TEETOTALLISM.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 274, 1 May 1873, Page 6

TEETOTALLISM.

(" Timara Herald.") Though the teetotaller, by reason of his sweeping denunciation and his proposed sweeping cure for the evils he and others are constantly striving to bring about, exposes him to ridicule and abuse, yet opportunities are constantly occurring where the abstainer from alcohol has the laugh on his own side, and where, if he were so inclined, he can turn the tables with a vengeance on his adversaries. One of the strongest arguments made use of by the abstainer is that the abuse of alcohol furnishes our gaols and reformatories, supplies our lunatic asylums with inmates, and that it is the direct means of shortening and at times bringing to a fearfully sudden end the lives of human creatures — and, sad to say, this argument is incontrovertibly true. It is not our present purpose to enter into the many questions which bear on the subject, and to point out where through excess of zeal the teetotaller loses instead of makes ground, but rather to show a way in which the teetotaller's cause may be materially assisted without infringing on the rights and liberties of those who differ from him in opinion. It must be admitted, we think, that people viciously inclined are not to be made sober by act of Parliament, but what the law can do is to endeavor to curtail and limit the opportunities offered to iudulge vicious and ruinous habits . In this matter -of acoholic imbibition beyond the actual requirements of the individual, the law should place its finger more on the giver of the drink than on the drinker ; the latter should be assumed to be, as in fact he really is, an unreasoning creature and a madman when he indulges so freely in liquor as to become intoxicated, and be treated accordingly. He is then non compos mentis, and unanswerable for his actions. At i present the law holds intoxication to be no excuse for crime, but rather an aggravation of it ; but the moralist condemns 1 such law as an injustice, while it leaves untouched the man who furnishes the most potent auxiliary to crime, and who encourages the wretched victim in his beastly course. Except when that publio ' opinion, which has for the moat part banished drunkenness from the upper classes of society, permeates into the lower stratum, then we may expect a similar reformation, but till then it is the duty of the law io prevent as far as possible drunkenness being a direct cause of large public expenditure, and also of its being fruitful QQurQe of djseajse aM d,eMh,,