Page 4 Advertisements Column 2

Shannon News, 3 November 1925, Page 4

JUDGE PRIESTS JUDGMENT. ism Increases Crime. THE INDICTMENT PROVED Mr. H. S. Priest, formerly Judge Priest, is a distinguished lawyer: a member of the American Bar Association and- the Presbyterian Church. He was born in 1853, and took his LL.D. degree in 1872. He was appointed a judge in 1894, and is now head of the firm of Priest & Boyle, of St. Louis. AN OPEN LETTER TO THE ELECTORS OF NEW ZEALAND. Saint Louis, 20th April, 1935. The outstanding and self-evident facts of Government by enforcement attempting to control private and personal habits are these: 4 Since January 1920, when arrests and raiding began under the Volstead Act, the official violations used under it has been accompanied generally by an unprecedented increase in crimes of violence, including highway robbery and bank robbery, remaining largely \ unpunished and still increasing, while &he jails and penitentiaries are being crowded with victims of Prohibition enforcement. Increase of compulsion by Government for the purposes opposed to right and reason has been accompanied by an increase of the most dangerous crimes against life and property, which compulsionists in power do not check. Prior to 1920 moonshining or illicit distilling was confined to a few remote districts chiefly in the Southern mountains; it is now general in towns and cities, and also in easily accessible rural neighbourhood's. When in 1922 enforcements in the Federal Courts boasted a total of less than 2,000 years in prison-sentences, it had left for 1924 to a total of 3,187 years. It boasted the seizures of 9,746 distilleries in 1921, and of 10,392 in 1924, with no other result than to emphasize the notorious fact that if it should seize 15,000 this year, a new increase may still be expected for the year following. While such official statistics of failure might be multiplied indefinitely, but public knowledge o-f the fact of failure does not depend on them. As far as such enforcement can go in compulsion, disregarding personal rights and public liberty, it makes its own failure more odious as it bocamss more manifest, Very truly yours, tffa fvurts^s I!lliin!il!!l!l!!I!lliIliillI BUI Profit by Experience VOTE CONTINUANCE