MR FOX ON STRONG DRINK

Star (Christchurch), Issue 576, 25 March 1870, Page 3

MR FOX ON STRONG DRINK

The Premier recently delivered an address on " Strong Drink " in the Wesleyan Cliapel. Auckland, to a crowded audience. Mr A. Clark, M.H.R., President of the Auckland Temperance Society, presided ; and upon the platform with Mm were Rev Dr Mansell, and the Her ' Messrs Corn ford and Berry. The proceedings were commenced by singing tiie temperance hymu, " Friends of temperance onward go." Mr Fox, who was very warmly received, spoke for an hour and twenty minutes, and the Auckland papers profess to give only some points of his address : — He said thai he had not been all his life a teetotaller, but he had at various periods abstained, from personal reasons. It was only recently that he had become a pledged teetotaller; and he was induced to become one by the train of thought, and the course of inquiry, into which he was led by having found himself as a magistrate, sitting and acting at a licensing session, and having a few days afterwards, still as a magistrate, found himself called upon to punish people for drinking the liquors the sale of which he had taken part in licensing. Very few people indeed knew anything of the history of the gigantic vice of drinking, as it existed in this colony ; therefore, ha would state the results of bis own inquiries and calculations as to the liquor trade in New Zealand. I got the parliamentary blue books (continued the hon. gentleman), the latest statistics published by the Government coming down to the end of 1867. Since that time, 1 think, there has been very- little change in our drinking habits. At all events, Ido not think we have improved in that respect; and, allowing for the increase of population, we probably drink more than we did in 1867. I found that, duri g 1867, the Government of this colony actually received in hard cash, as duties upon spirituous liquors, these sums : — ' >n ardent spirits, £351,000: wines, £{$9,000 ; ale in the cask, £14,000 ; ale in bottle, £25,000 ; making a total of £429,000. lam certain that thnae who know anything of the retail trade — who know how many " glasses " are sold out of a bottle— who understand what is meant by "dashing" — who know at all what goes on in smuggling and other Iniquities — will say that it is do exaggeration to put down, as the total paid by the consumers of those drinks, a sum equal to three times the duty. We have, therefore/ the enormous sum of £1,287,000 per annum spent in intoxicating drinks in this little colony in one year. But we must add the ale brewed in the colony, if we would get the total of what goes down our throats. In 1867, no less than 2,749,000 gallons of ale were brewed in New Zealand ; which, at 3s a gallon — a moderate price, as I have b.en toll by a brewer— represents £412,000: or a total of £1,699,000 paid for drinks by the people of this colony. The ordinary revenue in that year was £1,225,000, and the ordinary and territorial revenue together a nouuted to £1,775,000. So that; within £100,000, we drank* to the value of the ordinary and territorial revenue combined. The population of the . colony was, in 1867, 256,000—218,000 Europeans, and 38,000 natives ; so that, on drink, we spent at the rate of £6 10a per head of the population. Not £6 10s per head for adult males, but £6 10s a head, including women and girls, and boys, and sucking babes ! Striking out those who cannot be supposed to drink at all, we git, I have no hesitation in saying, a result of £50 per head per . year for what may be called the adult drinking population. I was once told, " The statement is absurd; it is an amount more than equal to wages, in many cases '." And do we not know, all of us, cases in which men do drink, .not only wages, but their ploughs, their; horses, their carts, and their little farms! Roads are left unmade — public works are not undertaken — because we have not money for them. Would it not be a great thing if, by inducing the people to. become teetotallers, we could get the £1,699,000 a year for public works. It would make for us 1640 miles of first-class, metalled roads, at £1000 a mile— or roads nearly twice the length of the whole of this island, and three times across it. It. would make 3,280,000 chains of fencing, at 10s a chaia, or sufficient for 5125 square miles of separate farms of 640 acres each. It would purchase 260,000 cattle, at £6 a head; or, perhaps, almost as many sheep as there are now in New Zealand. We are in trouble with the natives, and we want European regiments to help us. What the colony spends inj drink would supply' us with 40,000 men, at £40 per head per year, which was what we understood we should have to pay— forty Queen's regiments to fight our battles ! I was once told, " Alt this may be true.; but we eat a good. deal of beef and bread, and we wear a great many clothes. If we went without, we should have the money to spend." The reply to which is, that in one case the articles are articles of necessity, while in the other case they are not only not necessary, but, in the opinion of great numbers of people, are absolutely injurious; so that there is no parallelism between the two cases. An ingenious friend once asked me what the Government would do without the revenue of nearly £450,000 which is derived from these drinks! 1 replied, " Can you drink more from an

empty vessel -^r from a full one ? Gan you Squeeze more, out of a dry sponge than out of ja wet one?" The Government will get , more out of a wealthy people than out of a Spoor one; a nation of teetotallers will have •more money in their pockets than a nation of i .[drunkards; and he niust be a poor Chancellor of the Exchequer, indeed, who cannot devise means of taxation other than upon intoxicating drinks I have been told, especially, I regret to say, by some .clerical friends, " These things are God's !good gifts, and every good gift of God is to be received with thankfuh ess." I have been reminded that St. Paul advised Timothy to dri k a little wine for his health's sike. An i so some people] think they make out a eisefor drinking a good deal— certainly not for their health's sake. But, to talk of " God'a good gifts "in such a case, is an arrant absurdity. The vine is the gift of God, and we know that it produces a delicious and refreshing fruit and juice. But I never can believe that wine, or brandy, or beer, is a good gift of God in any shape, and least of all that it is so in the form in which we get it presented to us at the wine or spirit merchant's, or the public-house I think I can prove to you that it is the devil, and nobody else, who concocts such drinks as those. I will give you a thort history of the adulteration of these precious beverages. A considerable number of the facts are taken from a class of books which it was never intended total abstainers should read. There is a class of persons in London who live exclusively by the tale of drugs for the adulteration of wine, and beer, and spirits — " brewerß* druggists," and " wine merchants ' " something or other, they "are called. These persons publish little books j containing receipts for making those horrible fabrications which some people call " God's good gifts." There are other writers of authenticity, whose opinions and statements are of ralue on this point. There was a chemist who lived during the last halfcentury, who occupied the place that has since been occupied by the Lancet. His name was Accum. What is called " good old poit " was, and is, a favourite beverage of Englishmen. Hear what Accum says : — " There are few objects of commerce which are adulterated to a greater extent than wine. Alum, Brazil wood, gypsum, oak saw-dust, and husk of filberts, are used to brighten colour, and make astringent wines, A mixture of spoiled foreign and home-made wines is converted into the wretched compound sold under the name of ' genuine old port !' The sophistication of wives is carried on to an enormous extent. Many thousands of pipes of spoiled eider are annually brought to London from the country, for the purpose of being converted into fictitious wine." And this is one of " God's good gifts !" The Quarterly Review says, " The manufactured trash which sells in London under the name of Cape champagne, Barsac, Sauterne, &c, are so many specious poisons, which the cheapness of the inferior wines of the Cape allows the vendors to use as the bases of the several compositions, at the expense of the stomach and bowels of their customers." Mr Morewood, in his work " On Intoxicating Liquors," says, •It is estimated that more than one-half of the port and five-sixths of the white wines consumed in London are the produce of home presses." According to the Custom-house returns for 1812, there were landed at Guernsey, from Oporto, 135 pipes and 20 hhds. of port. In the same year, there were imported from Guernsey into the London Docks 2545 pipes of port, and 162 hhds. ! From 1829 to 1833 no wine was imported from Oporto to the Channel Islands, but there were 1605 pipes imported into London from the Channel Islands. Mr Cyrus Kedding, a great authority on wines, and who by no means writes from the total abstinence point of view, says, " Washings of brandy casks, elderberries, logwood, salt of tartar, green dragon, tincture of cudbear, constitute a mixture which sells as port." Here is a recipe for making port wine ; it is taken from a •' Wine Guide : "— " Take of good cider, 4gals.; of the juice of red beet, 2 quarts; logwood, 40z.; rbatany root; £tb. First infuse the logwood and rhatany in brandy and a gallon of cider for one week, and then strain off this liquor. Mix the other ingredients ; keep it in a cask for a month, when it will be fit to bottle. The Mechanics' Magazine has published the analysis of a bottle of cheap wine. It is — "Spirits of wine, 30z.; cider, 140z.; sugar, lsoz.; alum, 2 scruples; tartaric acid, 1 scruple ; strong decoction of logwood, 40z." Absolutely not one drop of the juice of the grape 1 A writer in the Pall Mali Gazette a few months ago tells a story of a friend of his who was staying in Reading, when the militia was in training, and who, going into the yard of one of the hotels, saw there an old crone — like a witch with a broomstick— stirring up. in a large cauldron, ■' a black mixture, which looked like a compound of blacking, blackberries, and ' Blocs.' ' What are you brewing, my good woman ? ' | asked my friend. The old witch, stirring with her thick stick, naively replied, "Port wine for the Berkshire militia." No doubt importers are totally ignorant of where the " wine" they import really comes from ; but only people of unlimited faith can believe that the wines imported here contain one drop of the juice of the grape ! Some people think that they must be right if . they get champagne and Moselle; and so the "awtlls" pay 7s or 10s a bottle for auch mixtures, and what they call " No. 2." When I went home, some four years ago, there was going on in the Queen's Bench a trial between two gentlemen. One of them had agreed to supply a quantity of wine for sale at Epsom hacee, but had failed to do so ; and the action was for the loss of profits on the sale. The sum ming-up of Lord Chief Justice Cockburn amounted to thia: — If you want champagne for a supper party or ball, you will give 50s or 60s a dozen, and you will get an article made from rhubarb. If you pay 20s a dozen more, you will get something " very choice." It will be made from gooseLerries ! If you

''know- the '-'Emperor- of Russia, and are in tlie habit of dropping in to ' smoke a cigar with him, you may get some real champagne, but you will not do it otherwise ! Such was about the summing up of Chief Justice Cockburn in that case. Except in tlie hands of the highest people, in the old cities of Europe, real wine, ii not to be had : a very large part of all the test is made up of the basest mixtures and decoctions ! And yet we are told that wine, such as we get it, is one of God's good gifts, and is to be accepted with thankfulness ! The honourable gentleman made a series of forcible appeals, especially to ministers of religion and to women, for aid in promoting the total abstinence cause, and so putting at least a check to the huge gangrene of drunkenness, which was, he said, destroying the very vitals of the country. He spoke very graphically of public-house keepers and the victims of drink; and he urged the '• moderate drinkers" to consider whether their position was as sound as they pretended to think it. As a remedy for drunkenness and its evils, he would, if it was in his power, provide that no public-house licenses should be granted or be renewed, in any part of the colony, except upon a requisition signed by fourfifths of the married women and mothers ot the town or district. (Loud applause.) He had made that statement elsewhere, and it had always called forth the loudest applause during his address. It was the men who had just applauded, and, if they would give their assistance, the wires of tl)e colony should have the power of making men sober. (Applause.) As to tbe Permissive Bill, the honourable gentleman said — I will touch I very briefly upon one remedy which has been proposed which has made great strides at horne — which, before many ye%rs, will be the subject of intense agitation in this country— -and which I trust yet to live to see part of the law of the land. I allude to the Permissive Bill, which is so little understood and so much misrepresented in this and other towns of the colony. lam very glad to see, by the receipt of recent Alliance papers from England, that the advocates of the bill are making rapid progress. At the great meeting held recently in Manchester — when 6000 people were present in one room, several hundreds in another, and I hundreds had to be turned away — statements were made which led many people to believe that next session, probably, but certainly in the next session but one, the Permissive Bill will be carried . It has been said that the bill is a tyrannical measure — that it is an attempt of a small minority to over-ride the great majority. No person who makes such a statement can have read the bill itself, or the brief statement of its provisions issued by the Alliance. What the bill proposes is this :...That instead of four, or three, or two magistrates having the power to grant licenses to publicans to demoralise a given community, by establishing public-houses there, a majority of two- thirds of the ratepayers, in the city, town, or parish, shall have the power vested in them, and shall decide whether a license shall be granted to this, to that, or to any public-bouse. There is nothing in that more tyrannical than there is in the majority of the ratepayers in the dintrict in which I live, having the power to take money out of my pocket towards making a given road. The principle is identical with that great principle upon which our Constitution rests, that majorities, and large majorities especially shall decide, and that minorities must submit. If two- thirds of the people feel aggrieved at debauchery, ruin, and desolation being scattered over a district — two-thirds of the people who pay the rates, and maintain gaols and lunatic asylums what tyranny is there in those people saying, " We will hare no more of this," and putting it down with a strong hand ? If the teetotallers wanted to force the community to yield, that would be tyranny ; or if one-third of a community wanted to rule, that would be tyrannical. We teetotallers may endeavour to create public opinion on the subject. But what we want cannot be done, and we do not suggest that it should be, until two-thirds of the ratepayers are in favour of it. This statement is a sufficient answer to all that has been talked and written about the tyranny of the Permissive Bill. The address was earnestly listened to throughout, and the honourable gentleman was very frequently and loudly applauded.