PROHIBITION TESTED IN ENGLAND.

Opunake Times, Volume V, Issue 229, 13 November 1896, Page 2

PROHIBITION TESTED IN ENGLAND.

(to the editor.) Sir, —The ’Frisco mail just received brings the following from the well-known Westminster Gazette, which is too pertinent at this colonial crisis not to have publicity : There exists a remarkable instance of the working of prohibition in England. Some thirty years ago the owner of a large estate in England, which was to be let for building purposes, applied the direct veto to the whole of his property by inserting a clause in the leases prohibiting the sale of intoxicating liquors on his estate, and this ares, which now covers more than halt the township ol Toxteth and the whole of the Parliamentary division of East Toxteth, is entirely under Prohibition. Two hundred streets, twelve thousand houses, and sixty thousand people without a public-house in their midst! The results of this have been remarkable. In the prohibition area in 1891 the death rate was in some districts as low as 10 to 12 per thousand, and in others 14. In the area outside in which public-houses abound the death rate was 41 per thousand. The typhus and typhoid fever map published by the health officer of Liverpool closely' corresponds with the map showing the number of public-houses in the same locality. Ninetenths of the applications for parish relief come from the district where public-houses and typhus prevail. In the prohibition area the poor rates have gone from 2s 6d in the £ to MOd or Is. The rent paid for 483 houses in the district without drink shops was £8744 ; that paid for 482 in the other district was only £6268 -less by 30 per cent 1 while in the former district pawnshops and bridewells are conspicuous by their absence.” Happy the New Zealand electorate awake and wise enough to vote no license at least so profoundly believes,— Yours, &c., • John H. White, Bahotu.