Liquor Revenue a Loss.

It is generally admitted that the indirect Cost of Drink to a country, in crimes, loss of time, efficiency, health, competence, commerce, and life, is at least equal to the direct cost-It is an under estimate that eighty millions have been spent in New Zealand upon Drink, and probably some-thing approaching twenty millions of revenue (Colonial and local) have been derived from it.

The direct expenditure, unlike that upon food, furniture, wholesome recreation, or a dwelling house, is wholly a loss to the purchaser. The indirect coat to the State cornea ultimately to be borne by the individuals of the State; so that to get twenty millions of revenue the State as a whole has been involved in an indirect loss of eighty millions, and the Liquor Consumers in a direct loss of eighty millions more, the whole one hundred and sixty millions being absolutely unproductive, except of untold demoralisation and misery, and the creation of a wealthy and powerful Liquor oligarchy to corrupt commerce, the public press, the Legislature, and the public administration, in favour of the interests of their devastating trade. Evidently one hundred and sixty millions of money, not merely wasted, but made to produce not alone demoralisation, but greater poverty than if it had been thrown into the sea, is a very dear exchange by the people for twenty millions of revenue.

And this leaves out of account, and therefore out of the cost involved, the enormous wealth that a reasonable and reproductive use of this one hundred and sixty millions of money would have produced. Even the labour it has employed of maltsters, draymen, barmen, policemen, judges, gaolers, and a host beside, has involved the State in the loss of the enormous wealth that would have resulted from a reproductive employment of all this brain and sinew; while the enormous quantity of grain destroyed to make the Drink has both increased the cost of bread to the people, and through the Drink expenditure diminished their capacity to purchase it.

The supposition that the Public Treasury (Colonial or local) would suffer by the suppression of the Liquor Traffic is well enough known to be a fallacy assiduously propagated to defend the interests, not of the people, but of the Liquor Vendors.

A man in this Colony who kept both a public house and a store, finding a customer owed £14 for stores, said to the storeman :—"What can I say to this fellow, for he spends all his money at the bar? " It paid to cancel the store debt, and take the enormous profits from [unclear: the] man's continual drinking But if one man keeps the bar, and another keeps the store, how does this arrangement suit the storekeeper ? It means that he must increased his prices to cover the loss from this source—in other words, that all his customers must be indirectly taxed to cover it. Thus the revenue derived by any district from license fees has to be vastly more than paid by the people of the district in the necessarily increased cost to them of every description of goods.

When a locality or a country adopts Prohibition its pauperism disappears, and those who wore formerly indigent [unclear: become] possessed of the means of contributing of public demands; thus at the same time diminishing taxation and increasing the number of those who share in the payment of it.

Who can estimate the material loss and other ills for which an expenditure of [unclear: over] eighty millions upon Drink in the New Zealand has been responsible ?—the loss to themselves, their families. And the comunity, from the moral mental and page 19 [unclear: ysical] deterioration, and incapacity [unclear: proved] in the victims of the Drink—some [unclear: them] persons of the highest capacity [unclear: promise]before "being victimised ?—the [unclear: debts] and crippled commerce, the loss [unclear: time] by workers, of employment for [unclear: men], and of wealth to the community, [unclear: which] would have resulted from the amount [unclear: reproductive] labour which the Drink has [unclear: ted]?—the loss of properties, the [unclear: cies], the grinding poverty, the [unclear: Efy] dissensions, misery and desertions, [unclear: Sacrifice] of personal honour by women [unclear: gir], the debauchery of youths and the crime and imprisonments, the [unclear: Cjrr] and suicides, and deaths by ex-[unclear: ty] disease, accident, and violence ?

Is it at this cost we are to maintain [unclear: a] ever blighting and withering traffic in [unclear: ak] for the sake of either local or [unclear: tal] revenue, or both, which, whether, recognise it or not, always costs us, [unclear: ly] or indirectly, even in hard cash, at many times what itself amounts to ?