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New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XI, Issue 512, 11 October 1900, Page 18

USELESS RESOLUTIONS.

One becomes so used to all sorts of protests on the subject of liquor in the King Country, that the

latest batch carried at a meeting of the Diocesan Synod of Waiapu, would .pass unnoticed, were it not that they contain one, which to say the least, may be termed novel. In their own phraseology it reads that “This Synod protests against the use of Government railways for conveyance of intoxicating liquor into the King Country for illegal sale, thus employing a Government institution for the violation of the laws of the colony.” In this, we find the intolerant spirit of prohibition. Because the fact of the forbidden area being under prohibition law, and thereby offering inducement to lawbreakers, this is deemed sufficient to condemn all inhabitants of such district to a state of teetotalism. This state to be brought about by the withholding of transit by rail. Do the Synod really imagine that if it were possible to bring their resolutions into effect that it would lessen illegal sales one iota, surely not They must know that-so long as the country contains inhabitants who desire liquors, and so long as it contains no licensed house, the sly-grog seller will pilot his wares into the land, rail or no rail. Was there no sly-grog selling before the advent of the iron horse ? Lt cannot be solely on the grounds that the railway is a Government institution that it should not be the means of carrying liquor into the King Country. The Government take the duty on the liquor in the first instance, they collect the fines (when possible) at the last stage, and why should they not have a cut in the intermediary stage. Beside which, the Egyptian has to be spoiled, let the Government spoil him all the time, from the time the liquor is landed until the time they set traps for the aforesaid guileless Egyptian to fall into. We all share in this spoil, it comes in handy, it goes to swell our cast-iron surplus, possibly some of us share it unwillingly, but we do share it. If some of the various bodies who pass such a number of useless and unworkable resolutions, would only study the question calmly from an every day point of view, they would soon come to the conclusion that legally licensed houses is the one and only remedy for abating sly-grog selling in the King Country. Manifold reasons can be given for this view, and have been given time and again. The chief one, and there is no need to go any further, is

that the sly-grog seller could not possibly compete with a licensed house either in , matter of price or quality. It would only be a very short competition, and then the sly-grog seller would be totally

eclipsed. Were it possible that liquor carrying into prohibited country by rail were made an offence and would effect a cure of the present deplorable state of affairs, then let us have it as s< on as possible. Anything in the shape of a cure would be preferable to the wholesale, lawbreaking, spying, lying, and trapping which now goes on. But it would not, this is undoubted, it would only add to the present underhand methods which must exist. It would also add to our already numerous government inspectors whose duty it would be to examine and certify that each case contained only what it represented on the way-bill, and that the innocent looking package of Mother somebody’s Soothing Syrup did not take the form of someone else’s special blend of twenty year old whisky.