PURE LIQUOR.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LX, Issue 143763, 11 April 1912, Page 7

PURE LIQUOR.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Bishop Crossley is advising the temperance party. He docs not understand the position; The Bishop evidently thinks it is the duty of the temperance party to regulate and purify the supply of intoxicating drinks. He is quite wrong here. The temperance party have nothing to do with that; that is for him aud “Brennus” and all who agree with them to attend to. By all means let them set about purifying tho drinks sold to the publicstokers or clubmen. The temperance party found Out nearly a century ago that all beverage use of alcohol was injurious; how, then, can they seek to provide for the public a pure alcoholic drink (for that is what the Bishop means)? At first people laughed at them, and doctors said that men could not do without strengthening beer and wines and spirits. Now only liquor dealers’ advertisements say that. Tho doctors do not; they say that it is both dangerous and injurious to health to drink alcoholic beverages. In the lace of the mass of evidence now current against alcoholic drinks, what sense or reason can there bo in asking the temperance party, to help to supply the people with thus thing which they know is bad (not pure)? Perhaps, too, it would be quite reasonable if tho temperance party asked the Bishop to look a little further into the alcohol question ; let him study it in the light of modern scientific investigation, or in the light thrown on it by merely reading his newspaper; he can see everywhere what a lot of harm results from the use of intoxicants, and he will have a lot of searching before he finds any good comes from it. Besides all this, the temperance party is a temperance party, and they understand temperance as the old Greek writer, Xenophon, understood it when he wrote; “Temperance moans, first, moderation in healthful indulgences; and secondly, abstinence from things dangerous, as the use of intoxicating wines.” If I were inclined to he facetious I should suggest that a law be passed to secure pure drink by enacting that all liquors sold to the public should be well boiled not more than 24 hours before being offered for sale. That is how we purify bad water.—l am, etc., G.H.M.