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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 77

Liquor Question

Liquor Question.

I next come to the liquor question. What do I mean by favouring Prohibition "as the ultimate ideal?" I mean favouring Prohibition if we can get it, and if we can get it without injury to those whom Parliament has for so many years allowed to engage in a business which it would suddenly stop. Failing this, or if the financial burden of compensation without revenue to the Government be thought too heavy, I favour the buying out of existing interests by governmental authority, and the running of the liquor trade as a Government monopoly—either colonial or local. A local government monopoly of the liquor trade has been operated for many years, with excellent results, at the large town of Gothenburg, in Sweden, and—I believe—in other places, and has come to be known as the Gothenburg page 12 system. Its superiority over the present system is obvious, if only from the fact that the interests of private individuals are no longer opposed to the public good. The Government or borough purveyors of liquor would be paid by salary and, therefore, rather be interested in selling as little liquor as possible, in order to have a minimum of work. It is like paying your doctor by annuity as long as you live, instead of by fee for work done. It becomes his interest to have you ill as seldom as possible, instead of as often as possible—in order that he may draw his annuity without doing more work for it than need be.