THE TEMPERANCE PARTY AND PROHIBITION.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume VI, Issue 310, 2 July 1896, Page 10

THE TEMPERANCE PARTY AND PROHIBITION.

SOME COMMON SENSE. When Mr J. E. Taylor decided to address the Mangere Mutual Improvement Society on “ The Present State of Prohibition.” be evidently considered that all he had to do was to pump prohibition into his hearers from start to finish, and also mix up the better principles of temperance with that of his subject. But he struck the wrong camp, and his lecture, from a “cram it down your throats” sort of view, was a complete failure, because two men of broad ideas who had the courage of their/opinions, combated the main

points of Mr Taylor’s lecture. Here are the particulars leading up to Mr Taylor’s discomfiture :—“ Mr Taylor said there was a great deal of misrepresentation concerning prohibition, and he read a lengthy extract from the Prohibitionist to show that it was not intended to interfere with a man drinking what he liked in his own house, but it was intended to stop the selling and importation of all alcoholic drinks. A majority of the people, and not the Legislative Council, should say whether any liquor should be imported or sold in the colony. He promised a rousing time and better results at the next election, as many young voters would come to the front, and they were mostly abstainers. Mr Archibald said to call the prohibitionists the temperance party was confusing and misleading. He believed in temperance in all things. The temperance people were those who sought to lessen the evils of drinking by moral suasion. The prohibitionists were extremists who insisted on coercion, and were entirely a political party. Prohibition, where it was enforced, was a great incentive of hypocrisy, deceit, and lying, and he would rather have to do with a drunkard than a hypocrite. He had resided for three years in Massachusetts, a prohibition State, and he had often seen men and women arm in arm drunk in the streets of Paul Biver city on a Saturday night, and always a number of them came before the Magistrate on Monday morning to receive their reward for drunkenness. Prohibition did not stop drinking there, but caused all manner of deceit. Mr Kirkbride urged moderation, and deprecated the intemperate language indulged in by some advocates of prohibition. He was sorry to hear Mr Taylor’s views on the second chambers of legislation, for he held that the Legislative here and the House of Lords at Home had saved the countries from rash and disastrous legislation.”