DOCTORED LIQUORS.

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 348, 8 August 1885, Page 3

DOCTORED LIQUORS.

I have on several occasions given our Blue Ribbon friends a hint to the effect that their time might be more advantageously employed in endeavouring to improve the quality of the alcoholic liquors supplied to the public over the hotel bars than by attempting to suppress drinking altogether — a task utterly beyond them or any other body of men to accomplish. So far, lam sorry to perceive the suggestion has fallen on barren soil. Money is freely subscribed all over the Colony to defray the expenses of itinerant temperance lecturers and the organisation of teetotal societies and monster meetings of ' abstainers,' but here my temperance friends stop. They refuse to believe that half measures are of any use where the question of drink or no drink is concerned, and are decidedly not of Paddy's opinion that the longest way round is the shortest way there. In other words, they will not admit that it is possible to promote sobriety in any other way than by suppressing the sale of drink altogether. Now, it seems to me, as I have before remarked, in this the Blue Bibbonites are attempting too much. They will never ' put do wn ' the drinking of intoxicating liquors altogether, but they may reasonably hope to modify the evils arising from the consumption of ' strong drink' to a considerable extent.

Some of the stuff retailed over the bar counters of our Auckland hotels is, I regret to write, of a villainous quality. Some samples of beer and whisky obtained during the past two days are before me as I write. Take sample No. I— a thick, muddy liquor, sold as So-and-So's celebrated ale, and which is about as much, like the genuine So-and-So's brew as flat ginger-beer is like sparkling champagne. This abominable apology for the extract of pure malt and hops shows a heavy yellowish-white deposit, and a few long-sleevers of this description would suffice to muddle and stupify the head of even a « seasoned cask.' No. 2 is, if anything, of a more objectionable description. It has neither the colour nor the taste of pure beer, and it seems extraordinary tow such miserable stuff can be palmed off on .a credulous public. No. 3 is a sample of Scotch whisky labelled 'Teacher's,' "but which certainly never came out of that celebrated distillery.' It is merely a bad, adulterated article— of the cheap and nasty

description, merely ' white spirit ' flavoured ; in imitation of "the genuine article — warranted to kill at twenty yards. All these liquors were obtained at Auckland hotels, and are fair samples of the poison supplied daily to scores of customers in certain houses. What wonder that we hear so much of the evils of 'strong drink,' when the 'strong drink' is of this soul-and-body destroying kind ? who can say what crimes are not traceable to this abominable stuff, or what it is not responsible for ? . $. Now if a milkman is caught milking ' the cow with the iron tail,' or sophisticating cur matutinal lacteal fluid with chalk, or some other foreign substance of that kind, he generally gets a ' talking to ' that makes a very decided impression on his mind, and . being duly published in the papers does no end of injury to his business ; or again, if , one's grocer is detected in adulterating his coffee, tea, spice, or cocoa, he is straightway held up to public scorn and subjected to all sorts of pains and penalties. In both these cases the offenders are liable under the • Adulteration of Food Act,' to severe punishment, and very properly.

The same Act of course applies to the adulteration of beer, wine, and spirits, but how often does it happen that the adulterator of these articles meets with the punishment he so richly merits ? Prosecutions of bakers, grocers, and milkman are comparatively common, but prosecutions of publicans guilty of adulterating liquors — an infinitely more serious offence — are never heard of. Why .should this be ? The Act applies equally to these people, and it ought most assuredly to be enforced where they are concerned. " Again I ask our Blue Ribbon friends to come forward ; more than onehalf of the evils arising from over-indulgence in alcohol liquors unquestionably arises from the quality rather than the quantity of the article consumed.