VIRTUE BY ACT OF PARLIAMENT.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XII, Issue 716, 26 November 1903, Page 24

VIRTUE BY ACT OF PARLIAMENT.

The New Zealand prohibitionists strongly oppose the provision in the new Licensing Bill, which forbids the keeping of intoxicating liquor in private houses in districts where prohibition has been adopted. And from their own standpoint are wise in so doing. The proposal was, however, carried, as the House generally agreed, or pretended to agree, that it was micessary to cope with the sly-grog selling amongst the Maoris in the King Country, whatever may be said of the wisdom of the proposal or the likelihood of its being effectively enforced, it is undoubtedly the logic of prohibition if that policy can be said to have any logic. The chances, however, are that the attempts to enforce the provision will kill prohibition as public policy. If no attempt is made to carry it into effect thoroughly, private drinking houses will take the place of pubs as they have done elsewhere. We have every sympathy with those who look on temperance as a moral reform altogether desirable, but believe that Governmental attempts to enforce morals do harm instead of good. Consider the result of the police being given power to enter any man’s house to see if he has “ a drop in a bottle,’’ the indignation of those unjustly suspected, the much stronger indignation of those who. e treasure trove is rm earthed and confiscated, the lies told and written as to the medical necessity' . -for stimulants, the smuggling and social demoralization consequent upon it, the even more pronounced detnoralization which the association of secret drinking would produce, the fascination which things forbidden has for weak minds, and sometimes for those which are not weak, and the danger of supporting those who fondly cling to the idle belief that by a legislative body sitting and inscribing certain things on parchment, “ a new heaven and a new earth” will be the result.

‘‘The Kingdom of Heaven is within you ” has a significance in. this relation that seems lost- to Vomen’s. Christian Temperance ■ Unions and similar bodies. Their aims are excellent, their methods crude, and certain to harm and paralyse the active social growth of good. We have historical warrant for this view. The writer is one of those who believe that the Puritan movement in its essence has been of inestimable value to modern civilised life. • It gave conviction and purpose to hitherto aimless lives,, purified thought, added to human dignity and struck at the heart of social shams. As a social and moral force it has to account a long list of achievements, accomplished nearly always in the face of what seemed insuperable difficulties, in spite of and often in defiance of the dominant politi-

cal power. Its failures have been entirely when it mistook form for substance, and sought by grasping political pv«ver to force the body politic when public spirit was unwilling. Cromwell’s Ironsides disbanded on Hampstead Heath after the Restoration, of Charles 11. was. the selfconfessed failure of mi-its iit Piyitan’sm aS a purely political force depending on the police powers for its enforcement. The discreditable period which followed was the natural re-action against improper interference, and the advantages which the thinker and teacher had won were lost for a time. Dark days followed, but the Puritanism ’Still remained, and its leaven has been working quietly but effectively since. Those who ask you to give it a new political birth should remember past failures in the sphere of politics and past triumphs as a purely moral and social force. —(Sydney “ Newsletter.”)