A Step in the Right Direction,

Observer, Volume XIV, Issue 792, 3 March 1894, Page 2

A Step in the Right Direction,

And so Government has decided to appoint inspectors of alcoholic liquors at Auckland, Wellington, Chriatohurch, and Dunedm. lam glad to hear it. I believe that there is a very large quantity of adulterated liquor retailed in the lower class hotels of this colony, and any step which promises to check the sale of doctored beer and spirits must be a step in the right direction. But it is to be hoped the inspection of liquors is not to be confined to the four principal cities of the colony.

Adulterated liquor, liquid poison, in fact, is much more commonly met with in the country districts than in the cities or the towns. It is impossible to over-estimate the harm that this vile adulterated stuff may do. Fill a man up with fusel oil and similar abominations and you may turn a sane, intelligent creature into a raving maniac, capable of committing any act of violence. I have always held that it is the quality of the liquor consumed rather than the quantity that is responsible for the worst evils connected with the liquor traffic. Let us have inspectors of liquor by all means, but let them travel north, south, east and west, bo that the bush publican and the county township publican may realise that there is a oheok upon them as well as the city publican who, as a rule, has to keep good liquor where competition is keen, or lose his trade.