KING COUNTRY AND LIQUOR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19732, 3 September 1927, Page 12

KING COUNTRY AND LIQUOR

" GREAT ANOMALY IN LAW."

BISHOP CHERRINGTON'S VIEWS

rBY TELEGRAPH. —OWN CORRESPONDENT. ] HAMILTON. Friday Strong comment on the eniorcement of prohibition in the King Country was made this week by Bishop Cherrington. Ho considered it a great anomaly that there should be a law preventing the sale of liquor in that area. Although the bishop does not claim an intimate acquaintance with the subject, he has foimed his opinion alter taking a communsense view of the question and he endorses the remarks of Mr. Justice Herdman at Hamilton this week, who, referring to a case, said: —"There is noth ing more demoralising to a country than a law which is regarded with contempt and leads to underhand dealing, hypocrisy and deceit." Bishop Cherrington; who interests himself closely in the welfare of the Muoris, expressed the opinion that it was wrong to enforce the prohibition of alcohol in the King Country now that a large proportion of the population was European, and he considered the restriction led to much bad behaviour and evasion of the law. He understood that, by virtue of the treaty between the, authorities and a section of our Maori friends in the King Country, an agreement was made that no alcoholic liquor should be taken into that district. "When that treaty was made the conditions there were very different," he said. "If the authorities are going to segregate a race in a certain part of the country and keep other races out, then there is a certain amount of justice in such a treaty; but now it is quite impossible to say that the King Country is Maori country. I suppose the number of New Zealanders there is vastly greater than the number of Maoris. Personally, I think it is a tremendous anomaly that there should be a law preventing the sale of liquor it. that area. It simply gives rise to all sorts of illegal actions so far as the law is concerned, but actions that cannot be, in any sense, called wrong, "The present law creates a wrong moral point of view and it creates all sorts of ways of getting behind the law. This is leading to a great deal of bad behaviour that would not .be the case. if there were, as in other parts, licensed houses where liquor is sold under proper conditions."