THE TRADE AND THE ALCOHOLIC LIQUOR BILL.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume VI, Issue 293, 5 March 1896, Page 13

THE TRADE AND THE ALCOHOLIC LIQUOR BILL.

We understand there is now some hope of the trade forming itself into an association for the protection of its great interest, and as pointed out by us in previous issues, it is desirable, if not necessary, that this should be effected at the earliest possible time. The reports from outlying districts show that the opponents of the trade are taking active steps to promote their cause, meetings of the prohibitionists having been already held in Onehunga and other places, and arrangements are being made to hold similar meetings at Epsom, Ellerslie, Panmure, and other places in the Manukau electorate. These meetings, we presume, will be followed by gatherings of the same nature in all parts of the Auckland provincial district, and as they are first in the field it is possible, nay probable, that an organisation will be effected, which will embrace the promised support of a large number of moderate electors, who will be led away by the usual plausible clap-trap of teetotal fanatics, who will be careful to place but one side of the question before those who advocate prohibition from a “ national majority ” or by bare majorities in the respective electorates now coterminus in their boundaries with the parliamentary electorates. Those engaged in the trade should at the earliest opportunity do what was done in Great Britain and Ireland previous to the last General Election, viz., organised their forces to checkmate the stump orators (whose sole mode of living in many cases is their present occupation. which, like Othello’s, would be lost if the moderate people in the country were aroused), and there is no doubt but that a moderate platform advanced by the trade would be supported by many men who are total abstainers and temperance advocates, hut who honestly and rightly believe that the greatest opponents of their cause are those who denounce every person who refuses to endorse their violent vituperations, and who are opposed to their doctrine of confiscation and spoliation. Ref ering to what was done in the Old Country, Sir Wilfred Lawson, the great champion of temperance, the man who has more than any other in the English parliament fought in favour of the principles of national temperance and sobriety, appears to have been absolutely disgusted with the extreme prohibitionists, for when addressing a crowded meeting at Birmingham he quoted at length from a speech made by a temperate English bishop, who described the English teetotal fanatic to be very much like his class in the Colonies, viz., “ all or nothing men, who if they could not obtain their extreme desires would have nothing at all. That when a moderate degree of success was within measurable distance they, by intolerance and uncharitable-

ness, upset everything. The all or nothing men reminded him of the hen that was sitting in a back store on thirteen good eggs, but she was not satisfied with the probable results, and when the storekeeper placed a crate in the compartment containing twenty dozen eggs then left her nest to sit on the crate, and consequently her own eggs were spoiled and she hatched nothing. Sir Wilfred, amidst enthusiastic applause, declared the all or nothing men were just as foolish as the hen. We have no doubt that all moderate electors in New Zealand will indorse the views set forth by the great English statesmen and temperance orator, and the trade should by organisation obtain decimination of a kindred nature. Another thing the association should look after at once is to see that that the electors in the various districts are duly registered. It will be sheer folly to leave this important matter to the last moment and then have five or six people running over each other in their frantic efforts to obtain signatures on the electoral forms. At the risk of being tedious we would again remind our friends of the stringent nature of the Act of last session, and notwithstanding this the extremists are agitating to make it more hurtful and still more extreme. Sir Robert Stout, in his recent Wellington address, “ voiced ” this view of the matter, and the prohibition press is deadly on the warpath. The recent appointment of Mr Hall-Jones, the Timaru prohibitionist, to to a seat in the New Zealand Cabinet may or may not be very significant in its character ; at any rate, he was one of the most rabid of his party in dealing with the Bill of last session, which was the basis of the present Act. We understand he was one of the twenty-four in the previous session who brought down (in committee) some forty amendments, any one of which, if passed, would have rendered the measure absolutely intolerable, and he was one of the bitterest of those members who denounced those who blocked their absurd proposals and saved them from becoming the laughing stock of the civilized world. Finally, we say the extreme stringency of the Act of 1895, the organisation of the prohibitionists, their strength in the House, and beyond all, the consideration of what is at stake, should be more than sufficient to cause a federation of the trade, which should be effected without delay.