The Gothenberg System.

Mr. T. P. Whitaker, M.P., speaking at a great public meeting at Manchester Free Trade Hall, said; —" I have one thing to say to some of those people who are giving us so much advice, especially to those who ask us to establish this Gothenberg system. Let us see to it that we maintain a clear hold upon this principle, that what good has been done in Sweden and Nor-way has been by cutting down facilities for obtaining liquor, The good that has been accomplished there has been by closing public-houses, find shortening the hours of sale, and thus diminishing the facilities for obtaining drink. We have no proof what-ever that any good has resulted in either Sweden or Norway from the management of this trade by public companies or the management of public-houses by special men. We find that results equal to anything that has been secured in the towns where the trade is under company management—equal, nay superior-have been secured in the country districts where the company management did not exist at all. When you recognise this fact, that in Bergen they have only thirteen shops in a population of 33,009—or one to every 4,000 people-when you recognise that these places are only opened at 8 in the morning, and closed again at noon; that they are not opened till, half-past 1, and close again at half-past 7 in winter and 8 in summer; that they are closed practically all day on Sun-day, and at 5 o'clock on Saturday night and before public holidays, and on public Holidays altogether, you will see that you have got an instalment of restriction and prohibition which would work wonders in this country, and which will account for what is going on there. Don't get led away with the idea that the putting of the Liquor into other hands will do any good. If you were to put a Bishop into a cathedral find allowed him to sell drink there, that drink would produce the same results those who took it."

The Gothenburg System has been worked on the most improved lines in Norway. And yet, under the Direct Veto-Bill which recently passed in Norway, six towns, in which liquor companies' live years' privileges to sell intoxicants expired at the end of last year, voted for absolute Prohibition, when a poll was taken under the new Act. Every man and woman 25 years of age had a right to vote.

"A little farm well tilled,
A little wife well willed;
Their good effects can all be killed
By a little corn distilled."

Hon. Neal Dow, so long Governor of the State of Maine, says that the Prohibition law now annually saves to the people of that State £5,000,000. After thirty years of Prohibition in Maine, in 1884, when Blaine had 13,000 majority, the people unheld Prohibition by a majority of 47,000.