PROHIBITION AND PROGRESS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 860, 24 August 1888, Page 20

PROHIBITION AND PROGRESS.

As an institution that has attained its best success in the United States, where personal liberty is supposed to flourish as the inalienable right of every citizen, prohibition and its effects will be found well worthy the serious consideration of every young and growing country. In r spite of the fact that the friends of prohibition have been for years the political power in severai ©f our States, prohibition cannot be regarded as a success, viewed either from a moral, a social, or an economical standpoint. It is just as easy to get drink in the State of Maine as though there were no such thing as a prohibitory law—only the business is. conducted secretly, there is no publicity. or legal control to ensure its respectability, and the community derives no revenue from it. Judge Goddard, of Maine, a reliable authority, shows, from the State Prison returns, that during the past thirty-seven year 3 ihere ha 3 been in the State an increase of 174 per cent in felony, 307 per cent in dangerous crime, and 850 per cent in murder, as compared with the increase in the population. In lowa, in SDite of laws that prohibit the manufacture or sale of any spirituous or fermented beverages, the United States collected last year revenue on 174,339 barrels of malt liquor sold ; in Rhode Island, the prohibitory law, after several years’ trial, has been repealed as ineffective and unsatisfactory, and so we might go on. These are the results ; of the means by which they have been accomplished we could say much more. Maine, that has in its large cities several thousand secret dram shops, where the vilest decoctions are doled out to imbibers, makes the selling or giving away of a glass of cider a misdemeanour, punishable by tine or imprisonment. Kansas seizes and destroys property representing the life’s savings of thrifty German citizens, under a law passed since they took up their residence in the State, and without a cent of compensation. lowa adds fine and imprisonment to the practical sequestration of properly consummated iu the sister commonwealth. Rhode Island spends thousands of dollars a year in the maintenance of a State Secret Police—a band of legal spies—and .their chief acknowledges that all their dirty work failed to secure the enforcement of the prohibition measures.

It has been suggested by prominent advocates of the cause of prohibition that Australia, as a young community, would be a good place for the propagation of their doctrines, and that their peculiar-“ ism,” once firmly implanted in the colonies, would grow up with their population until strong enough to assert itself. It is for those who have the best interests of the colonies at heart to consider whether the presence and teachings of the total abstinence advocates should be encouraged. As in the United States, so in Australia ; people are attracted as settlers by a feeling that greater freedom of thought and opinion awaits, them in a young country than in the hide-bound conventional communities of older continents ; and they are right. It is a surprise to those who come to the United States, imbued with such convictions, and bound for Kansas or lowa, we will say, to find that the manufacture or sale of a glass of beer, the retailing of a drop of spirits, except on a doctor’s prescription, or the warrant of a judge granted on a sworn statement, is a crime. Would-be immigrants are apt to pause and think before they settle in a community where such theories prevail and such laws are enforced, and Kansas and loiva have suffered heavily in population since prohibition was adopted as the State policy ; Maine has been for years at a standstill as far as her population is concerned. Economically, too, the prohibition States have been heavy losers by the abolition from within their limits of industries of such importance as those identified with the production and sale of the interdicted beverages. Where no good, either socially, morally, or economically, can be traced to prohibition, it is difficult indeed to find cause for its continuance in the communities in which it is in force, and were it not for political factors it would probably have been abandoned almost universally long ago. Wo present the above facts, which w@ might indefinitely extend, as well worthy the serious consideration of our readers in Australia, in case the colonies should be made one of the battle grounds of prohibition, and would advise them before they treat the subject lightly, or allow the advocates of sumptuary legislation to gain a foothold that will enable them to act the part of a disturbing element in the community, to study the workings and results of the prohibitory movement in the United States from an impartial and authentic standpoint.—New York Australasian and South American, July 20. "