PROHIBITION IN CLUTHA. (From Our Own Correspondent.) Wellington, December 21.

Otago Witness, Issue 2286, 23 December 1897, Page 34

PROHIBITION IN CLUTHA. (From Our Own Correspondent.) Wellington, December 21.

Mr Hawking, S M., has reported on the operation of prohibition in Ciutha. He says there is a sense of injustice and of irritation arising out of the fact that what is lawful and expedient elsewhere in the colony should be declared the reverse in this district. The minority feel that they are victims of an arbitrary law. Of 80 informations laid 40 were withdrawn, 16 dismissed, while there were 23 convictions. The fines amounted to £651. It is impossible to say tbab the sale h>s been stopped, or that any final blow his been given to the trade. Says the SM. :—: — 11 Liquor is to be found generally, and is offered to vititors in houses where before 1893 no liquor was kept. The repressive measures and the penal enforcement of them have led to an open defiance of the law, and to a disregard of truth in the Magistrate's Court, the evils of which the commission ' cannot sufficiently dwell ou aud deplore.' " There is hardly a case which has come before the S.M. in which defendant hag pleaded not guilty in which, in the stipendiary magistrate's opinion, there has not been lying in the witness box. In some cases it is most deliberate. The S.M. says that the prohibitionists, while attempting to cast; out one devil, are bringing in several others far worse than that one. The condition of the present state of affairs is most unendurable — an evil of a character most mischievous to the morality of the district;