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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 74

Crime, Pauperism, Death

Crime, Pauperism, Death.

A very brief summary of the kind of evidence obtainable must suffice [unclear: I] reminder of the mischief's wrought by strong drink. In England, [unclear: and] Ireland, America and in these colonies, judges have agreed in [unclear: ing] it from the bench as the most prolific source of crime, their [unclear: tes] of the proportion to be ascribed to it varying from the 90 per cent. [unclear: vd] Coleridge, the late Chief Justice of England, and scores of others to [unclear: df] two-thirds which in our own Chief Justice's estimate for this Colony. [unclear: Ik] the prisons this testimony has beon confirmed by jailers and [unclear: I] chaplains: "80 per cent, of the men who have passed through my [unclear: I] would not have come there but for the drink," was the opinion [unclear: tly] expressed by the keeper of the Wellington Gaol. A similar tale is [unclear: sd] by philanthropists and city missionaries of the wrecks and outcasts page 4 among whom they have worked, "Nine-tenths of our poverty [unclear: squ] vice and crime spring from this poisonous tap-root," says General [unclear: Bo] 99 per cent, was Dr, Guthrie's calculation of the proportion of [unclear: desti] children who owed their destitution to drink; and Or. Barnardo, [unclear: wh] first thought the statement a gross exaggeration, arrived at a [unclear: minim] 90 per cent., and became a total abstainer in consequence. In New Zealand a Benevolent Trustee of large experience in this City, and the head of Charitable Institution in Christchurch, have both debited liquor with 90 per cent, of the cases that have come before them. This proportion gives 1400 as the number of "neglected and criminal" children in our [unclear: indust] schools at the end of 1893 through the drinking habits of their parents, [unclear: d] 150 as the number added by that cause in 1894. To anyone with a [unclear: sen] the value of home life and the sacredness of childhood—in other words the worth of a human soul and its infinite aptitudes for good or for [unclear: i] which are involuntarily shaped by early impressions and assosiation tatistics of this class tell a more tragic tale than any form of [unclear: fl] suffering. As to the death-rate, the highest authority on inebriety England, Dr. Norman Kerr, who took up the matter some years ago with avowed object of upsetting the extravagant estimate which ascribed 60 [unclear: as] deaths in the United Kingdom annually to this cause, came to the conclusion that 120,000 about four times the entire population of Wellington [unclear: df] nearer the truth. Another high authority places the number as high [unclear: fd] 200,000. In our own little Colony the number has been estimated at [unclear: dd] The data are somewhat uncertain, and I have not been able to check [unclear: i] calculation, but it does not appear to me excessive, and is less than [unclear: ha] English rate.* Consider it for a moment—1000 deaths from drink [unclear: df] year in this sparsely populated country, 20 every week; 20 hare gone [unclear: s] our last Sunday service; 20 more will go before the church bells ring [unclear: as] or shall I say before the wine goes round again at the Christian's [unclear: Su] dinner ?

* "The estimate is a good deal more favorable to us than the [unclear: com] statistics of drunkenness would Seem to justify. The average of the [unclear: arr] drunkenness in England and Wales for the years 1889-1893 was 178,845, or 6 per cent 100 of [unclear: dsd] population; in New Zealand for the same period the rate was over 7 per thousand, [unclear: b] be absurd to suppose that drunkenness is more rife here than in the Mother Country [unclear: d] causes could be suggested for the discrepancy in the figure; among which I should [unclear: co] not be inclined to place the greater vigilance of our police. The number of [unclear: the] drunkenness in New Zealand last year was 4594. in 1893 it wan 5251-an average of [unclear: dd] week.