THE NO-LICENSE ISSUE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 14357, 29 October 1908, Page 8

THE NO-LICENSE ISSUE.

Sill,—l fear your correspondent "A Minister of tlie Gospel" is one of those of whom it <jan truthfully l:o said, " Convincs a man against his will ho is of the same opinion still." Ha says it cannot bo iprdoed 'that a properly-regulated triple causes evils in any degroc approaching those where no-license prevails. In Uio (irst placo I would asl: him where a properly-regulated trade exists. The Rev. Mr Thomson three years ago promised to show us that of Dunedin, but if Dunedin to-day is a. sample of what the product of a properly-regula-ted trade is, then from the bottom of my heart I say, "Prom such good Lord deliver us." Then he tolls us that Dunodin is while and Sydney black so far as this question is concerned. Quito true; I s believe him. Hut the argument is about the most senseless cno any man can imagine. Again, he says that ho has given the question a study for some years, and that wherever .prohibition has been tried it lias proved a failure. Evidently our friend has been asleep since last elections' and only awakened in time to wrile his latter to your paper, or he would have known that where no-license has been tried in New Zealand it has boon a great success. If lie. lias any doubt on the point I would advi-:e him to ascertain what has been the result in C'lutha, Invercargill. Oamaru, and tVshbiuiou. Let him got the quantity of drink sent into these places before they adopted no-license, or if he cannot get '■hat, take the average over the colony per annum. _ Then he can take the Rev. Mr Thomson's ligures for what ha.s gone in since—and ho may bo euro they will not be understated,—strike the average, and let, us know the result. Then he "can find out the number convicted for a certain time, before no-license and set the number concisted since for drunkenness and all other crime, and let us know the result, and should we have no reply from him with these particulars, we will conclude either that ho is satislicd that no-license is a success in New Zealand or that, like the Rev. M.r Thomson, he refuses to discuss the question. As for American statistics, etc., which have .been served ii]i to us, they havo nothing to do with New Zealand to-day. In fact, they will not square with themselves. The one day wo are told that prohibition in Maine Was the cause of the . decrease in the birth-rale; the next, that Main? is the most drunken Stato of.all the American States. To which of those distinctly opposed statements doos our friend pin his faith'! _ 1 remember an American gentleman coming to my native village in Scotland, and he gave one or two lectures 011 America, and he told us that there was a murder committed almost every day in New York, and that few of them wero bver noticed. But beaius? the law against murder there was a. failure, ha did not advise us to abrogate the law against, murder in Scotland, although you know the law against murder in Scotland dees not altogether do away with murder there, any more than no-license does away with all drinking in New Zealand. Dunodin may be "white to-day and Sydney black/' but Dunodin is black laday to what it was not so long ago, and tile pitv of it is that it is our young men and lads who are the victims to-day, and unices something is done, and that quickly, we will soon make up 011 Sydney.—l am, etc., X. Y. Z. Dunodin, October 28.