Opponents of Local Option

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XIX, Issue 1898, 18 October 1886, Page 2

Opponents of Local Option

A local option poll under the new Act has been taken at Rockhampton, Queensland, and ended iu failure for the friends of Temperance, whereupon the scribe of the • Sydney Bulletin ’ senf up the following ptcan ” The local option poll at Rockhampton has ended jn » triumph for those who love W on the frothing porter and fill high the bowl with shandygaff. The righteous men of the land rolled up in all their force, but they were very few, while the rest of the community rose like one drunkard to demolish them.

And their numbers were like the omnivorous horde That sweeps off the food from the free luncheou board. All that fateful day grog-blossomed noses glowed like red ilUomened meteors round the polling booth and reflected a baleful light as the sun of the tropics darted down its rays on each crimson beak. Blotchy citizens, dirty, ragged citizens, malodorous citizens, all were there. The distant bushman galvanised his steed into new life, and galloped in to strike for freedom ; the publican and the sinner voted straight for the same cause ; so did the local brewer, and the policeman, and the corner loafer, and the habitual drunk, and the man who uses obscene language, and the party who sleeps on the hotel verandah, and the man with no visible means of support, till the ten just citizens of Bookbampton retired in despair. And now a beery jubilee is in progress iu that dreary town on the Pilzroy River, the fountains of the great deep are broken up, and it promises to rain whiskey for forty days and forty night,j, while the hard-shell loafers join iu the chorus, ‘ Let some droppings fall on me.’ ”