NO-LICENSE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 94, 4 December 1911, Page 6

NO-LICENSE.

(Per Press Association.) Palmerston, December 3. The No-license crusade is being carried on most vigorously hero. Nearly all the clergymen (except the Anglicans and the Roman Catholics) preached on the subject last Sunday evenThe Rev. Mr Doull, St. Andrew’s Church, preached strongly in favour of prohibition, and other ministers have also done so. The Rev. Mr Eosher (Anglican Church), however, recently referred in a sermon to temperance as against prohibition, and tp-day, at St. Patrick’s Church, the Rev. Father Costello read a circular letter from Archbishop Redwood in reference to the statement of the Rev. Hammond, of Sydney, who is touring the country for the No-license League, as . follows : “Leaders of the No-license Party have publicly declared that if national prohibition is carried, one of the results will bo that after about ten years no wine, even for medicinal or caramental purposes will bo allowed into the Dominion. As this would render the celebration of Mass impossible, we feel obliged to warn our people against prohibition, and to warn them not to vote for it.”

Father Gastello said he would not have referred to this matter otherwise, though in some other churches here sermons favouring prohibition had been preached. The Catholic doctrine was one of temperance. The men who preached that wine was in itself evil, must preach that Christ was a bad man. His first miracle was tq convert water into wine at the requst of his worker, which he declared to he the best wine kept to the last elements. Good vine and good spirits were not evil, hut were created by God Himself. It was not their use but their abuse that the Church Condemned. There was no harm in taking wine in moderation. For those who could nob take it in moderation by their own free will, then teetotalism was the remedy. This was a free country, and reform should lie a free-will reform, and not an enforced one.

MANIFESTO BY NEW ZEALAND ALLIANCE. AS REGARDS CATHOLICS. Wellington, December 4. At a special meeting of the New Zealand Alliance executive hold this morning the following resolution was unanimously adopted:—“That this executive has read with deep regret the circular iettei of Archbishop Redwood, advising Roman Catholics to vote against national prohibition on the grounds that possibly the repeal of tiie clause allowing alcoholic wine for aerrmentai purposes may follow the success of national prohibition. M r e notice with pleasure that the said declaration does not touch the issue of No - license as no question of need for any exemption for Sacramental or other purposes can arise under that issue. The executive desires it to lie understood that the party has not only not entertained any such idea hut lias on the other hand given substantial evidence to the contrary. The executive has taken a strong lino safeguarding religious convictions. When the draft of the famous compact was presented to the Alliance it did not contain a provision covering the sacramental question. The Alliance ndsolutely refused to proceed unless a proviso were inserted and Sir Joseph Ward declared that unless toe Alliance’s demands were acquiesoal in he wood not proceed with the Bill. The definite exemption of sacramental wine from the operation of national prohibition was then inserted. The law expressly provides that if national prohibition is carried (section 21, clause 2) nothing in tin’s section shall extend or apply to the importation, manufacture or sale in accordance with regulations made by tho Govenior-in-Cniincil in that behalf of intoxicating liquor for medicinal, scientific, casramental, or

industrial purposes exclusively. The Archbishop's dictum is an inference from the following statement attributed to the Rev. Hammond: “When wo carry prohibition a few years after we will have a majority of people educated to the extent tiiat doctors will throw alcohol out for medicinal purposes, the churches will not use it for sacramental purposes (as * indeed my own church does not now) and it will not lie necessary for industrial purposes.” Mr Hammond'appears personally to contemplate revision by the medical profession, by the church, and by tiie manufacturing interest of their present use of alcohol. Such revision, voluntarily made by the interested parties themselves, is the very opposite of a tyrannical invasion of the rights of conscience. The executive is satisfied that it speaks for the whole of the No-License Party when it declares that party would never carry the principle of prohibition to such lengths' as would interfere, with the rights of conscience of our Roman Catholic fellow-citizens or of any other religious body, but would, on the contrary, oppose any such extension as a violation of the principles of religious liberty.