Eminent Mention Prohibition.

Thames Advertiser, Volume XXIX, Issue 9496, 25 November 1899, Page 4

Eminent Mention Prohibition.

(By Truth.) The late Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, writing to the Bishop of Chester in 1894, Btated that "Local option could bo no more than a partial remedy. • The limitation of licenses as a remedy for drunkenness was an imposture." The late, John Bright, M.P., speaking of the local Veto Bill, said: "You propose by this bill through an oxciled and inflamed state of public i opinion, it may, be that ,the business which hitherto by. the law in every Christian land and' civilised country, has been admitted to, be a business that was as fairly to be carried on as any other business, shall be prohibited; There is no provision for compensation in the bill. ; This bill is as bad as could be contrived."

The Marquis of Lorne wrote from Kensington Palace in 1895 as follows: "Prohibition has been tried over and over again in the l United States and I Canada, and has failed to make prohibition effective. They would probably ;ask the powers to employ a large do;tective service, pry into all men's business, stop suspected traffic in the jstreets and roadway, and dance attendance on every, man going to his dinner."

j Mi'. E. B. OBter, M.P., speaking on jfche second reading of ; the, Plebiscite [Bill in the Canadian Parliament, said, ''Prohibition laws have been a failure wherever they, have been enacted.. Failure is written in broad, plain letters wherever it has been tried. It is pound to end in failure. It will create a demoralising influence in the. community, and: ; lead to perjury, "deceit jind a degraded moral sense, far worse than intemperance. Canada is progressing steadily and firmly on temperance principles. We, are improving day by day and from year to year (is a temperate people. We are improving in this respect without prohibition, without, one part of the community taking ;the other by the throat pud saying, 'You shall not do.,this,' but simply owing to, } the increasing moral sense of the people that drinking to excess is. wrong and vicious. Let us go on steadily from year to year improving as we are doing ,thus helping to solve the question in the (jinly way it can be solved—by creating temperate living in tho country. I believe that no greater calamity could befall Canada than an attempt to enforce a prohibitory law. Such law cannot be enforced—as we know |rom experience everywhere,. We are, I hope, a fair-minded people, and yet it is proposed to do away with all the money and capital invested in an enterprise which-is now perfectly legal, you are stirring up strife among the people j you are taking s leap in the park; you are declaring that we phould take a step which involves the Joss of seven or eight millions of dollars of capital; and you are about to do this simply on a. chance vote—yes or no."