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of 1895 had been made applicable to the King-country it would have greatly facilitated the work of the police in preventing sly-grog selling. The same answer was given by some of the Justices of the Peace in reply to Mr. Poynton's question; I think it was made by Mr. Ellis and Mr. Wilkinson. The Police Commission, in its own report, made a mild recommendation that the clause should be applied, and for five successive years the Alliance party have urged the Premier to legislate in that direction, but without avail. Several witnesses and Justices of the Peace recommended that the purchasers of illegally sold grog should be subject to penalty as well as the vendor. This was recommended by several constables, and, I think, by Messrs. Ellis, Macdonnell, and Wilkinson, but no notice was taken of the recommendation. For at least five years prior to the Ist December, 1897, Mr. Edward Parry, of Te Kuiti, was allowed to hold a license, in consideration of the sum of £1 per annum paid to the Collector of Customs, to carry on the business of brewer, and to sell in quantities of not less than 2 gallons of beer, ale, and porter made at his brewery at Te Kuiti. Mr. Eose, the Collector of Customs, gave evidence at the Commission that this brewery license was stopped after the 31st January, 1897, because he (Mr. Eose) had seen reports in the newspaper of several convictions of sly-grog selling against Parry, and it seemed to him that Parry was unable to commit this breach of the Act under the cloak of holding a license as a brewer. He stopped it of his own motion, and not because the police had taken any action. A man can hold a license to brew within the Clutha, but not to sell within the district, as could be legally done within the so-called prohibited area of the King-country. Now I want to come back to Wahanui, and the statement made that he was mad at the time he asked that prohibition should be enforced. The statement was made by Kahu Huatere, Wahanui's brother, when addressing the Premier as a member of a deputation on the 3rd of this month. I wired to Mr. Gittos, who replied, " Absolutely untrue," and that the same statement was made concerning Eewi just before his death. Presumably it was made because he also advocated prohibition. Eeturning again to the failure of prohibition, the defective law was as imperfectly administered. Messrs. Ellis, Macdonnell, and Wilkinson gave evidence at the Police Commission that for many years sly-grog selling was kept in check with a firm hand and held within reasonable limits. That during the most difficult years of enforcement, when the railway-line was being formed, it was held in check, but that when the Natives began to attend the Land Court in large numbers they found one European selling with impunity, and followed his example. Numbers of them began to carry bottles and glasses of grog about the street, while others sold under the guise of what pretended to be butchers' shops. Moerua, addressing the Premier on the 3rd September, gave another reason why sly-grog selling was so rife. He objected to prohibition because, he said, " under it a stigma was cast on the chiefs when, instead of getting their liquor openly, they got it by stealth ; and," he added, " a stigma was also cast on pakehas, men of position, officials of the Government, because of their seeking grog by stealth." 1 should like to put in these sworn declarations as indicating that a change from defective prohibition to sales under license would not benefit the Maoris. [Exhibit A.] All the declarations were sworn except one from a friend of the Eev. Mr. Bennet's, who wrote from Pirongia, and whose letter was published in the Taranaki News of the 15th September. [Mr. Isitt offered to get this in the form of a sworn declaration if the Committee desired.] I should be glad to state the grounds on which temperance reformers base their objection to Maoris being supplied with liquor under any system. They know that he is absolutely defenceless against alcohol, whether under license or no license. The system does not matter; if he gets the liquor it will destroy him. To use a phrase much employed of late, he is not in any way so "immune" as the British people are— i.e., comparatively speaking. We claim that they should be protected, because it is the wish of the people of New Zealand that it should be so. The Government and Parliament are both temporary. The people's responsibility to the Maori remains a permanent trust, and the ignominy of failure is theirs. The principle of fatherly care of the Maori has been recognised throughout, especially in regard to the controlling of his own land and in respect to liquor. He is protected by paternal legislation against alienation of his own lands. He is protected as Europeans are in part against liquor. All licensing systems imply that the people must be protected against liquor as they are protected against nothing else; but, it is now proposed that, while the protection of the Maori in respect to land shall be continued, he shall have no special protection against liquor, but share the restrictive liberty in that respect which is granted to the European. We hold that the positions are not equal, that the races cannot be treated alike. Ceuturies of drinking alcoholic liquors, first in milder form and then in greater strength, have given the British people a comparative immunity from its evil effects, though only comparative. The Maori, on the other hand, was the only aboriginal race of which we know anything which had no alcoholic liquor or intoxicant of any kind. He knew nothing of it until we brought and gave it to him in a strong form, which had grown out of the centuries of our drinking habits. It finds him defenceless. As the Chinese are so inured to typhoid and small-pox that those diseases are with them comparatively mild disorders, as measles are with us, while measles will destroy a Polynesian race ; as many Austrians and Hungarians so accustom themselves to the use of arsenic that they can take a dose which would kill twenty other men; so we, as a people, can take alcohol with a comparative impunity that the Maori cannot share. To him it means certain destruction. In all parts of the Empire native races are protected, and under penalties more severe than have been imposed here. Dr. Ashe, in his book on the siege of Kimberley, reports that the publicans broke the law prohibiting the supply of alcohol to the natives, until the first of them was detected and heavily fined and lost his license, on which the others submitted. The Gape Times of the 11th June reported that a man named Joffe had been sentenced to twelve months' hard labour without the option of a fine for illicit liquor-dealing in the Transvaal, and another liquor-dealer, a Pretoria liquor merchant named Tiendbirg, had been fined £500 and lost his whole stock of liquor (valued at £3,000) by confiscation for selling a single bottle of grog. The London Spectator of the 16th