LIQUOR LAW REFORM.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4163, 24 July 1874, Page 2 (Supplement)

LIQUOR LAW REFORM.

EDITED BY THE HON. WILLIAM FOX, M.H.H. [The Editor of this journal is not responsible for the opinions herein expressed. The column is solely under the charge of its special Editor.] THE AMERICAN WHISKY WAR AGAIN. The advocates of the liquor traffic are great at swallowing camels, while they strain at very small gnats. The trade which they defend converts hundreds of thousands of fair and virtuous women into drunkards, and worse drags shoals of them down to the gutter; sends them by scores to our gaols and penitentiaries. All right, says the publican’s advocate ; men must have their social glass, must take their ease at their inn ; and if a few of the weaker sox go to perdition, as ono of the consequences, it can’t be helped. Don't on that account think of touching the source from which the evil flows. Thus the camel goes down. Rut when a few noble women across the Atlantic, weary of seeing their sox made victims of the drink traffic—weary of seeing their husbands and tbeir sons ruined by the poisoned cup—combine to do tbeir best to sweep the evil from among thonij and, in so doing, take up a prominent position in the world’s eye, what a straining it causes among the editorial advocates of the liquor traffic, against the poor gnats. Wo are told that it is a most indecent thing ; that woman’s proper place is at her husband’s hearth ; that woman’s mission, in short, is to “suckle fools and chronicle small beer” ; that no reasonable person can expect substantial success from her efforts to promote sobriety; that if every saloon in the towns were closed one year, each would be open the next, and in the meantime there would bo sly grog-selling, “ It is diffi-

cult to think,” says one of our editorial critics whose paper is before us, “ how the spectacle can be conceived without a shudder, of hundreds of women forsaking' their homes, their duties, and their children, to create what is no more than a street disturbance. And to speak of that street exhibition as ‘praying,’ is little less than blasphemy. Who was it that said, ‘Thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet; and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret ?’ To us the American street exhibitions resemble that standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, and using vain repetitions as the heathen do.’ ” This certainly would be amusing if it were not very shocking. The writer tells us that it makes him shudder to hear of women leaving their homes and so forth to create what is no more than a street disturbance. Yet he never shudders at the fact that this liquor traffic has ruined hundreds of thousands of homes, and robbed poor women of husbands and children by millions. But then the praying in the streets : there’s the greatest indecency ; altogether contrary to the precepts of the Book which supports the liquor trade, and which is so received by the grog sellers. Doesn’t the Bible tell these women to go to their closets and pray there ? HoV dare they pray in the street, or in the bar-room, where iniquity is carried on, against which they are praying ? It seems to ns that if this text is to be taken as an authority against the noble American ladies, it is equally powerful to shut up our churches, to put an end to all public worship, and every species of prayer carried on beyond the limits of our own domestic closet. But the text was spoken against hypocrites who stood praying in public places because they wished to appear righteous before men. These American ladies, at all events, are no hyproorites ; they are terribly in earnest —they act as persons who feel that they war not only. “ against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness in high (never low) places,” That they should call on the God whom they worship to put an end to a traffic which they believe to be ruining millions of their fellow men and women—that they should pray as they believe their religion enjoins for the conversion even of those who are the cause of the evil—that they should pray thus before those whom they Irish to influence, may be an unusual thing, and contrary to all decorum, but the ladies who do it are neither hyproorites nor blasphemers. They are human beings, whose whole souls are afire by the. constant contemplation of a gigantic evil which comes home to their very hearths and beds. They are goaded by the neglect of Government on the subject, and so they set aside the conventionalities that surround them, and rush with an earnestness which has nothing but what is noble and generous about it, to do the work which they think it rests with them to do. On the whole, we recommend the advocate of the liquor traffic not to put the Bible in defence of his patrons. There is an old saying about a certain person quoting Scripture ; and when we hear it quoted in defence of a bad cause, or in opposition to a good one, it makes one feel uncomfortable, to say the least of it. louring the late English elections the publican’s war "cry was, “ Our Bible and our beer—our national institutions.” This was blasphemous if you like ; but we are sorry to say that the beer part of it decided the elections ; and, as has been well said, Mr. Disraeli was “ carried into power astride of a beer barrel.” We do hope that wo shall never see such an unholy alliance entered into in New Zealand as that which turned the scale at the late elections in England. . Our colonial critics seem entirely to misunderstand the character of this American whisky war. They regard it as purely ephemeral, and predict that it will leave no result ; that “if the saloons are closed now they will be all open again next year, and sly-gi-og selling exist in the meantime.” It is very probable that the intense excitement may die out, but they must have given very little attention to movements of this class, religious rerivals and the like, if they suppose that there will be no result. Why has the movement had so much result already ? Simply because it is sustained by an overwhelming public opinion. It is that which gives the movement the importance it has in our eyes, and in that of impartial observers like the correspondents of the Loudon Times and Standard. It is only one of the signs of the great general rising that is going on in almost all civilised nations against the tyranny of the public-house and the drinking habits of the day. Even the serfs of 'Russia are taking up the question, and with good effect apparently. The feeling is growing everywhere—we must kill it or it will kill us. Depend upon it when the great tidal wave which is now sweeping the United States has subsided, it will be found to have done much good work, and to have swept away not a little of this gigantic evil that it was destined to encounter in its headlong course. The predictions of the publicans’ advocates, that the houses now put down will all be reopened in a year-, and that sly grog selling will exist in the meantime, will, we believe, prove entirely unfounded. In those parts of the United States whore the prohibitory laws have been enforced, there are whole counties, towns, and villages without end, where the liquor traffic has been all but entirely swept away, and where no sly grog selling exists. We may be asked how do yon know that no sly grog selling exists. We reply because gaols that wore full are empty ; policemen who were kept up at night all the week long, now sleep in peace in their bods ; poverty and destitution have disappeared where they wei’e common, and all those results are absent which would certainly be there, if sly grog selling or any other sort of grog selling or grog consuming went on. The evidence of hundreds of witnesses lately taken before the Canadian Parliament, has confirmed the belief in the general success of the Maine Liquor Law, while a cloud of witnesses, not casual travellers who stayed a night in a seaport town, but men filling all the high positions of the State, attest the same fact.