"THE ETERNAL LIQUOR QUESTION.”

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXVII, Issue 5374, 6 September 1904, Page 7

"THE ETERNAL LIQUOR QUESTION.”

(To the Editor of N.Z. Times.”) Sir, —Do yon really not see that there is a broad difference between our proposal (as embodied in Mr McNab’s 1895 bill) that any person who should solicit or receive any order for, or supply, or deliver, or send any liquor into a prohibited district, except for certain specified purposes, should be liable- to penalties—and the provision in this year’s bill that possession of intoxicants except under certain conditions shall involve the possessor in a driO penalty. I have never heard of any complaint that an injustice was done in. subjecting a printer to penalty for printing leaflets for circulation without affixing an imprint, but what; would bo said if every person in whose possession such papers were found were subjected to penalty also ? “ The distinction between public actions and private habits is drawn in all outlaws except that which relates to the prohibition of the possession of opium, and the sole responsibility of that rests with Parliament, who passed the measure without any request from the people, unless it were from certain Chinese petitioners. The comparison frequently drawn between the proposed liquor exclusion danse and the subjection to penalty of a man found in possession of burglars’ tools is misleading. The possession of burglars’ tools is manifestly forbidden only as a precaution against an action in itself criminal, and those who now advocate danse nine would bo the last to claim that the possession of liquor is per se criminal. Our objection to State control lies deeper than you seem to realise. At present we deplore that public revenue is derived from a traffic whose demoralising and destructive effects have been depicted by multitudes of men whoso opinion carried the more weight because they were not suspected of being fanatics. To us it is ari intolerable thought that the people of this colony, with • a majority voting against liquor, should even be asked to consider a proposal that the nation shall dip its hands more deeply into the illgotten gains from a deadly trade.—l am, etc., . PRANK W. ISITT. Sept. 5.