TEMPERANCE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 871, 9 November 1888, Page 7

TEMPERANCE.

ALCOHOLISM AND CRIMINALITY. M. Naramber, in a communication to the Academy of Medicine, stated that after examining 3000 convicted criminals he found that of the vagabonds and mendicants 79 per cent, are drunkards ; of the asassins and incendiaries 50 and 57 ; of robbers 71. Of those convicted of crimes against the person 88 per cent., aud those guilty of attacks on property, 77 per cent, are alcoholics. Of 100 criminal youths under twenty, 64 are already drunkards. Drunkenness has greatly increased in France since the consumption of spirits has ' been substituted for that of wine. THE IMMORALITY OF LICENSE. By S. Anna Gordon. Mr Hoyt’s plan for the diminishing of drunkenness is surely a very strange one ; i.e., to establish no Prohibition law, because the law will not prevent drunkenness. It is equivalent to saying : ‘ Establish no law against murder, because the law will not prevent murder,’ and so on through the whole catalogue of crime This would do away with the necessity of all law, and leave crime to correct itself." This illogical idea would not be worthy of note were it not for the fact that there are a great many illogical minds. No Prohibition law is the whiskey men’s own argument, but to the contrary of Prohibition they say, ‘ Give us license that one man may first destroy another, and then punish him, because, under the law he has been destroyed. It makes the victims of crime the culprits, and the real culprit the one to convict and punish. Beside such crime Cain was a humauitariau. He destroyed Abel, not by a slow process of poisoning and resultant convictions aud punishments, through which the inebriate tells us that he suffers tue pangs of a thousand deaths instead of one, but proceeded at once to do the work of an executioner. Cau we call this a Christian Government when the voter can have his taxes paid from a revenue of crime which his vote has had its influence to induce ? Can we call this a Christian Government when it sustains crime that leads to death and to the consignment of souls to the wailings of the lost ? A Chris, tian Government, dooming the nation to an ultimate fall ! licensing murder, when God has said, * Thou shalt not kill !’ Christian men’s votes against God’s laws 1 Christian men legislating the wholesale destruction of their race! ’ When the Government closes distilleries and breweries, and forbids the' importation of alcoholics, and rears Bober men instead of asylums, then will its lost forces regain their strength, and the nation its power. If the liquor traffic is a worthy enterprise, why tax it? If unworthy, why permit it ? If it is worthy of men lo license it, why not worthy of them to drink and become besotted, because this is the legitimate outgrowth ? Where does the crime begin ? With the first criminal. Who is the first criminal ? The man who votes the license. Who is the second ? Th 9 man who affixed his signature creating the law to license. Who is the third ! The man or men who granted the license. Who is the fourth ? The man who sold the alcoholic under the license. Who is the fifth ? The man who bought the whiskey. Who is the sixth ? The man who arrested the man who drank

the whiskey that tho law licensed him to drink. Who is the seventh? The court that punished the man who drank the whiskey that the law licensed him to drink. These are the seven direct sins the liquor traffic brings, besides the numberless incidental ones. Who shall lift his voice against Prohibition. The same is a destroyer of his own soul and that.of his neighbour; and upon him will God placo the curse of the inebriate's sin. Deceive not thyself, O man ; God is not moakefl.—The Union Signal.

We beg to acknowledge with thanks the receipt of the Temperancs Herald from Dunedin. It is a useful journal, devoted entirely to the interests of total abstinence. The November , number is quite up to the usual standard. ? .