Report.

Your Committee have met five times, and have communicated with such paces and persons abroad as it seemed profitable to approach. The matter appended to this Report indicates the general scope and range of the inquiry and of its sources. In view of the Act recently placed on the Statute Rook by the Parliament of New Zealand, your Committee do not at present make any suggestions for immediate discussion. They are of opinion that it is now best to leave the new regulations for the control of the Liquor Traffic to work out by practical experience their own lesson. (N.Z. Act, Appendix I.)

Your Committee desire, however, to submit opinions they have been led to form in the course of their inquiries and deliberations:

(A) As regards the Gothenburg system, or the Bishop of Chester's scheme, or any schemes of a like or parallel nature, they consider that, however desirable in themselves, the propositions embodied in the schemes should be much more familiar to the public of New Zealand before submission for approval. The Convocation of the Province of Canterbury has pronounced against the Gothenburg scheme on the ground that the sobriety of the least sober English town is greater than the sobriety of the most sober Scandinavian town that submits to the system. (See Appendix II., Sec. ii.)

The House of Lords rejected the Bishop of Chester's scheme without a division, on the ground that there were five separate schemes before the House and the country awaiting decision, and on the further ground that the existing law in England is better than any of the schemes proposed in replacement, and that with comparatively few improvements the existing law would be quite satisfactory.

State regulation of the retail trade by placing every house under the control of a state-appointed manager, and by absorbing all profits on the invested capital over five per cent., would undoubtedly tend to give the State an increased vested interest in the maintenance, if not the development, of the liquor traffic. The expital invested for the satisfaction of our national drinking habits, the number of persons employed in the manufacture of drink, and the national and municipal revenue accruing from the sale of drink, already present a combination of obstacles almost insuperable for schemes of moderate re-adjustment. It is clear that under the Gothenburg system, or any colourable imitation of it, these vested interests and obstacles would be much augmented. For instance, were Dunedin placed under such a system, the profit, to the municipality, calculated on the Gothenburg scale, would be £10,000 a year—a sum that no municipal body would ever be likely to abandon should it have once controlled so large an item of revenue. Your Committee do not offer any opinion as to the advantages or disadvantages of the partial adaptation of the Gothenburg system to the wants of New Zealand. The general and widespread deficiency of information on the subject seems to render it a fruitless task to enlarge further at present on such schemes of control.

Your Committee call attention to Appendices on the Bishop of Chester's [unclear: Bill] of 1893, and on the Gothenburg System. (Appendices III. and IV.)

(B) Your Committee are unable to convince themselves that a policy of [unclear: total] prohibition is either practicable or desirable. They do not think that by [unclear: merely] taking a temptation out of a people's way very much is done to strengthen the [unclear: morality] of the community. It is necessary that men should learn to use the good things [unclear: of] life without abusing them. They do not think that an endeavour to stop [unclear: drunkeness] should be entangled by the endeavour to stop drinking. No competent [unclear: teacher] has ever succeeded in maintaining that within the Christian scheme of life [unclear: drink] is wrong in itself; while the tendency to create what may be called artificial [unclear: seen] should in every way be discouraged.

With these objections your Committee, after a very careful review of a [unclear: grass] deal of evidence gathered from all sides, generally concur. While they admit [unclear: that] it is the duty of every Christian to assist the general progress of humanity [unclear: by] strong self-restraint, even in cases where the matter is indifferent, yet they [unclear: consider] that agreeably to the Christian spirit, all such restraint in matters that [unclear: are] indifferent should be self-imposed and self-controlled. They also think [unclear: that] prohibition, as understood by its extreme advocates, trenches on the elementary liberties of mankind. While they yield to none in their desire to promote temperance, they are unable to consider total prohibition an efficient means of [unclear: more] improvement; while of the great moral and physical problem that awaits [unclear: solving] they consider the solution must be brought about by persuasive, and not by [unclear: coercive] means. It seems to them that with a more exact knowledge of what were [unclear: the] drinking customs of society at the commencement of this century, what were these the facilities for drinking and the quality of the drink sold as compared with the actual condition of these matters at this hour, moderate reformers would be inclined to trust to the operation of the same causes to bring about further result in the same direction.

They append Reports on the present condition of Drink legislation in the United States of America, with Professor Gold win Smith's opinion on the working of the Scott Act in Canada. (Appendices V., VI., VII.)

They recommend that the Committee should be re-appointed, if members are willing to act, as a Vigilance Committee, seeing that the whole question seems to be in process of partial settlement.