LICENSING LAWS AND THE REVENUE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15822, 22 July 1913, Page 6

LICENSING LAWS AND THE REVENUE.

10 THE EDITOB. Sir,— According to a statement in your columns on Monday, members of Parliament are discussing the question of the loss of revenue amounting to £900,000 should prohibition bo carried in New Zealand. The idea that the abolition of the liquor traffic will involve the country in any financial embarrassment or loss is a delusion which will not stand the test of an hour's disinterested analysis. The delusion is, encouraged by our thinking and talking of "the revenue derived from the liquor traffic." Nobody is so unreasonable as to talk of the revenue derived from the merchant or the grocer, because it is clearly recognised that the taxation on the dutiable goods in which they deal is not paid by them but by I their customers. They merely collect the tax—they do not pay it. So it is with the Jiquor seller. The traffic from which we speak of deriving revenue is tho channel, but not the source, of supply. If drink really was the source of supply the drying of the source would necessarily embarrass our finances. But neither tlie trade nor the trader is actually the source. The community which keeps them both going pays the revenue and has the privilege of paying for their keep besides. What does the community pay for the liquorV For 1910-11 it was. £3,803,438. And what revenue does it get in return '!— £847,275. The liquor seller collects £8471275 of revenuo from the community and charges £2,956,163 for doing so. And we are asked to bolieve that if this wonderful system of. collection wore' abolished we should be the poorer for the change. It surely does not roquire a financial genius to see that the country could still raiso the revenue and bo nearly £3,000,000 to tho good. If money be spent on house build--sn< r, tho money circulates, labour is employed, and there is also a house to show for it, but money spent on drink only produces a perennial crop of drunkenness, crime, insanity, pauperism, disease, and death.

Look, at tho money spent in 1911 to keep up this traffic—in prisons, police, criminal prosecutions, charitable aid, old-age pensions, hospitals, and industrial schools, amounting to £587,768. Deduct this from the rovonuo of £347,275 and you have a balance of £259,507 to bo made up if the liquor traffic is abolished. The money saved from liquor, ■ should prohibition be carried, would go into circulation along other channels. Some of it would directly employ labour: 6ome of it would bo invested in agriculture, manufactures, and commerce. Practically the wholo of it, by increasing the amount of money seeking employment, would tend to raise wages, lower 'interest, and promote the wealth and prosperity, and therefore the revenue-pro-ducing power of tho people.—l am, etc., Dominds.'