CORRESPONDENCE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXIV, Issue 17733, 5 December 1919, Page 4

CORRESPONDENCE

EX-PRLiSIDEXT TAFT AND THE 4|pRADE.

To tho Editor

Sir,—ln to-day's issue of the Chronicle Don Q. has written oh the Trade, Mr Durham, and Mr Tall. He quotes an extract fron. an Am6f*fcaa magazine, striving to prove that/iMr Taft was against Prohibition. He finishes his letter by a sympathetic

"Poor Mr Durham." Thank you, Don Q.. thank you. Cervantes, the author pf Don Quixote, would 'undoubtedly endorse your claim as a tilter at windmills. Let me quote from Everybody's Magazine, September, 1914.—"The Committee,of Fitly, —The men who composed the famous Committee of Fifty are persona long connected with movements concerning the highest good of the United States of America. They represented different communities, occupations, and opinions, and they were not, with very few exceptions, candidates for office; at the same time they were men of the highest personal honour. Before arriving, at any conclusions the committee examined prohibition in Maine, in lowa, South Carolina dispensary system, restrictive laws in Massachusetts, the liquor laws of.. Pennsylvania. Ohio liquor tax, liquor laws in Indiana since ISSI. The committee finds that Prohibition has failed to ■exclude intoxicants completely even from districts where public sentiment has been favourable, has failed to solve the drinking • passion, has caused cpen defiance of the law, evasion of the law, Courts have been weakened, two-faced and mercenary law officers, hypocritical and truckling candidates for office, unfaithful office holders." Now, as for exPresident Taft: "Taft, William H;, 'Four Aspects of Civic Duty,' pp. 46----8: The Supremacy of the Law.—Th€ public detriment arising from iola.tions of law, followed by immunity from prosecutions or punishment, can hardly be overstated. It igj'xctf course, the duty of the legislator'^ the enactment of laws to consider tie ease or difficulty with which, by reason of popular feeling or populr.V prejudice, laws after being enacf.fiO can be enforced. Nothing is more foolish, nothing , more utterly at variance with sound lniblic policy than to enact a law which, by reason of the conditions surrounding the community in which it is declared to be law, is incapable of enforcement. Such an instance is sometimes.presented by sumptuary laws, by whfcfh the sale of intoxicating liquors Vis prohibited under penalty in localities where the public sentiment, cf the immediate community does not and will not sustain the enforcement of the law. In such cases the legislation is u.uallythe result of agitation by people in 'the country who are | determined: to make their fellow citizens in the city better. The-en-actment of the law comes thrdugh the country representatives, who form a majority of the legislature; but the enforcement of the law is among the peopl*?. who are generally opposed to its enactment, and, under such cirumstanceSfthe law is a dead letter. This result the great argument in favour «so-call-ed local option, which is rfally an instrumentality for determining whether a law can be eawced before it is made operative, in cases where the sale of liquor cannot be prohibited in fact, it is bettter far to regulate and diminish |he evil than to attempt to stanr) it out. By the enactment, of a drrstic law, and the failure to enforce it, there is injected into the public mind the idea that laws'are to be observed or violatad according to the will of those affected."-:—I am, etc.,

GEORGE DURHAM, December 4th, 1919.

Sir, —The.Rev. Blamires expresses the wish in to-day's Chronicle to have a chat with me over a cup of tea, so that he may' discover certain things. I would suggest that he is likely to find out more over a bottle oi; Burgundy. However, I shall be glad to, have a cup of tea with the rev. gentleman, and suggest that he rings me at Braeburn,, making an appointment for Friday or Saturday morning.—l am, etc.,

GEORGE DURHAM. Dec. 4th, 1919. >