NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XI, Issue 510, 27 September 1900, Page 18

NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS.

All subscriptions are payable in advance, A discount of 2s 6d is allowed on all subscriptions paia within three months from date of order, Tttk Sporting Review and Licensed iceuallers’ Gazette has been appointed the Official Organ of the Trade. . •. The subrcription to tne jnbw Zealand ox’obting Review and Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette is 15s per annum. It offers special facilities for advertising “ transfers” and other official announcements, embracing as it does the extensive circulation of an already popular New Zealand and Australian sporting oumal. Any paragraphs of interest to the Trade, whether of simply local significance or otherwise, will be received and considered in our columns. Questions on legal points or other matters connected with the Trade will be paid careful attention to and answers given, (fur reciders throughout the colony and in Australia are requested to communicate with ** Bacchus,". who will always be pleased to offer them a medium through which the public may be reached.

THE PREJUDICE AGAINST SPIRITS.

Authorities differ as to the antiquity of the manufacture of Distilled Spirits. The disciples of the teetotal cult very often try to turn

the edge of the Bible weapon, which cuts at their theories root and branch, by setting up the covering theory, that ardent Spirits were unknown at the dates of the sacred writings and in the time of the founding of the Christian Faith. Therefore, they say, neither the permission, if any, nor the example, if any, of Christ being a consumer of alcoholic beverages, avail anything, as permitting the consumption of Distilled Spirits. On the other hand those who contend for the great antiquity of the art of producing spirits, or rather separating them from the liquids in which they existed at weaker strengths, maintain that this art was practiced among the ancient Egyptians, as proved by sculptures picturing the apparatus used, the proving of which would relegate the origin of distillation or concentration of the alcoholic constituents of beverages to a remote antiquity, which carries us back to a period long before the sacred writings of the Jews were penned. It might, however, be mentioned that, apart from concentration by age or other process of the strength of wine, and apart from distillatipn, there were other processes known, which enabled the Ancients to arrive more quickly at the stage, which the cabman in Punch called “ forrader,” and arrival at which he failed to find, by means of those liquors especially favoured by the French Treaty of 1860. So that “ strong drink ” was an even more inclusive term than it is now, even were distilled spirits non-existent in the times of Biblical history. People are apt to lose sight of the fact, that any process by which the watery particles are, by evaporation or other process, separated from the alcohol, rendering that alcohol of greater strength, is in practical effect, and its essential features, distilling. Even now no commercial spirit is absolute alcohol, which is, stated in proof strength, slightly over 75.0 0.p., so that even 68.0 o.p. spirits of wine has some water mixed with it, while Scotch Whisky for example, at 11.0 o.p. when bonded, lacks over 64 degrees, by which it is short of the full strength of pure alcohol. Prima facie there does not seem any logical reason why the gentleman who reposes under the kindly shadow of the hospitable mahogany, overcome by the 40 degrees of alcohol in Vintage Port, should have been charged by the revenue less for the instrument of his excess, than the humbler inebriate who has fuddled

himself into unconsciousness on whisky dispensed to him by the retailer at 20 u.p. (or 80 proof degrees), and consumed with a dillution of half water. Indeed, for revenue purposes, the alcoholic test pure and simple, must commend itself to the practical and logical mind, were there not other factors influencing and tempting Legislators into paths which are not those of pure reason. There is no doubt that there is a prejudice against spirits on account of its potentialities, which is a very suitable word to indicate of what the potency of spirit is capable. That capability is hardly ever tested, though most —indeed, because most—are quite aware of the possibilities which reside in alcohol only slightly diluted. We venture to assert that spirits in this country are consumed at a strength which averages not greatly over the average strength of the whole of the wines consumed by our population. It is, however, as we just said, its known potentiality, of being drunk at great strength, which creates the prejudice against the former liquor. It is also certain that owing to the popularity of spirits in the humbler station of the population, it has come to be regarded as of baser nature than wine. This phase of the prejudice is becoming obsolete now that whisky has become the drink quite as much of the higher as of the lower classes, but the article is still eyed askance by many, and the oldfashioned wine-drinker votes it a Philistine and heathen beverage. We have come across in the book, which instructed our readers last month as to the past capabilities of London as a wine-produc-ing centre, a passage which discloses a considerable depth of prejudice on the part of worthy Thomas Pennant. Speaking of Lambeth in 1790, he writes :— “ In this parish are the vast distilleries, till of late the property of Sir Joseph Mawby. There are seldom less than two thousand hogs constantly grunting at this place, which are kept entirely on the grains. I lament to see the maxim of private vices being public benefits so strongly exemplified in the produce of the duty on Stygian liquors. From July sth, 1785, to July sth, 1786, it yielded £450,000. And I have been told of a single distiller who contributed to that sum £54,000.” We amused our readers last month with the naive applause, by the chronicler quoted, of the “ admirable mimicking” in Lambeth of the wines produced in the wine districts of Europe, and other grape growing countries. Carried away by his prejudices against spirits, Pennant, in his desire to play upon the root syllable Stygian, and the abodes of the pigs who were fed on the grains, brands the consumers as indulging in “ private vices,” because of the bare fact of their consumption of distilled spirits. When we ascend into the region of genuine opinion formation, as against the mere prejudice which people so often substitute for the former nobler result of proper deductions from well ascertained facts, we find ourselves confronted with such a set of facts as deal conclusively with the pet prejudice in question.

We find the Northern nations and the Northern portion of nations, consuming spirits by force of preferential “ natural selection ” —if we may appropriate somewhat wrongfully a well-known Darwinism —and whether they be nations or fractions of nations standing in front of their fellows other things being equal. For instance, the whisky consuming Scotchman and Irishman cannot be said to be intellectually behind the Englishman, whose consumption of spirits is lower than that of his Caledonian and Hibernian neighbours. If we turn to France, whose consumption of spirits per head more than equals our own, we find that the most solid and stable-minded section of that country are those who, dwelling in the northern portion of that country, consume the

greatest quantity of spirits, as Dr Lunier in his comparative map has shown. It must not be thought that we are here mixing up cause and effect, we are only pointing out that when Legislators, backed up by teetotallers, and, indeed, applauded to a certain extent by a section of our own trade, avail themselves of this combined advantage to put a “ morality tax,” as the late Mr F. W. Cosens, the well-known sherry shipper, used to call it, on spirits, they should be able to fortify their position by facts, and not to avail themselves of the prejudices of two entirely conflicting classes to saddle a certain article with huge taxation. In saying this we must remind our readers that the original object of the Association, now called the United Kingdom Alliance for the Total Suppression of the Liquor Traffic, was to suppress the sale of “ Ardent Spirits,” as they called the article. We also find the Gothenburg system applies to spirits only, leaving the sale of Beer entirely free. We come, therefore, back to our original explanation of the prejudice which has resulted in such opprobrium, and its consequent taxation, viz The potentialities of spirits to make people drunk sooner than less highly alcoholised beverages. In this matter of alcohol consumption the more immediate the potentialities of intoxication, the greater restraint is necessary on the part of the consumer, lest he overstep the bounds of moderation. The teetotallers’ remedy is to prohibit, or to try to prohibit, the article which may intoxicate, being sold as a beverage. Common sense suggests the formation of character by voluntary restraint of appetite. In the light of the latter principle, we look abroad on the present race-forces of the world, or glance back into the past of individuals and nations and are inclined to think there is more than appears on the surface in the well-known saying of the celebrated Dr Johnson : “ Claret for for men, Brandy for heroes.”— Ridley's Wine and Spirit Trade Circular.