SOME EMINENT OPINIONS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3342, 7 October 1911, Page 5

SOME EMINENT OPINIONS.

ALL OPPOSED TO PROHIBITION

STATESMEN AND PRELATES UNITED.

The- Late- Marquis of Salisbury

! OU wish to prevent a certain- iramJL her of people from getting drunk. Therefore you ask us to prevent four, five, or six times as many, who are sober consumers, from having an opportunity of the free indulgence to which they have a right. Why are we to punish the imm cent in place of the guilty? The rich who possess, or can possess; wine cellars are free from the attacks of the prohibition reformers. It is the poor, the working people, that the law inconveniences. This kind of legislation is absolutely of a class character.” The Rev. Sidney Smith, Dean of St. Paul’s.

“There has been in all Governments a great deal <;f absurd canting about the consumption of spirits. We- believe the best plan is to let people drink wliat they like-, and wear what they like—to make no sumptuary laws either for the hellv or the back.” The Right Hon. William Ewart Gladstone.

“I am glad you are: not scandalised about my laxity as to the ‘public house.’ I really had no choice. How can I, who drink good wine and bitter beer every day of my life, in a comfortable room among friends, coolly stand by and advise hard-working fellow-creatures to take ‘the pledge?’ We must, not allow any political feeling or prejudice to interfere with the rectitude of our judgment, or to; prevent us from giving the same measure oi justice or indulgence to licensed victuallers that we should give to any other class in the community.” ...... His Holiness Pius X. on Prohibition.

His Holiness believes in temperance, but. not in Teehotalism. Addressing the Catholic Union of Missouri, the Right Rev. Mgr. Franz Goller declared that Pope Pius X. is not in sympathy with t:h© prohibition idea spreading through this country (United States). _ Mgr. Goller’s remarks are deemed significant because be was among the first priests to. be raised to; the rank of Papal Private Chamberlain to the present Pontiff. “The Pope certainly does believe in temperance,” he said, “that is, moderation in all things, but not absolute prohibition. That is not the spirit of freedom but oi autocratic government. The Holy Father himself takes a. glass of wine/and believes that men should he allowed to use their own judgment iin what they should eat and what they should drink, and not have other men decide such matters for them.”—/New York “Times.” The Right Hon. Joesph Chamberlain. “I have been, a great traveller, and I have seen prohibition at work in the United States of America, and I rely, in 1 regard to it, much more upon the information I have obtained from impartial intelligent people than I do even om my own observation, and the evidence'l have received from snch persons —persons thoroughly disinterested —is all to the same effect-; that in towns, at any rate, anything in the nature of compulsory prohibition of drinking is absolutely impossible, and it only leads to drinking in worse forms than Under the old system. There is no doubt whatever that/ this is a class measure in the strongest sense- of the words. It affects the poor, it does not affect the rich. It interferes with a poor man in his convenience, in his comfort, in all the arrangements of his life ; it dees not- touch the home of the man who has property of his own.” Sir James Paget. . “The best, and, in proportion to number, the largest quantity of bram work has been, and still is being done by the people of those nations in winch the use of alcoholic liquors has been, and is, habitual. . . On the whole, and on the question of national health and strength, I cannot doubt, with such evidence as we have, that the habitual moderate use of alcoholic drinks is generally beneficial, and that in the tion raised between temperance and abstinence, the verdict should he m favor of temperance.*