TEMPERANCE AND PROHIBITION.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVI, Issue 948, 7 May 1908, Page 22

TEMPERANCE AND PROHIBITION.

The “Cumberland Times” (Parramatta) recently published a bright and smart leader on Temperance and Prohibition, and deals with the subject in a most sensible and interestiny way. The policy of the paper is “decent sobriety in moments of the most convivial enjoyment as is the most oratorically rampant outrager of commonsense that ever disgraced the cause of temperance by the grossness of his intemperate accusations against all who have anything to do in making or meddling with the drink traffic, as that is conducted by the licensed victuallers of New South Wales.” The Federal Postmaster-General, Mr Mauger, has raised a hornet’s nest about his ears, the music of which he is not likely to forget for a long time after his intellectually asinine ears have been curtailed to something like human proportions. Another strong point in the article is the fact that the licensed victuallers round Parramatta (which is really true also of licensed victuallers elsewhere) have not a single word to say in favour of men who drown what little

sense they have by over-indulgence in alcoholic drinks. Such are the publican’s worst customers. No man of sense would denounce —as most of the temperance spouters do—fermented, and spiritous liquors and the trade therein as being practically the root of all the evils that afflict society, and that to “redeem the world from the flaming hell of intemperance into which it has sunk and wallows, the only saviour wand is the lever of absolute prohibition.” Another point emphasised in the leader is the inability of prohibition, in districts where it has been by law established, to prevent those who were “afflicted or blessed” with an 'appetite for alcoholic stimulant, procuring that spur to their existence on which the comfort of their living depended. Mr W. A. Lloyd’s recent lecture at Rookwood is also referred to, and the wellattested facts he quoted against the operation of prohibition showed that it was utterly fallacious as a preventive to excessive drinking.