The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1874-07-04

WE HAVE BEEN much interested during the
past week, in listening to the numerous current
remarks on the Distillery Bill, and we are
led to believe that most people who offer these
remarks on it have not taken the trouble to
read it. We are as earnest and jealous as
any one on the temperance question. This
paper has at all times, before it came under
it's present management, and not less since,
Leen a strong supporter of the Prohibition Law,
as it mas existed on our statute book for now
more than twenty years and we hope that
we shall continue to advocate every measure
and every tendency which may ward off the
evils of intemperance.
But let US examine some of the arguments
which we have heard this week against the
Bill, and see whether, in the language of the
street, they will hold water The first
argument, which is asserted with great emphasis,
is that no profit can be made out of distilIation.
Does it not appear a conclusive answer to this,
If one shall. say,-then there is nobody that
will undertake it or, if it shall be undertaken,
it will be dropped, and therefore certainly no
harm will come of the Bill. But, it is answered,
the small plantations will carry on the business,
and will sell to natives on the sly and they
will get the laborers away from the other plan
%tations, by giving them rations of rum /!
Truly, the race of g bugbears' is not extinct.
1t does not even diminish in number or in
the magnifcence Of the size of the breed. If
the small plantations can manufacture rum TO a
profit, it follows that there is some profit in
it, and it will be difficult to see why large ones
may not do so also. A man in the country could
not make Il very large profit by selling to his
few neighbors on the sly, and running the risk
not only Of the penalty for breaking the present
law regarding furnishing liquors to natives,
and the additional penalty of losing his license,
having to pay the penalty of his bond, suffering
confscation of his property, and standing n
prosecution for perjury to say nothing of the
absurdIty of any one deliberately debauching
his own men or suffering his neighbor to
debauch them for him. We would like TO see
a calculation of how much money any proprie-
tor could obtain-not make-but {" take in"
in a year, by selling raw liquors to natives,
under the foregoing circumstances. With re-
gard to getting hands away, it appears to be
forgotten that small plantations want but a
small number of hands, and no one is at
all anxious to obtain and pay any more hands
than he has 4 use for, therefore when he has
got hls iul complement his neIghbors are
welcome to all the rest, if they want them.
Again, it would seem as though q man who
is willing to break the law and get his neigh
boris hands away by giving them spirits, might
run less risk and accomplish his purpose much
cheaper by buying 4 dozen or two bottles OF
e square GIN" and then go into the business
quite as efectually on a less capital. There
is the utmost difference between the situation
of a person whose business 1t is to raise sugar
and make rum from the refuse, and one whose
business it is to sell rum by the glass. The
first cannot spare time from his own business
to 60 into the retail liquor business, whilst, as
indicated above, it is the business of the other
to sell to whoever will buy. No people are
so much interested in the sobriety of the native
population as the planters, on all accounts, and