RATIONAL LIBERTY AND TRUE TEMPERANCE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 110, 30 October 1911, Page 3

RATIONAL LIBERTY AND TRUE TEMPERANCE.

(By Professor Salmontl.) Xo. 2.. Prohibitionists are fond of adducing statistics from no-liecnse areas as exhibiting the reformatory efficacy of their favorite moral remedy.' They 'generally overlook the most remarkable example, but T find it recorded in a recent number of the Tribune, and it will be read with interest and astonishment.

_ "There is a community where prohibition prevails, and the conditions there are such as to make the electors weigh their votes at the forthcoming elections. It is an ideal prohibition locality, there being no secret drinking, arid the importation of liquor from without is prevented by rigid barriers. The residents are orderly, crime is unknown, and the air of quietude is charmingly in contrast with the bustle in localities where there are hotels. The community is guided by a few simple rules. There is no immorality. Everyone is educated. There are no debts, and no quarrels, and consequently no courts. The few ' guardians of the peace have nothing to 1 do. Everyone is well dressed and well fed. Xo curfew bell is required, because all the residents retire at an early hour. There are no idlers and no absentees from worship. Xone have any thought for the morrow. Occasionally, though rarely, an unruly one goes away, but he invariably returns to renew the peaceful and regular life he has so thoughtlessly abandoned. Where is this ideal community, you ask, where the exclusion of liquor can bring about such happy results? My answer is. 'ln gaol.'"

This example is instructive and arrestin". It can be no longer denied that prohibition prohibits, nor questioned whether it is an efficient remedv. Only give us enough of it. Let the walls be sufficiently high and strong, multiply bolts, liar, handcuffs, batons, and policemen: carry it out with a hand high and transformation scene. The lesson is manifest. Only make XeW Zealand a huge jail with the encircling sea for prison walls, and we shall see Paradise restored. We have at last discovered the gospel of the redemption of humanity. The clergy themselves confess that prohibition will do more for mankind in seven years than they have done in a thousand, and they are therefore agitating for a release from the irksome and useless business of preaching the Gospel so that they may peregrinate the country in order, to preach the gospel of bolts and bars and magnify the Works of the law. Unfortunately when we get over our first impressions "and look more narrowly, certain doubts seize the mind. The prisoners in the stern hands of the prohibition jailers gesticulate well and move with the utmost propriety, but it is to be feared that the men are no better and remain a collection of depraved scoundrels. Prohibition has made clean the outside of the cup and the platter. It has swept the floor and garnished the walls of the house. It has done no more and never will do any more. The clergy had better, after all. stick to the Gospel of Christ's roval law of liberty, and not abandon faith in the weapons of the spirit. There is another difficulty—the jail works its reformation only by means of, the utmost sternness and by carrying prohibition to the uttermost lengths. Tf we are going to reform Xew Zealand by jail methods we must do likewise. Weak measures and half measures will not suffice. It is to be feared that our new reformers do not realise the magnitude of the task they are undertaking. We must have armies of officials, spies and informers; a thousand prying eyes at every port; a host of a'rgus-eyed police to cope with the endless ingenuifiVs of'men's iniquity, sharpened by the consciousness of waging a righteous war against the arbitrary infraction of natural rights. It is only when the law has been proclaimed that the difficulties will begin. It is to be feared that the law ean never be enforced, for Xew Zealand cannot be converted into a jail.*