464 INTEMPERANCE AND INSANITY 



before the Royal Canadian Commission, " When I was Mayor 

 (1851) every man who indicated he was drunk was arrested, but 

 now they do not do that unless the man is noisy and disturbing 

 the peace." Another witness, a " Past Most Worthy Patriarch of 

 the Sons of Temperance," on being told that evidence had been 

 given that men drunk but not disorderly were not arrested, and 

 that in the preceding year " men shook their fists in the face of the 

 Police in Portland, and dared them to arrest them," said, " I have 

 no doubt of it." " And that would naturally reduce the number 

 of arrests very largely in the city of Portland ? " " Yes." l The 

 following sums up the case very fairly : " Every word of Mr Morris' 

 (Rev. Phillip H.) arraignments of the prohibitory law is true. He 

 might have made it much stronger and still kept within the borders 

 of truth .... Prohibition has remained upon the Maine statute 

 books for half a century, for the single reason that it has never 

 been enforced. One year of genuine enforcement, and it would be 

 abolished as soon as the legislature could be got together . . . 

 ' Make the law respected where it is a law,' said Mr Moore. There 

 is the solution. Make the law respected, and everybody except 

 the theorists who now sustain it will demand its repeal." 2 



760. The evidence concerning the failure of prohibition and 

 local option in other parts of the United States, in Canada, and in 

 Australasia is similar in kind and quite as conclusive. Of Canada, 

 the Report (1895) of the Royal Commission says, " in short the law 

 as an aggressive weapon has been abandoned." In Australia one 

 ' town,' the Moonta mines township, is said to be under ' prohibi- 

 tion.' Another, Mildura, has closed its public houses, but alcohol 

 is sold in clubs. " There is no haughty exclusiveness about these 

 clubs. The members appear to be anxious to extend the right 

 hand of good fellowship to all comers, so that no man need go 

 athirst." 3 New Zealand has a law of local option. At the election 

 of 1905 * no license ' was adopted by six out of sixty-five districts. 

 It has been in operation longest in the Clutha district, and the 

 King country, the inhabitants of which are aborigines. Its success 

 may be gauged by the following : " The Maori chiefs in the King 

 country, New Zealand, have asked the Government to substitute a 

 limited licensing system for the prohibition which is in force at 



1 Quoted by Rowntree & Sherwell, op. cit., p.i6o. 



* Biddeford (Maine) Daily Record, April 24th, 1899, quoted by Rowntree & 

 Sherwell, op. cit., p. 198. 



3 The Report to the Victorian Board of Public Health, by Dr Robertson, quoted 

 by Edwin H. Pratt. The Licensed Trade, p. 141 (London, Murray). 



