kind permission I will reply to Mr. Dewar, and in doing so will endeavour to be as brief as possible. Mr. Dewar quotes voluminously figures and statistics, showing an analysis of the voting in the several provinces, cities, and towns when the plebiscite was taken, the analysis unmistakably "panning out" in favour of the Prohibition party. But, as I explained to Mr. French, " when you want to get a fair and accurate analysis from a plebiscite you must deal with the ballot in a general or national sense. You cannot select one or two isolated provinces or cities, and take their voting as representative of tho whole country." Let me deal with just two quotations from Mr. Dewar's effusion. He says Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the Canadian Premier, furnished Mr. Alderman Sponce. secretary of tho Dominion Temperance Alliance, with the following information: —" All the returns are now in, and the official returns are as follows: 278,487 in favour of prohibition and 264,571 against; majority of votes recorded 111 favour of total prohibition, 13,916. But as Montreal voted largely against, he did not think the majority shown was such as to justify the Ministry in introducing prohibiton." My courteous opponent, Mr. French, is undoubtedly' a postmaster in tho art of manipulating adverse statistics, and I consider that Mr. Dewar is sufficiently proficient to take the same high degree any t'me. In proof of this, let me first submit an analytical table, which I may also obseive is compiled trom the Canadian Blue Book or Parliamenary papers, and will show how distorted, garbled, and unreliable his data is:—(a) Population of Canada, 5,300,000; (b) total names on voters' list, 1,233,349; (c) votes polled for prohibition, 278,487; (d) votes polled against prohibition, 261,571: (e) prohibition majority of votes polled, 16,916; f) percentage polled of names on list, 44.00; Percentage majority of list voting for, 22.50; (h) percentage of list voting against, ii i PL P° rcenta ge majority of votes polled, 1.00; (k) percentage of votes polled to population, 10.24; (1) percentage of prohibition votes polled to population, 5.25; (ni) percentage of anti-prohibition votes polled to population, 4.99; (n) percentage of prohibition majority to population, 0.26. It will thus smnrnn ut of ft tota0 P u ' ation of 5,300,000, rather more than one-fourth we , 011 the list, i.e., duly registered as voters, and of these 1,233 349 electors enrolled only 278,487 voted for prohibition Therefore the actual strength of tho Prohibitionist vote was only about l-19th of the whole Canadian population, and but 22.50 per cent, of the entire body of electors! And if the result of tho plebiscite shows anything tangible at all, it demonstrates most forcibly how numerically weak the prohibition cause is in the Domi- ?| on - Y?t it ' 3 only a week or two ago that Mr. T. E. Taylor jubilated uproariously on tho splendid victory the Prohibitionists had won last year in Canada, where they had actually polled a majority of 17,000." Ho was particularly careful not to give his hearers the entiro aspect of the ballot, but left them to believe that by a majority of 17,000 the whole country had gone in for prohibition. To proceed. On the strength of this voting and alleged majority, the leading Prohibitionists (through tho secretary of the Dominion Alliance, Mr. Spence) wrote Sir Wilfrid Laurier, demanding that his Government should at once enforce prohibition throughout the colony, and as,the result of a prolonged md (on the Prohibitionist side, acrimonious and dictatorial) correspondence, Sir Wilfrid gave the party an unmistakable quietus with these closing words:—"The Government of the Dominion is of opinion that the fairest way of approaching the question is by consideration of the total vote cast in favour of prohibition, leaving aside altogether the vote recorded against it. On that view of the question the record shows that the electorate of Canada, to which the question was submitted, comprised 1,233,349 voters, and of that number less than 23' per cent., or a trifle over one-fifth, affirmed their conviction in the principle of prohibition. And no good purpose would be served by forcing upon the people a measure which is shown by the voters to have the support of less than 23 per cent, of the electorate. either would it serve any good purpose to enter here into any further controversy on the many incidental points before us. My object is simply to convey to you the conclusion that in our judgment the expression of publio opinion recorded at the polls in favour of prohibition did not represent such a proportion of the electors as would justify the Government introducing a. prohibitory measure." The view of the position taken by Sir Wilfrid Laurier and his Cabinet is that which must commend itself to all Liberal statesmen. In fact, no other courso than that adopted by,the Canadian Government oould be acceptable to any people wider a truly Liberal and Demooratio

regime. Why, oven their own acknowledged champion, Sir Robert Stout, admitted this, whon contributing his ably-written article to the Review of Renews on "Local Option in New Zealand," for he said: "The local optionists aro aware that if local option wore carried by a chance vote, before there was a strong and educated temperance feeling in the community to back it up, the last condition of that district might bo worse than the first, and sly grog-selling and unpunished violations of tho law would result." I will conclude by a mere roferenee to the statement that ''703 municipalities tot-ally prohibit the sale of liquor by licenso, whilst 225 permit it," throughout th-j Province ol Quebec. Let me state that it is tho same in Canada as in the neighbouring States of America; there are scores of so-called prohibited towns and cities where liquor is sold both openly and secretly, The truth of the matter is, that the municipal authorities in dcfcrenco to the clamours of the temperance party, pass prohibitory enactments, but never enforce them whilst tho liquor-dealers conduct their business in anything like an orderly, decent, and respectable manner. The internal revenue returns for IS6S—the latest available here— that in tho five prohibition States of Maine, Kansas, lowa, Vermont, and Rhode Island, there are the following proportions of licensed liquorsellers:Maine, one dealer to 610 population; lowa, one dealer to 506 population; Kansas, one dealer to 1087 population; Vermont, one dealer to 510 population; lihrdo Island, one dealer to 254 population, tin Auckland, with full license, one to 666) Connecticut and Massachusetts have twice enforced and repealed prohibitory laws, and their licensed sellers now number one to 213 and one to 242 of population respectively. As you pointed out from Rouutreo and Slierwell's splendidly-written book, 16 at least other of the United States have also tried tho same idiotic Quixotic experiment, and have proved the utter fallacy of prohibition. —I am, etc., George Everard Bextley.