Reply to John Bull.

Southland Times, Issue 13286, 13 August 1895, Page 3

Reply to John Bull.

[Published under the sanction andon bohalf of the committee of the Southland Prohibition League.] <:■' TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—John Bull has taken up nearly two columns of your space in pouring, out his vial of wrath on the heads of us prohibitionists, and I trust you will be equally liberal with me ih replying to him. Not that I intend to take up an equal amount of your space, as I think I can knock his “shedifice” down with much less. I will not waste words characterising this immense effusion further than to say that I am astonished that a “Bull” possessing so much knowledge should have pawed the ground so furiously to so little purpose. Dirt, only dirt; scarce a vistage of argument or reasoning. But it will “atnoose” tother side. With these few prefatory remarks I proceed to my work to demolish this Aorangi of fiction. At the commencement “John Bull” speaks of Britain’s rights that are inherent and inseparable from him. This is a misapplication of words. There are no rights pertaining to man that are inalienable. Just make a note, John ! All his rights and liberties are subject to modification or annulment by law. All rights and liberties are bounded by the law of expediency. This is the supreme law in the affairs of civilised men. Another note, John. Even Christ was subject to this law. He said—“lt is expedient that I go away.” How then can man, with his rights, rise above it? The position is untenable, and John’s structure is like unto that house that was built upon the sands, which fell when the storms and winds beat upon it. John’s shedifice of rights crumbles Jto dust before the breath of reason and truth. Britons fought for centuries to free themselves from the yoke of tyranny, and have succeeded in doing it, but they are still under the law of expediency, which is ever saying to them, “ hitherto shall thou come but no further.” It was obedience to this law which raised man from a naked savage to what he is today, and it is only by his continued obedience to this law that his further progress can be secured, and his retrogression into his primeval state prevented. Now that I have cleared this question of Right of the nonsense with which John Bull had clothed it, we may proceed to consider man’s right to drink alcohol, free from blind prejudice

and foolish notions. His right to drink alcohol is the same as his right to do anything else that he does do. It is good and valid in the eye of reason so long as his doing so does not bring evil uppn himself, upon his fellow men and women, and upon society at large. Now comes the question, “ Has drinking done this?” The unanimous verdict is that it has. This brings the matter under the law of expediency, and the first question now is, “ Does the evil arising from drinking alcohol outweigh the good derived from it by man ?” Thia is a strongly debated point with some, whilst others freely admit that the evil vastly preponderates. But the onus of proof of good rests with those who attempt to maintain that side of the question, and this good must be apparent and not merely alleged, and here I bring under review the whole body of teetotalers, their persons, their health, their homes, their • dealings with their fellow men, their dealI ings with tradesmen and their general conduct throughout the whole business of life ; and I put them as a body against the drinkers of alcohol as a body, and I challenge John Bull to show wherein the latter are better than the former or where the teetotalers are worse than the drinkers. If the good that is claimed' for alcohol does not show itself when brought into juxtaposition with its opposite, how can reason and common sense believe in this good that is claimed for it. The only good there is in alcohol as a beverage is in ministering to a vitiated appetite which itself has created ; in feeding ■ a leech whose only cry is for more. And those who drink this alcohol as a stimulant—for there is comparatively little of it drunk as food, it“ is taken as an extra between

meals—for 60 or 70 years, and spend little and big fortunes upon it, are not one bit better in the end then the men who spend nothing at all on it,and spend nothing in its place in any other drink. There is no positive good to be found in the use of alcohol when put in the balance against abstinence. Now let me turn the search light upon alcohol, to see if any positive evil flows from its use. Don’t run away John ! I will just give a few extract sentences from a newspaper report of a suit for divorce which took place in Dunedin some years ago. The petitioner said “ her husband came home drunk one uight and wanted to take the kerosene lamp from the table to go into another room; she offered him a candle instead. He knocked her down and threw the lamp at her, which missed her. Another day he went home drunk and began swearing at her, and wanted his razor ; she would not give it to him. He then smashed the window with a chair and threw her boxes outside, telling her to clear out as it was not her home. A week after her confinement her husband went into her bedroom drunk and refused to leave when requested to do so by the nurse. “I was too ill” she said “to remember what happened during that disturbance and it had a serious effect on me after.” The paper is torn here. The name of this drink-created-monster is Kilpatrick, and they lived in Southland once. How many i Kilpatricks has this drink not manufactured ? Tell us not that some men are brutes by nature. No man ever acts like that in his sober senses. lof my own knowledge know of a c ise where several little children lay gripping each other in bed in mortal dread at hearing their drunken father raging through the house and up the stairs at midnight, seeking their mother with a knife, swearing that he would have her life, and to escape him the mother had to get through the chamber window and drop to the ground injuring herself terribly. Put such cases as these, John, of which with some variations often for the worse—there is an infinite number—in juxtaposition with those joyous scenes of song and dance you speak of, which flow from the inebriating cup, and say if you are prepared to purchase these brief pleasures at such fearful cost. I have not yet referred to the revelations of crime that are daily made in our law courts. Some of these are too vividly present in our minds to need referring to, and the concluding acts in some ' of these tragedies, brought about through drink, are still to be gone through. I will not dwell longer on this point, but affirm that the evil flowing from the drink outweighs the good to an infinite degree, whether we view it from an economical standpoint or from that of solace and pleasure. Having brought in a verdict of “ Found wanting ” against the drink it is right here that the Law of Expediency should step in and assert its sovereign rule over it, and say to the axeman—“ Cut this drink traffic down it shall no longer pervert and destroy man.” Having established this position on an unassailable basis, I have taken the keystone from the arch which supports John’s structure, and there is nothing of importance left to reply to. But I will just apply the fanners to the chaff. John says that “the plausible argument that what the majority think is right is an old weapon of tyranny and oppression, which was used to coerce} end prrs c te the Nonconformists.” John has tumbled into ’ another pit here. The persecution spoken of . was inflicted by the minority, who ruled the majority at the time, for it was before the enfranchisement of the masses. Since that has taken place persecution has ceased. John is a stickler for right. But he wants to decide what is right by his own measure, and there is a bit off one end of it. John’s measure is a minority, and he is very inconsistent, for he abuses us prohibitionists for wanting, as he says, to rule the majority with his own measure of right. There is only one measure of right, John, and it is Imperial. It is Might. Does this startle you? This world has never known any other measurer of right. I know that there are other rights which we theorise about besides those which Might metes out to us. But I think the same of these rights an Byron said of woman’s conscience—“ Heaven only knows where it would lead to.” I will only deal with what is practical, and the position remains the same under every form of government. Might decides what shall be right. How do you like that John Bull? I wish you had signed} your right name, so that I could have had the pleasure of looking at you to see whether you

belong to the shorthorn breed or to the polled Angus. The conflict for the ruling power has always been between minorities and majorities..•; Sometimes the minority WM one Against millions. But Mr Democrat tbaa changed a’d that,' arid he now stands oyer the scales like an apothecary, and whichever side the extra decimal falls into he declares that side, has,won. This is the position that was bound to come about from the day the first stick or stone was oast at .the ruling minority of one. The forces in politics are like the forces in nature, they must come to a balance, or as near that as ’Possible. Mr. Democrat is quite satisfied to have all questions of right settled by the extra unit,except the right to drink alcohol, and here he is aghast at the inexorable logic of bis own creed, and reels in the saddle, where ha has seated himself, at the prospect of- being stricken by his own thunderbolt. ■John never mentions my name but he takes more than one shot at me. He has got his musket pointed at me where . he deals with the informer in such scathing language, likening him- to Judas Iscariot 1 Well, John, I have taken this unclean beast under my special protection. Why I .have done so I have already explained. It is because ho is indispensable in the present state of society, and instead of you .attacking the reason given, as you should do, you attack the informer. You attack me and let my friend alone. I have now got to the special heading • “ Prohibition an Enemy to Labour and Capital!” Surely, John, isn’t Byron de Winton come again. That heading sounds very much like the heading of Mr de Winton’s lecture, John’s raving under this heading is simply awful. But I am not going to discuss this point at all. Trying to frighten intelligent working men with such rubbish as is put forth here is like ■ticking a turnip lantern on a pole to frighten people. 1 refer John to my remarks on this point in my letter in reply to Mr Newman. So that disposes of the Wednesday portion of John’s attack. On catching sight of the same heading—the one at the beginning—in Thursday’s paper, my first thought was “why, here’s this dreadful article in again.” But I soon saw that John had not cleared his stomach of all the bile in Wednesday’s paper, and had commenced with a will to vomit the rest. Glancing down the first dozen lines or so I find such words as “Worshippers of Bacchus,” “dammed by the cause of all evil —drink,” “the accursed drink,” mixed up with “Holy writ,” “miracles,” “bilge water,” “gripes,” and such like sweet sounding words. In proceeding, John seems to have worked himself into as great a fury as a Red Indian going through his war dance. He called on the sea and the grave to give up their dead, and brought the gh<-ts of our forefathers—the Teutonic Scandinavian—before us to show us what mighty men they were who drank oceans of strong drink, and overthrew the mightest empires the world ever saw, and raised others from the debris in their place. These men struck with the “ hammer of Thor.” John has read the Arabian Nights dream, and he has drawn heavily upon this fiction in making up his copy. After showing on paper what those mighty men —our forefathers —did, and what their descendants are now doing—who have also drank oceans of strong drink—John asks in triumph, “ What about this deadly poison, that our race has drank oceans of for thousands of years?” Well, John, in my humble opinion the race would have been much better without those oceans of drink. I am quite certain of one thing, and that is that alcoholic drink does not help in the least degree to develop physical nature. Any aboriginal race will prove that. And as for fighting qualities: Some races fight best when they are sober, and some when they are drunk, and some when their stomachs are full and some when they ore empty. So you can’t claim much for the drink there. And as for the moral prrt of the race—which I will suppose you will allow is the most important part—the drink is certainly no help to morality, neither in past generations nor in the present. History only gives us a peep at those horrid Bacchanalian wine festivals held in honour of Bacchus, the God of Wine, but it’s enough ; and the counterpart of those scenes are to be found in our own day, in every centre of population, in connection with the drink. That there is what monogamists consider immorality practised by the followers of Mohammed—who abstain from all intoxicants—is true ; but we are not to judge- them from our stand point. They act in accordance with their religion in practising poligamy and in abstaining from wine. But Christian religionists do not act up to their religion in anything, so there should be no casting of stones by Christians at Mohammedans. But it is on this question of poison that I, in part at least agree with John.' I believe those medical authorities who say that alcohol is a poison, and that it kills. We hear of men and women dying from its effects every day. But Ido not believe t hat it is a deadly and certain poison when taken in the diluted state, as it is in the ordinary liquors, which some teetotalers represent it to be. The fact of men taking liquor freely all their lives, and yet living to as great an age as any of those who never touch liquor is quite enough to deprive this poison bogie of all its terrors. And it would be better if teetotalers would give up trying to frighten people with this poison doctrine—they do not need it. The bill of indictment against the drink is quite heavy enough without it. Neither -should those wbo take drink in moderation be spoken of uncharitably, as they often are. They have a perfect right to please themselves, as long as the licensing laws exist. All that teetotalers should do in their case is to use moral suasion. That the drink cuts an infinite number of lives shorter by slow degrees, no one can deny ; and that it causes many violent and sudden deaths is also too true to be denied. And, besides this, that it is the cause, directly and indirectly, of an incalculable amount of every species of evil that exists in this world, which would not exist to the same extent if it were not for the drink, is also true. This is a sufficient charge against the drink to warrant prohibitionists asking for its suppression; and in taking up this position they are on the bed rock of absolute truth ; and the gates of hell—with John as gatekeeper— cannot affect this position. This is the prohibitionists case. They simply ask that the drink traffic should be dealt with by the same law that has called every other law into existence, the law of expediency. The third part of John Bull’s complaint has appeared, and the whole has been published in a single sheet, ,to be scattered about. This points to the conclusion that the publishing and writing of the paper has been paid for by the Licensing Victuallers Association. So that John must be regarded as a mercenary scribe, writing for pelf, and not for a heroic purpose. There is nothing in John's chapter iii calling for special notice. He makes a further use of his turnip lantern to frighten the women, by insinuating that their husbands and brothers will go to the sly-grog shanties, and to the brothels, for their tipple if the hotels are closed. John’s reference to the Puritan rigours of Cromwell’s time, and the drunken immorality which'succeeded the restoration, has no application to prohibition. History never repeats itself with exactitude in social life. The advance in intelligence, since that time forbids the thought of the reoccurrence of such a state of things as disgraced Charles the Second’s time. In conclusion I would just like to say to those who have swallowed John’s great

dose, believing it was a healthy tonic, and who now find themselves suffering from nausea—on discovering the channel through which the dose came- 11 just take a little brewer’s barm, it is an excellent solvent, and will help you to get rid of the huge imposition with the enemy’s own antidote.” —I am, &c., Thos. Buxton. 10 th Aug.