THE LICENSING QUESTION.

Southern Cross, Volume 10, Issue 30, 1 November 1902, Page 9

THE LICENSING QUESTION.

Mr J. F. Deegan, of Victoria, delivered a lecture in the Theatre Royal on Thursday evening in opposition to the prohibition movement. The building was crowded in every part, and both sides of public opinion were well represented in the audience, as evidenced by the bursts of applause, the ironical laughter, and emphatic “yes!” and “no!” which greeted some of the speaker’s statements. Mr J. S. Goldie presided, and read an apology from the Mayor, who had to attend a meeting of the borough council.

In the course of his opening remarks, Mr Deegan said that laws had been enacted which were tyrannical and unjust to those engaged in the liquor trade, and which also menaced the inherent rights and liberties of the people, and for that reason he held that wherever teetotal organisations flourished they should be criticised not only in the interests of the liquor trade, but in the interests of the community. The licensed victualler supplied important public requirements, and prohibition was not only an attack upon trade interests of great magnitude, but was a serious interference with the comfort and the liberty of citizens. Laws which under the pretence of preventing drunkenness restricted th,e free exercise of personal judgment in personal matters by hundreds of thousands of people, not drunkards, were clearly opposed to liberty. To compel a people to be sober against their will would not make them moral. The deliberate self-denial in virtue of which a man, for the sake of himself and others, abstained from vicious indulgence could not oe created by act of Parliament. One theory advanced on the teetotal side was that alcohol was destructive to the human system, but as against this they had the names of many medical men who strongly approved of alcohol both as a stimulant and for social purposes. As to the mortality due to intemperance, the proportion of deaths was very small—in N.Z. last year about 6 in 1000. The majority of men could drink and be sober, but the total abstainer did not use alcohol because it did not agree with him, and the drunkard became what be was because his digestive organs and nervous system could not stand alcohol, and because he was cursed with a morbid craving for it. Drunkenness, Mr Deegan feared, was one of the decreed ills of the flesh, and would only be cured when a Greater Power than ours saw fit to change the nature of mankind. In the meantime, rational and logical means should be adopted to mitigate a vice, the evil of which no one disputed, So far from the theories as to the evil effects of drink being correct, history proved that the greatest and most prosperous nations were free drinking nations. The men who had done so much to maintain the honour of the British flag in South Africa were not teetotallers, and as for the Navy he questioned if they would find enough abstainers in it to man a single battle-ship. If the work of thosemen in South Africa had been left to teetotallers the British flag would probably have been used as a dishclout in a Boer kitchen. (A voice: MTbat about General Roberts ?) As to the econ-

omic aspect of the question, the capital invested in the liquor trade iu New Zealand was about three millions ; the amount contributed to State revenue, £373,000 ; ditto to municipal revenue, £53,000. The number of people employed was 6766, upon whom, it was estimated, 30,000 were dependent for sustenance. The abolition of the liquor trade in New Zealand would mean the sweeping away of £426,000 of public revenue annually ; it would shut out the employment of nearly three millions of capital ; and it would cut off the sustenance of 30,000 people. Mr Deegan then dealt with the question iu relation to crime, pauperism, and disease, and traversed the statistics submitted by Mrs Harrison Lee and Miss Balgarnie in their recent addresses. He also criticised one of the advertisements published by the local prohibitionists, in which <he late Queen Victoria was quoted as advising the Bechuanaland chiefs to keep the drink curse out of their country, and declared that Her Majesty had been kept alive during the last few years of her life by Scotch whiskey. Regarding men who gave way to drink, as soon as a man became an habitual drunkard, he (Mr Deegan) would like to attend his funeral, for he was no good to himself or anyone else. He did not condole with anyone over the loss of a drunkard, because be was the most useless and despicable person in existence. They had teetotallers because such men could not assimilate drink—their digestive organs were at fault —the only mistake they made was in trying to make other people not drink. The same statement applied to the drunkard—he could not assimilate drink and should leave it alone, but he was different from the teetotallers in that he had a morbidcraving for liquor, although it did not agree with him. Excessive drinking was a disease, not a vice, and if drink were swept away to-morrow some men would resort to the use of vile drugs—ether, opium and the like. If alcohol were so injurious as the prohibitionists asserted, the great nations of the world would have been swept out of existence long ago, and Great Britain, for one, should be absolutely demoralised. On the contrary, the highest form of national greatness was consistent with the use of alcohol. As to prohibition laws, they had not been a success anywhere, and in the Tapanui district, where they had prohibition, the most successful sly-grog shop was run by a youth of seventeen, and kegs of drink were taken to dances, and the girls as well as the boys were seen at night in a state of beastly intoxication, whereas with hotels in existence they had the machinery for carrying on the trade respectably. . No decent publican, no one with any manhood in him would encourage boys and girls to drink. If there were hotels in which boys could get drink they could be abolished without prohibition —the law enabled the police to deal with them. For every hotel abolished they would perhaps have four or five hell-holes. (Cries of “No!”). But he said “Yes!” and they knew perfectly well that what he had just said was true. Mr Deegan depicted the falling off in trade and business that would follow prohibition, and said that in five years Balclutha, if it did not go back to license, would be a very dingy sort of place —it was pretty dingy even now. The only way to settle the liquor question was by the enactment of liberal licensing laws—they need not attempt to put surcingles and champing bits on British subjects. No man who loves freedom would tolerate prohibition. The man who liked his glass of whisky, although he detested drunkenness, would snap his fingers at the law and get his liquor, but unfortunately he would become degraded to a certain extent through having to obtain it stealthily, feeling that he was assisting people to break the law, and make the place a nursery for sneaks, hypocrites and liais, and informers, the most contemptible specimens of humanity—the lineal descendants of Judas Is-

| cariot. Informers were wanted in Balclntha just now, but no doubt enthusiastic prohibitionists would supply a number from their own ranks. One lady had written to a Dunedin paper that she would be glad to be an informer, but he did not think any decent man or woman would dream of being one. In closing Mr Deegap said it had been suggested thist he was interested in tbe liquor trade. He had no interest in it whatever, but he was proud to say that at one time he had been connected with it. Amongst hotelkeepers he had found the whitest men in the universe, with wives and daughters as good as could be found in church or out of it— they were model wives and mothers.

The chairman, in reply to a qnery, said that questions would be allowed. Mr D. Whyte : Are you aware that the N.Z. prohibitionists do not propose to close the hotels, but the bars P Mr Deegan: I am not aware of that. It appears to me that if you vote no-license yon close the hotels as places in which liquor is sold. (Cries of “No! no !”). Mr Deegan : You do ! I don’t pretend to know what your intentions are, but if prohibitionists and those misled by them vote no-license, the hotels will be closed as places which sell liquor. (Applause). Mr Whyte: Do you consider it wrong for a law to be established which is the expressed wish of threefifths of the people of New Zealand ? Mr Deegan : It depends on what kind of law it is. I do not consider any law should be passed unless upon the broad principles of civil liberty. If laws are passed otherwise, I don’t care whether by nine-tenths or threefifths of the people, the minority has a right to despise and reject, that lew. If nine-tenths of the people in the district decided that the church that gentleman attends is not the true church, and that he must, for the sake of his eternal salvation, cease to attend it, and go to another, would he consider it a fair thing ? Would he obey that law ? I don’t think he would. Laws of that kind are always disobeyed, and I hope that as long as the British race exists it will disobey laws of that kind. The head of an English king has rolled in the dust before now because be sought to have tyrannical laws obeyed. When John Hampden refused to pay the ship tax, and caused a revolution that ended in the death of Charles I, was he wrong in disobeying that law ? I say he was right. Mr Whyte : Do you mean to advise New Zealanders to be law-breakers, and to uphold sly-grog selling P Mr Deegan : I mean to advise them to despise and resist laws of that kind. I have already answered the question, and you would not need to ask it unless your memory is defective and your intelligence still more so. On the motion of Mr Seymour, seconded by Mr Martin, Mr Deegan was thanked for his address.