The Licensed Victuallers Gazette

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIII, Issue 755, 25 August 1904, Page 23

The Licensed Victuallers Gazette

DOES PROHIBITION PROHIBIT P

Despite all that has been written in affirmation of the statement that prohibition prohibits, the fact remains that it doesn’t. Nobody with any sense ever believed that it did, could or would prohibit, and the prohibitionists themselves got into the habit of contradicting popular belief because that was the only apparent method of justifying their plan of campaign. It was only the day before yesterday, so to speak, that the Isitts and the Richardsons were to be found declaring that it was perfectly feasible and easy to prevent the introduction of liquor to the King Country, and that the total suppression of drinking within that area was the proper way to put down the traffic in sly grog. But a marvellous change has come over the spirit of their dreams. The opportunity has occurred to prove the value of repressive measures in prohibition districts much more readily amenable than the King Country to police methods, and the principle of suppression has failed dismally. The prohibitionist had, like all fanatical 4< reformers,” reckoned without human nature. The result of the tremendous anti-liquor campaign has merely been to change the venue of the drink, and to change it for the worse. This is what Police Commissioner Dinnie says in his annual report:—

The effect of prohibition as regards drunkenness in public places within the areas in which the no-license vote obtained has been marked, a considerable reduction in the number of arrests for that offence having resulted, and leas complaints having been received of street bawls or annoyance caused by drunken persons. On the other hand, it is evident that liquor has been introduced into private houses where it did not previously exist, and a considerable amount of sly grog-drinking is indulged in, which is difficult to detect and more difficult to prove because of the amount of perjury committed. Travellers also complain of a change for the worse experienced in the comfort and cleanliness of hotels since no license obtained.

This cannot be very gratifying to the more reasonable section of prohibitionists. And Police-Inspector Cullen, in charge of the Auckland district, has the same kind of story in his sectional report. He says:—

The sly grog-selling nuisance is still strongly in evidence in the King Country, and will continue so until such time as licensed houses are established by the Government, or the introduction of liquor within the proclaimed area is strictly prohibited. During 1903 there were 167 prosecutions for sly grog-selling, as compared with 77 for 1902.

This is very discouraging. All the more so because Mr Cullen speaks as an expert on the King Country traffic, having won his promotion by dexterity in hunting down the shebeen keepers in that region. The sum of it all is, that we shall have to decide between the respectable hotel coupled with truth, and the sly grogshanty united with lying, perjury, and all the deadly sins. The prohibitionists themselves are no longer willing to apply to the Europeon prohibition areas that principle of the total and absolute exclusion of drink which they formerly advocated in the case of the King Country. The cry now is that the rights of private citizens must be respected, and with the observance of these rights is bound up inseparably the liability to “trade” in liquor, and, as a natural consequence, there is the sly grog-shop. Ihe Reverend Ihomas Fee, who is a bright and shining light of the Methodist Church as well as of the Prohibition Party, says he would rather have twentyfive sly grog-shops in a town than one public house; but it seems almost a pity to let the colony go to the Old Scratch just to please Thomas Fee.