AN EXTRAORDINARY CALCULATION.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 662, 6 November 1902, Page 20

AN EXTRAORDINARY CALCULATION.

There is an old s-iying that figures cannot lie. but after reading (he following 1 think that the reader will conclude that if figures cannot’lie, then liars can figure. Speaking on the Prohibition quest’Pn re-

centlv in Dunedin to an audience of some 1750*people, Mr J. F. Deegan, formerly a member of. the Victorian Legislative Assembly, gave a lengthy and most able address, in thse course of which he referred to the example of reckless argument resorted to by Prohibitionists in th’e extraordinary advertising sheet which hacl lately been distributed in New Zealand, in which it was affirmed that during the last dress, in the course of which he referred about 120,000 people per annum in England and Wales. Statistics supplied by the Registrar-General's Department in Wellirigtpn to a gentleman in Dunedin showed that the actual number of depths attributed to intemperance in England and Wales in 1900 was 3038. The figures — 3638 were transformed by the teetotal magnifying glass into 120,000. As a mat- , ter of fact, the proportion of deaths caused by intemperance was very small. For example, take New Zealand. According to the New Zealand Official Year Book, the number of deaths attributable to intemperance in the colany in 1901 was 43, out of a total of 7634—aboutt six deaths in 1000.