Prohibition or Moral Suasion.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5211, 19 March 1895, Page 2

Prohibition or Moral Suasion.

♦ I The " moral aussionista "in the temperI ance ranka have for years beea silenced by the louder and more feshionable cry of the prohibitionists ; but there are tigns that moderation is once more reasserting ita sway. The demonstrated failure of prohibition in practice will do a good deal to make speakers on temperance more temperate in their language and aims. In a recent letter to the National Conservative Temperance Unitm the Marquis of Lome wrote : — " Prohibition has been tried over and over again in the United States and ia Canada, end has failed. What reason is there to suppose it would be successful here ? It may be imagined that the circumstances are dissimilar. They are not. Among • constituencies, tha counterpart of thesa here, this thing has been tried— not ouce, but many times, not in ore place, but in many places, and haß failed. They who have voted for it have on experience voted against it. They have done so, not because they have changed their convictions, or have become anti-temp6rance, but because they have found temperance is not promoted by the plan of prohibition." Speaking the other evening at a temperance meeting at Petone Sir Robert Stout said it would be a bad tbing if they got prohibition at once. The people had to be educated up to it. It could nob be expected that the race could become total abstainers in a day or a year; it might be ten or twenty years, or even longer. He did not say that they would get a higher social life by aboliahiog drink, but prohibition would go a long way towards it;, becauso from drink arose other 6vila. The victory was not going to be won in a day, and if it was not won in their lifetime they could tell their children to emulate their example and continue the fight. Holding, as he does, such reasonable views on the difficulties" of prohibitive legislation, and the necessity for a long proeeaa of education before the people are ripe for it, Sir Robert offers no hope to the extreme prohibitionist party in this colony that under him any more stringent law would be pasaed than that; which now prevails. Those who find fault with Mr Seddon for going slowly on this great question might well lay to heart the latest utterances of Sir Robert Stout.