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Otago Daily Times, Issue 13653, 24 July 1906, Page 4

NO-LICENSE AT INVEROARGILL. Just three weeks after the inauguration of a regime of no-license at Invereargill the first prosecution for sly grog-selliu" mulcr the new conditions has been ,concludGd in that city, the result being that the offenders, three in number, have been convicted and fined £50 each, with the alternative of a month's imprisonment. It is satisfactory to find that the magistrate at Invereargill iv meting out punishment of so salutary an order, for there seems to have been something particularly flagrant about the conduct of the three men concerned by reason of which they were found guilty of an offence amounting to a wanton defiance of the law as the concrete embodiment of the will of the great majority of the people of Invereargill. The report of the proceedings in court before Mr M'Carthy, S.M., makes sorry and in some respects extraordinary reading. The extraordinary element is found in the evidence for the defence as given on oath by the defendants, and it is not surprising that the magistrate characterised the story told by them in their own behalf as wild and improbable, and rejected it. Glancing at the facts disclosed, we find that the three men, who conjointly occupied a small cottage, ordered and were supplied with no less than forty-five gallons of liquor within eleven days. They endeavoured to show that this was all consumed by themselves, and gave evidence of as high a rate of consumption as ten gallons of beer in twentyfour hours, Clearly these three Invereargill residents were either men of "unbounded stomach" or men of un-' bounded imagination and disregard for facts. Possibly they were men of the breed to which counsel for the defence seems to have mado vague reference when bo said that the Court would be aware that some men in England regularly drank their three, four, or five gallons of beer per day, while Germans frequently drank their three gallons a night and thought nothing of it. It is pathetic to think that these three men of the south should, to their own way of thinking, have been misunderstood when they imitated such worthy British and German models and scorned to estimate the liquor they imbibed in any other way than by the. gallon. In the account given by the three accused of their habits, the first is found allowing that in the days of license he used to drink about a dozen "long beers" (each approximately a pint) a day, and that seven gallons; of beer would last himself and his two companions in the house raided for twenty-four hours. On one Saturday night they drank a gallon a man, falling far short of the high German standard mentioned by defending counsel, it will be noted. The second witness, a chimney-sweep, admitted that nine "long beers" before breakfast, with sometimes an addition thereto, was not an unknown experience to him when pursuing his calling; while the third witness, who said his average earnings amounted to 30s a week, made the remarkable assertion that he used to purchase two gallons of beer almost daily at the hotels for his own consumption. On a Saturday aftejn.oo.ij referred.

to ho had a dozen glasses of beer, and then went to the station and had something more. Such are some of the statements which tho three Invercaniill defendants took upon themselves to make in the witness-box, and if their story could be accepted it would be a. shocking revelation, the reflection of which would go far. We are reminded in this connection that Plutarch tells of how Alexander the Great in his later days invited his friends and officers to supper, and to give life to tho'' carousal promised that the man who drank most should be crowned for his victory. One Promachus drank four measures of wine (about fourteen quarts) and carried off tho crown, "but survived it only three days, while the rest of the guests drank to such a degree that forty-one of them lost their lives, the weather coming upon thorn extremely cold during their intoxication," Such historical revellers sot a bad example, but as atonement an ancient warning. The statements made by the defendant? in the Invercargill case have, in view of all the circumstances, the appearance of being simply so many audacious and impudent assertions. Such characters as these men are, on their own showing, the worst enemies the liquor traffic could have. They are a menace to any community in which they reside, and are entitled to neither sympathy nor leniency. It is to he hoped tlw punishment in this case will have n salutary effect and go far to stamp out whatever incipient growth the practice °ff sly grog-selling has made in the Invercargill no-license area. Promptness is the great essential in putting down a practice the details of which are always sordid and mean to a degree, and the Invercargill police are to he commended on their energy in this direction, which has disclosed and obliterated, it is to be hoped, what was evidently a drinking den of the worst type. The drunkard is a nuisance, a. menace, and a burden to the community he disgraces, and we are disposed to think that he receives often too much sympathy in our courts of justice. A more rigorous treatment might prove a very beneficial deterrent. Drunkards are sometimes found at times at. large who would be more fittingly in the police cells if considerations for their own safety and the susceptibilities of the sober were considered; whilo all have had unpleasant experience of thft intoxicated or semi-intoxicated individual who makes a pitiful spectacle cf himself in tramcar or railway carriage.