PUBLIC OPINION ON THE LIQUOR TRADE

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 679, 12 March 1903, Page 23

PUBLIC OPINION ON THE LIQUOR TRADE

Last week we published some extracts from a leading article in the Dunedin et Star.’* In a succeeding issue that journal prints a reply from the pen of Mr C. B. M. Branson, as follows : —

“ Sir, —In your article ‘ Incensing Law Reform ’ of the 13th inst. you take pains to show that the recent Local Option poll was so scandalously conducted that it could not be taken as a true expression of public opinion, yet in your leader of the next day you profess to doubt that the petitioners against the poll had any good and sufficient reasons for their petition. As one of the petitioners, I should like to state that the highest professional opinions obtainable advised that our case was so strong on the point of undue influence and unfair tactics that if we proceeded the poll must have been upset, and our only rd&son for not proceeding was the discovery of the monstrous state of the law by which, in the event of our successful action in this direction, a worse injustice might have been inflicted on us and the public generally. “ I have always brought myself to look upon the Press as a leader on all matters, social and political, and educator of the newly enfranchised of botih sexes to look carefully and deliberately into* the pros and cons of every question demanding their careful and serious deliberation, not as relating to any particular section, but rather as affecting the whole community.

Instead of which you are,in this instance, found advocating what you call reform, ‘ drastic severity and confiscation,’ by which many men and women are to be driven out of business and employment and ruined without compensation or even Christian sympathy. I would have expected your columns to reflect some of Mr Chamberlain’s teachings. That gentle-, man, in a speech at Birmingham on October 14, 1901, is reported as follows : — ‘ That Sir William Harcourt’s Bill, in which the principles of the United Kingdom Alliance was embodied, was a more disastrous failure than any other—more disastrous, that was, to the Government which brought it in. And as it failed so conspicuously he thought himself it was disastrous to the best interests of the temperance cause. “ What,” Mr Chamberlain remarked, " was the case with regard to that Bill ?” After all, we are a libertyloving people, and we don’t like being dictated to even as to what we should drink ; and, in the second place, we are a justice-loving people, and I don’t think the people of this country have ever seen

the justice of depriving those who are en-

gaged in a trade which, whatever you may think of it, is perfectly lawful, depriving them of their livelihood without giving

them any compensation.’ “ And he goes on to say :— ‘ I will warn temperance reformers that so long as they reject practical measures, so long as they treat moderate drinking (which, whatever you may think of it, is a habit and a custom of the majority of the people), so long as they treat that as though it were in itself a crime, and so long as they deny to a large section of the population (to all those who in one form or another are

engaged in connection with this great industry) the rights of ordinary citizens, so long as they propose to take away their property without any compensation, so long as they propose to take away totir property without any compensation, so long the legislation of the future will be no more successful than the legislation of the past.’ This speech was delivered to the Birmingham Temperance Society. “ All reforms for years past have been in the direction of leniency and freedom, ' as wiser and more successful than severity and repression, and under such wise counsels Great Britain leads the van of progress throughout the world. When she abolished slavery she considered it honest and just to pay for it. When she abolishes licenses she also pays for them. Can this young colony afford to despise such example, and' at the instigation of organised zealots inflict robbery and confiscation on their fellow-colonists ? Great statesmen, guiding the destinies of nations have recognised, and are recognising, the fact that sudden reforms attempted by force of law were always failures, but that true and lasting reforms could only come gradually through moral causes—personal suasion and general elevation of the people. Tile policy of confiscation and punishment advocated by you and the Prohibition party can only make matters worse, and ehd in trouble and disappointment all round. The reduction, besides inflicting grievous wrongs and injustice on individuals,/ actually retarded improvement by making room for sly-grog selling, as many of the former licensed houses have been since used for that purpose. The majority for reduction, even accepting it is a correct verdict of the electors, was so small as compared to the great number of voters, that it does not justify the greatest possible reduction, but only the smallest! Licensees would gladly accept your advice to support a temperance and a temperate committee.”