ECCLESIASTICS AND THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11955, 2 May 1902, Page 7

ECCLESIASTICS AND THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.

TO THK EDITOR. Sir.--Your excellent report of the move in Dunedin for the formation of a Publichouse Trust Association reveals the fear of coming doom on the part of some friends of " the trade," and also the old anxiety that the liquor traffic should receive the blessing of the Church. This Dunedin move has been used to draw Bishop Nevill and the Rev. Curzon-SiggerS These gentlemen ere doubtless willing to take the full responsibility of giving their countenance, not only to the proposed trust association, but to tho common sale' and use of alcoholic liquors as beverages. It would perhaps be hardly fair to saddle them with remits that will doubtless arise by the use that will be made of their position and sentiments by the trade in the coming battle at the polls. But surely men who are supposed to lead and set an example in good works may be supposed to consider the remote, as ell as the immediate consequences of their words and actions, and consequently to act more or less in full view oi all possible results. Bishop Nevill and the Rev. Curzon-Siggers are both impliedly in favour of some reform of the liquor traffic. They are not satisfied with our present liquor .system. But it does not take a. prophet's vision to see that their sentiments, so innocently drawn in connection with this Dunedin movement, will be strenuously used in the endeavour to perpetuate, by the votes of i'\o people, the present svsfern, with all its accursed but apparently inevitable associations. In seeking the blessing of the Church the liquor traffickers are apparently resting in the delusion that the people oi this country are so ignorant and unintelligent as to be led by the nose in this matter. It may be as well for them to learn first as last that the right of the liquoi traffic to star in this country is going to be settled on the merits of flse case. The blessing of the priest will not save it from a righteous doom when once the conscience of an enlightened people is awakened to ii sense of the wrong and the shame and the sin in which they are involved there!};,-. Our ancestors in Britain got out of the slave trade at the cost of 20 millions, when the conscience of the nation was awakened to the enormity and wrong of human slavery. And out of the more terrible slavery of the liquor traffic, not only New Zealand, but the whole British nation, will get at whatever cost when once the national conscience is aroused to a proper sense of Ihe drink sin. One can but regret that professed teachers of righteousness should delay the coining of t]\c great deliverance.—l am. etc., Titos. .1. Bull. April 29. 190.?.