The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1909-06-02

The Hawaiian Evangelical Associa
tian heard an address on The Liquor
Question last night by Hon. John G.
Woolley at Central Union church. The
meeting was presided over by Rev. 0.
H. Guliek, with Rev. Moses Nakuina
as Interpreter. Mr.. Woolley said:
Escaped convicts from one of the
penal settlements in Australia brought
! the liquor business into the Hawaiian
| Islands about hundred years ago.
These men and been found guilty OF
| crime in England and sentenced to be
| banished beyond the sea on the ground
| that they were not fit to be at large
! in the Land of their birth.
| In pursuance of that sentence they
had been driven, like dangerous ami
mails, on board of prisonships, carried
under guard to Australia, put to penal
servitude on a chain gang during the
day and locked up in cells at night.
Unfortunately for the Hawaiian
people, they escaped and made their
way to these Islands, where, as beftted
their character and their history, they
proceeded to open up the meanest line
| of business that perverted ingenuity
has ever devised-that of bruising the
sweet fruit of the earth, setting it
aside to purify, and then distilling
alcoholic drink from the death-sweat
of the good gifts of God.
The business SO established straigh-
way and steadfastly justified the moral
character of its authorship by produe-
ing other convicJs, and more convicts
| hot WORK
ed together or separately upon these
lovely shores.
There was Immediately great in
crease of quarrels and fighting. Whole
villages were submerged in drunken
ness and vice; and everywhere that the
convict merchandise extended quick
degradation followed in its train.
The seourges of measles, smallpox
cholera, were terrible in their day; but
J they ran their course anu ended in re
: covery or death But this convict dis
order neither got well nor Killed.
only made men crazy, cruel, quarrel
some, contemplate; and it went from
bad to worse.
5 Cholera tortured and killed only
those who had it; the convict sickness
7 tortured those who did not have it
When a man gets drunk, it is his wife
and his child that pay the bulk of the
penalty.
Thus the convicts laid the whole
community under tribute-the sick an(
the well, the foul and the clean, the
cruel and the gentle. The drink hat
probably made these fugitives from
justice what they were, and they pass
ed on the curse to the Hawaiians.
The great Kamehameha then wa:
King, and he was no soft-hearted mis-
sionary. Death did not make hin
afraid The sight of blood did no
make him sick But the convict cpl
demic made him anxious. The sight OF
his people, crazed and besotted by tn,
new disease, put him in fear.
When he realized what the matte
was, he placed the tabu ON the con
Wet product Then good health ant
: good order came again.
But not for long; he died soon after
ward, and his son called off the tabu
The new reign began amid scenes o.
drunken revelry and vice and crime
that baffled all description fit for de
, cent ears.
Since that time the seed sown by tht
convicts has never ceased to grow ant
ripen, to it's dreadful harvest. And il
all that hundred years that business
has done not one good thing for any
man or any family.
1t has filed the pockets of few
white men with unclean and uncon
seionable profits while riveting the iro1
collar of abject poverty on thousand:
of natives.
1t has clothed the wives of liquor
dealers in silk and fine muslin while
Continued on Page Seven.)