PROHIBITION IN CANADA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11826, 2 December 1901, Page 7

PROHIBITION IN CANADA.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—ln your issue of the 25th inst. appears a cablegram stating that " the Privy Council has decided that the Provincial Legislature of Manitoba is entitled to enact a law for the suppression of the liquor traffic. ' An explanation of this decision will not be without interest to many of your readers. When a vote was taken in Canada a couple of years ago on the question of national prohibition, every State polled a majority in favour of the proposal with the exception of the province of Quebec, which, through its French population, cast such a majority against it as to defeat the prooosal. The prohibition party then decided to secure the suppression of the liquor traffic in the several States favourable to it.

In .July, 1900, the Legislature of Manitoba carried a. prohibitory measure, which was to come into operation on Juno 1, 1901. The Liberal party in Canada is supposed to contain the majority of prohibitionists, hut in Manitoba—alone of all the eight States forming the Dominion—the reins of office are in the hands of the Conservative party, under the leadership of a hereditary chief, the son of the late Sir John Maedonald, who practically ruled Canadian politics for lialf-a-century. Premier Maedonald seems to have fallen heir to his father's genius for reading the signs of the times. Ho is looked upon as the rising star of the Conservative party, soon to be proclaimed federal chieftain, with the hope that he will recapture tho Government benches at Ottawa, so long hold by his illustrious father. With the Conservative party therefore rests the honour of having carried tho first prohibitory measure in Canada.

Thoso interested in the perpetuation of the liquor traffic in Manitoba brought forward a very ingenious objection to the prohibitory law. Before Manitoba was erected into a province of the Dominion, the great prairio country was a portion of Rupert's Land, administered by the Hudson's Bay Company, under an Imperial charter. Before Canada took over the territory the right of this company was extinguished by tho payment of a large sum of money and a large grant of land, but the Act which set forth the bargain and transfer provided that thecompany should be permitted to continue their trading, as a corporation without let or hindrance. The objectors to the prohibitory law sot up tho contention that this bargain with the Hudson's Bay Company precluded the province from prohibiting tho ■sale of liquor by the company. Tho Canadian Supreme Court upheld the contention. Appeal was then made to the Privy Council, with t.ho result as stated in the cablegram quoted above. ° The province of Prince Edward Island, tho smallest of the provinces forming the Dominion, recently enacted a prohibitory law.— I am '> etc., llaimta.