Extract from Dunboy’s Pamphlet.

Southland Times, Issue 14508, 2 December 1899, Page 3 (Supplement)

Extract from Dunboy’s Pamphlet.

I “TWO WRONGS: ONE RIGHT,” For site at all booksellers. STORY OF AN IRISH EVICTION, OK LEGALITY v. JUSTICE.

Mr Isitt and his party say that the licensee has no right beyond his license. When that expires he has no legal right to continue his business, and where there is no legal right there can exist no just right. Let us test this by another paralie). Some few years ago, a great question was being fought out in Ireland —a question closely affecting the whole of the civilised world, for it referred to the right of a landlord to dispossess his tenant without compensation for his improvements and loss of possession. For many generations it was the privilege of the landlord to evict his tenants without allowing them compensation for improvements. There was no justice in this, but the law of England permitted it, and the strong arm of Imperial authority protected the landlord in the exercise of his inhuman prerogative. The people dependedfor their sustenance solely on the produce of the bit of land they cultivated, and loss of possession meant absolute starvation to a vast number of these wretched people. Most of them were what were then known as “ tenants at will,” or, at best, they held a lease simply from one rent day to another. Sometimes crops failed, or prices were low, and the produce of the land was insufficient to pay the back rent of the absentee landlord, and still keep famine from the tenant’s door. Then followed evictions. At times it suited the whim or the interest of the landlord to make a clearance of a large estate that he might convert i it into a sheep run or a shooting reserve. Wholesale evictions followed. In many cases the tenant was not allowed to harvest ' his growing crops. Notics having been served, a day was fixed for the i eviction. The bailiff and his crowbar brigade arrived, and with them a strong i body of police, to see that the law was I carried out. Yes, my reader, and out these

tenants had to go—the weak and the strong, the young and the old. The aged and tottering grandsire was torn from his place at the humble fireside, and, together with the little half-clad children—driven into the public highway. Only too often feverstricken patients and women in the first hours of their motherhood, with their newlyborn infants at- their breasts, were carried out on their straw pallets—out into the chill, biting blast, out into the pitiless rains, to lie by the roadside, and, perchance, die, as many did die, of want and exposure. For fear that some of these poor, homeless creatures might creep back for shelter into their late homes, the crowbar brigade demolished the houses as soon as the tenants were evicted. This was perfectly legal, my reader, and what say the Prohibitionists to this ? What can they say if they are consistent? “Out with these tenants,” they cry. “Away with them. What if they suffer ? What if they die ? They cannot complain, for they have no legal claim to remain in possession one hour after the expiry of their lease—no right have they to gather the fruits of the field which they have planted, and upon which they have depended to save them and their families from starvation. Throw down these wretched cabins 1 Such creatures have no legal c'aim to shelter, no legal claim to food : the law of the land must be obeyed.” This, my reader, is Proh'b'tion logic; this is Prohibition morality—where one has no legal right to stay in possession, he must have, though in going ho face inevitable ruin. What did the'British people lately say to these evictions ? Commissions were appointed, inquiries were made (great God ! that such shoul 1 be deemed necessary), and the Commissioners declared that the law, as it s ood, should at once ba' blotted out of the Statutes—that it was opposed t> the dictates of common humanity and an outrage on the laws of God. So the eviction of tenants, without compensation, had to cease, though, mind you, it had'been both the law and the custom for ages. In this colony the right of the hotelkeeper Io his “holding” has been respected, and justly held earned, for half a century, but the Prohibitionist, harking back to the barbarous principles of the Irish landlord, declares that where a man has no legal right of possession, out he must go, though we ourselves have been his partner in the business—though in going he and his family faci ruin-aid, paradoxical as it may appear, this iniquitous doctrine is favoured by men who are Christian ministers —men whoso duty it is to preach peace, and charity, and juitice.

ABUSE AND ITS USES.

MR ISITT AND THE FOOTBALLERS

Take the football incident, in which Mr Isitt appointed himself public censor and, from the platform (and, incidentally, through the length and breadth of the colony), published the most serioui charges against thirty or forty young fellows who had had th’ misfoitune to travel by train with him. Those young men had parents and brothers and sifters, to whom their conduct was a most serious matter. Most of the young fellows held situations, and were answerable for their conduct to their employers. To many of those youths, public misconduct meant loss of employment and an irreparable stigma on their characters. Does Mr Isitt study these matters ? Would Mr Isitt — would Bishop Julius — woul 1 their reverend followers like to be pilloried in this manner and have thennames flashed through the colonist, couplei with charges of the most damaging nature. Would a half-hearted withdrawal of the charge, a few days later, be any recompense ? Some of these young men were apparently innocent. In fact, the great majority seemed to have proved their innocence. It was, therefore, doubly unjust to attack all. But, my reader—and this is a point to which I call your earnest attention —if all were guilty, to Mr Isitt did not belong the right of advertising their guilt. Was he justified by the usages of society? Was he justified by the law of the land, which holds that the greater the truth the greater the libel ? Or, Was he justified by his Divine Master, whose maxim was . “Judge not that you may not be judged.” If fhe footballers interfered with Mr Isitt’s comfort, when travelling in a train, he had another and most effectual remedy, but he had no right, human or divine, to publicly smirch the character of those boys. Football is a rough game. It is encouraged among our youth to counteract the tendency to effeminacy and to bring out the rugged side of man’s nature. A study of the game must lead to the logical conclusion that footballers, on tour, will naturally be boisterous. I recently met with a graphic sketch, in a comic paper, which throws a flood of light on the game. A young and handsome girl is paying a visit to a matronly-looking woman. They are seated in a richly-furnished drawing room. A half-open door reveals a youug fellow who from head to foot appears to be iin trouble. His arm is in a sling, his head is swathed in bandages, and his general getup bespeaks a disastrous “ maul in goal.” Says the young lady compassionately: “ Your son went to Melbourne with the football team. Is he half back, or threequarter back?” “ Oh,” replies the mother, with tears in her voice, “ he is all back, excepting two fingers and one ear 1” Just so ; it is a rough game, but it serves its purpose. The average youth will have either a vice or hobby ; to a great many young fellows football is a hobby. As Mr Isitt has acted towards ths footballers, he and his friends have acted towards all and sundry ongaged in the liquor trade. No epithet has been too severe, no word too bitter to hurl at them. If they attempted to reply, they were caricatured and railed at. Their motives, their sincerity, their truthfulness were at once questioned. Theresultis thatmanyanhonest,

earnest man, to-day, really believes that BAR is only another rendering of “ Beware a Robber ! ” and that all who enter a licensed bouse are on the high road to being robbed. Robbers there may be among hotelkeepers, as there are robbers among all classes —even ministers of religion have been known to fall, but of two things I am certain : — Firstly, that there are many honest hotelkeepers, and, secondly, if it were not so, if all were dishonest, Mr Isitt and his friends have no special privilege to publish the fact; doing so is both illegal and unjust. If the Prohibitionist finds it necessary to indulge in abuse, and evidently he does, then I ask :—ls it not a bad sign of Prohibition and of the regime which is to follow its introduction ?

PROHIBITION STATISTICS.

MR CHAMBERLAIN MISREPRESENTED. My chief objection to Prohibition statistics is not that they are known to be wrong, but that in many cases they are not proved, and cannot be proved, to be right. We all know that people die of excessive drinking, just as others die of excessive eating, or of having lived amid unsanitary surroundings, but it is a fact that we have absolutely no data as to the number who dio from drink. The Registrar-General in this Colony cannot tell you; neither can the Registrar-General at Somerset House. The death certificate mentions only the organ fatally affected. The deceased died of “heart disease,” or of “consumption,” or of some such disorder. The cause that led to that disease is not given—cannot ba given with the remotest degree of accuracy. . . How, then, are Prohibition statistics arrived at? Simply by the wildest system of gue s-work. I heard Mr Isitt deal with this matter in one of his lectures. He said that he always found the most valuable testimony f om the admissions of his opponents. He then proceeded to class Mr Chamberlain as an opponent, and quoted from ono of that gentleman’s speeches According to Mr leiti’s re adoring of the matter MR CHAMBERLAIN DID NOT EVEN ATTEMPT TO GIVE STATIST.CS of the death rate from drink. He was simp'y givino a supposititious case, and (according to Mr Isitt) said : “ What if one in ten, what if one in five died of drink ?” and then proceeded with his lias of argument. It was palpably an argumentum ad dbsurdum. Mr Isitt at once goes on to build up Prohibition statistics, and says : —“I will not take one in five, which Mr Chamberlain is ready to admit as the percentage, bat I will tike one in ten; that means two million deaths, etc.” The next night he is reported as saying : “The two million people which, according to Mr Chamberlain, arc ruined by drink in England.” Then a newspaper correspondence springs up, and it is boldly assarted that Mr Chamberlain had admitted that two million people died annually of drink in England. Now, lam not going to question the fact that numbers die of drink, but I say that the number has never been ascertained, and that when Mr Isitt gave his quotation from Mr Chamberlain’s speech he knew, and none knew better, that the death rate from drink was an unknown quantity ; he know also that Mr Chamberlain could not give the correct figures.

Slliav ME A MAN WHOSE LIFE IS A LIVING LIE, and I point him out as far more degraded than the drunkard. Show me a people, bred up to a system of deception, and I point to them a, men already morally_ lost, excepting a miracle be wrought in their behalf. Drive, by force, a national custom off the face of the earth, and it grows more evillv, and gives more pernicious results, beneath the surface. Candour, manliness and openness of character are the redeeming traits of a people. For tho e who possess these traits, one never need abandon hope. But I am mot by the statement that I am defending the existence of what I myself admit as an evil—a curse. No ;by no means. I object to Prohibition, because it is no remedy for the evil ; because it is an unjust interference with the propertied rights of others ; bicause it is an usurpation of the liberty of others, and bee mse as a remedy I am convinced that it will not be efficacious. There are other remedies, and I intend to suggest some tif them. In all their statements the Prohibitionists take, it for granted that strong drink is the mainspring of every vice, and that the abolition of the liquor trade would lead to unalloyed morality. They seem to tlrnk that abstention from one vice must necessarily make a man moral They follow this line of reasoning in face of a striking object lesson. No land in this nineteenth century of ours is free, from vice. Sin and crime and human misery stalk abroad only too defiantly in every corner of the earth. Men are not what they ought to be in any clime, but in ages to come this era will be known, and have to carry the well-de-served’reproach of posterity, for its toleration of the most pestilential plague spot—morally speaking—that ancient or modern history can reveal. I speak of a Prohibition people, of a nation from which wine is banished, of a land of atrocities and nameless crimes—the land of the “ unspeakable Turk.”. If Mr Isitt is sound in his logic, if Bishop Julius and the clergy are consistent in their professions, surely they should ba able to point to the Ottoman. Empire as a place where compulsory sobriety had borne fruit. What fruit does this compulsory sobriety boar in the East ? Am I not right in declaring that abstention from one vice, will give no guarantee of morality either in an individual or a nation ? Is there nob some force in my motto—“ Beware of the man of one virtue”?:

Messrs Isitt and Co. go even so far as to declare it the duty of every right-thinking man and woman to wage war against, the brewers and hotelkeepers, and, if possible, deprive them of their livelihood, because—-

and solely because— some of those who buy liquor in licensed houses offend against the canons of sobriety. A large section of the clergy have adopted this doctrine, and Bishop Julius has, apparently, given in his adhesion to it. I have searched the decalogue in vain for this commandment; I have failed to find any authority for it in the Christian Code. To me the doctrine says in plainest English : Do evil that good may come.

The action of the clergy in this matter forcibly reminds me of a goldfields incident of by-gone days. In the course of my wanderings, I chanced upon a very weird and uncanny place—a wooded gully in an old and remotely situated goldfield. It was far and away the most desolate spot I had ever gazid upon. In the early days of its history, the place had been rushed by Europeans, but they were soon lured away by brighter prospects, and the field was abandoned to the Chinese. Yes, the Chinese flocked in and took possession. The Joss House, the opium shop, the gambling hell, the badly ventilated and poorly lighted dwellings—all told of the Oriental blight that had fallen like a curse upon the place. Women came there too in numbers —women who had fallen to the lowest depths of infamy in the cities, now came along to this earthly Inferno to seek still lowest depths. They found them and fellfell into the abomination of opium smoking and the degrading companionship of the lower grade of Chinamen. In those days there were but few European men on the field, and of the greater number of these it might ba truthfully said that, before finding their way here, they hid lost their way in every other part of the world. w It was among this ill-assorted community I first heard a new rendering of the commandment, “ Thou shaft nob steal.” . It was revealed to me in a narrative known in those parts as “ The Story of the Professor’s Pig.” Strangely enough, the moral of the story boars a striking family likeness to this new doctrine of Prohibition without compensation. Among those who had gravitated to this field was one who was by no meins a typical gold-seeker, for in the mining industry he took no part. HE WAS A WILD, DEVIL-MAY-CARE FELLOW, who could more than ‘hold his own in a free fight or an all-night sitting at the gambling table. When “ fan-tan” proved a profitless venture, he equalised matters by flattening out the bankers and playing skittles among his wily opponents. He was a well educated man. He had travelled, and could speak several languages. In fact he displayed so universal a knowledge of things that he soon became known on the diggings as “ the Professor.” Sometimes he won at “ fan-tan,” and, for a few days, was flush of money. Sometimes he gob monej’ from other sources, but no one cared to inquire too closely about that, f° r folks up that way were not too particular, and, in any case, it would have been a trifle risky to have gone into such matters with the Professor. Generally, however, he was out of funds, and, as he hud no credit at tb e stores, he frequently quartered himself upo n his neighbours. It was one of these hospitable fellows who told me the story. .“ J-he Professor were a boardin’ wi' me,” said m y informant, “ and between you an’ ms an’ the gate-post,

HE HAD A MOST ONGODLY APPETITE, eat nigh as much as two coves. Well, you bet, I were a gettin’ kind o’ tired o’ him, an’ I fancy ho knowed it, for one Sunday mornin’ in he comes a-staggering under a heavy load o’ somethin’ in a sack, an’ down he chucks it on one of the bunks. ‘ There you are, old cock I’ says he : ‘ there’s a pig for you, or, at least, two hams and two sides .of jolly goo 1 b;con. Just pop down the fryin’ pan, an’ we’ll have a rasher right away.’ ‘ Why, where on earth did you get that there ?’I asked. ‘Stole it!’ said the Professor, as he mopped the puspiration off hisself with a towel. ‘ Stole it I Now, look here, mate,’ said I, an’ I was most infernally riled : ‘1 draws a line at stolen goods. I’ve lived honest, so far, an’ I tell you I’m nob a havin'any o’ that there stuff.’ ‘ Oh, yes, you will, when you hear all about it, old man, for you can’t say I stole it 1’ said the Professor. ‘ You remember those Chinkies losing a pig when they were drivin’ a herd from the township? Well, this is the very animal.’ ‘ But, look here, Professor,’ eays I, ‘ the Chinkies have always acted square with mo, and—straight dinkum—l’ll see you in hell before I’ll steal their pig 1’ ‘ Who stole it from a Chinkie, you old noodle ?’ and I could see as he was a bit narked. ‘ I’m not such a low down cad as that. To tell you the truth, I didn’t steal it at all. ' You know those coves in the hut over the hill?’ ‘ The Joneses ?’said I. ‘ Yes ; real bad eggs, as you know. Well, they was hangin’ around when the pig was lost, and they snavelled it. They did the stealin’. They dressed the pig in the bush, and when night cime on, carried it off to their hut. I saw the whole thing. I was lookin’ through the bush for ’ Here the Professor used some furrin lingo, but I knowed he meant some gimcrack curio thing. Then he went on ‘Well, deir boy, I popped into the hut now and then to see how the bacon was seasonin’, and to-day I thought it safest to bring it away. That’s square enough, isn’t it?’ ‘ Oh,’ says I, ‘that’s a white horse of another colour altogether. The Joneses had no right to it, anyway, an’ if they had, the’re infernal scoundrels ; so here goes,’ and gettin’ the fryin’ pan I made a start. Real good bacon it was too. Just a trifle on the green side; but, as the Professor pointed out, it wasn’t safe to leave it any longer wi’ them three thieves.” And as the old fellow stooped to rake oub a hot cinder for his pipe, he muttered half to diimself: “Them there Joneses was a real bad lot!” Precisely. Two wrongs, carefully added together, make one right. The Professor’s logic was of the Prohibition type, and his mazim of “Wrong those who in your opinion are doing wrong,” is a maxim that is now taught daily from Prohibition platforms.