BISHOP NEVILLE ON PROHIBITION.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1289, 12 November 1896, Page 40

BISHOP NEVILLE ON PROHIBITION.

A NOTABLE UTTERANCE. Dunedin, November 4. At the Anglican Diocesan Synod a resolution was passed cordially approving of the views of Bishop Neville on the subject of Prohibition as expressed in his address.

The views expressed by the Bishop are as follows : —" It is not mj intention to go into figures or arguments as to the success or the failure of this scheme in the prevention of drunkenness in particular districts where it has been tried, but I think it within the sphere of my duty as a teacher of morals, and in some humble way I hope an exponent of the mind of God, to point out some grave aspects of this subject which have either been lost sight of in the heat of argument or which at least have not yet received the attention which their importance demands. The question is what is likely to be the moral effect of Prohibition upon a community supposing the law to enforce io? Ido not think I say too much when I affirm that a compulsory abstention would be in the highest degree demoralising. We must remember that in the moral sphere there aie, so to speak, planes of varying devotion, and though the consequences of insobrioty are terrible indeed, yet the striking and ruinous character of those consequences are themselves liable to blind us to the lu<-> observable, because more subtle, dangers of tho application or force a-* a remedy, and the dangers thus produced may in the end be of even more ruinous results to a community because they are dangers which operate upon a higher plane. Let me try to make myself more clear : I am not merely saying that compulsion as a remedy for drunkenness is sure to prove a failure, though I fear it would be so. I hear of demijohns of whisky being delivered at railway stations in great numbers in Prohibition districts for the use of private families, which in so far as it is true is a spreading of temptation over a wider area. But when I said that in my opinion the compulsory 'stoppage of the sale of unfermented liquors would be demoralising, I referred to two distinct views of the subject which ought not to be lost sight of. The first is the almost certain evil of the formation of a public character in which the vices of deceit and hypocrisy and dishonesty would be largely developed, and these, 1 take it, are immoralities of a deeper dye than drunkenness itself. The other is the departure made by this scheme of Prohibition from God's way of dealing with his creatures as moral agents."