ANOTHER PROHIBITION FAILURE.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 3257, 14 October 1897, Page 4

ANOTHER PROHIBITION FAILURE.

TO THE EDITOR. Sib, —Prohibition is so dead, and the cry of the political crier so completely gone, that I thought it needless to rattle the dead hones of a by-gone craze. But since you have published the convincing proof of one failure, here io the convincing proof of another.- The letter of the Canadian (Ottawa) correspondent of the Otago Witness, which appears in the issue of that paper of September 23rd, contains the following paragraph: Charlottetown, the capital of Prince Edward Island, has just repealed the local option temperance law known as the Scott Act. It did not work satisfactorily. The people of that community are strongly in favour of Prohibition; but when such a measure was placed in operation they seemed indifferent to its enforcement. Violations were viewed with leniency, Jand the work of making the law operative was ' left to the ordinary legal machinery. This machinery was both weak and corruptible. Infractions were winked at, and the people who had really brought the measure into existence held it to be no part of their duty to go beyond the polls. In this situation the sober judgment of the community has reverted to a license system. If, in a community like Charlottetown, where the majority leans strongly towards the exclusion of liquor, a local measure cannot be enforced, many are led to ask how a national measure of Prohibition could be made effective." I am sorry for all the . poor street-corner demagogues who have lived on the Prohibition craze so long, but it is quite evident that iff other countries their occupation is gone, as it is in this.—l am, k 0., Geo. Fisher. October 12, 1897.