THE LIQUOR QUESTION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5714, 6 November 1896, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE LIQUOR QUESTION.

REMARKS BY BIRHOP NEVILL. [Pee. Press Association.l "DUNEDIN, Nov. 2,

In his address at the opening of the Diocesan Synod to-day. Bishop Nevill, in referring to the liquor question, said .- — It is not my intention to go into figures or arguments as to the success or the failure of this scheme in the prevention of drunkenness in particular districts where it has been tried, but I think it within the sphere of my duty as a teacher of morals and in some humble way, I hope, an exponent of the mind of God, to point out some grave aspects of this subject which have either been lost sight of in the heat of argument or which at least have not yet received the attention which their importance demands. The question is, What is likely to be the moral effect of prohibition upon a commtinity, supposing the law to enforce it? I do not think I say too much when I affirm that compulsory abstention would be in the highest degree, demoralising. We must remember that in the moral sphere there are, so to speak, planes of varying devotion, and, though the consequences of insobriety are terrible indeed, yet the striking and ruinous character of those consequences are themselves liable to blind us to the less observable, because more subtle, dangers of the application of force as a remedy, and the dangers thus produced may, in the end, be of even more ruinous results to a community, because they are dangers which operate upon a higher plane. Let me try to make myself more clear. I am not merely saying that compulsion as a remedy for drunkenness is sure to prove a failure, though I fear it would be so. I hear of demijohns of whisky being delivered at railway stations in great numbers in prohibition districts for the use of private families, which, in so far as it is true, is a spreading of temptation over a wider area ; but when I said that in my opinion the compulsory stoppage of the sale of imfermented liquors would be demoralising, I referred to two distinct views of the subject which ought not ,to be lost sight of. The" first is the almost certain evil of the formation of a public character in which the vices of deceit and hypocrisy and dishonesty would be largely developed, and these I take it are immoralities of a deeper dye than drunkenness itself. The other is the departure made by this scheme of prohibition from God's way of dealing with his creatures as moral agents.