The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARR INCORPORATED The Evening News and The Morning News. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1871.

Auckland Star, Volume II, Issue 601, 13 December 1871, Page 2

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARR INCORPORATED The Evening News and The Morning News.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1871.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance. For the future in the distance, ' And the good that we can do."

Labt night's debate on the Licensing Act Amendment Bill was of no ordinary importance. After keen discussion, it was determined that woman has a right to raise her voice in preventing her home being turned into a hell upon earth, and herself and her children being at the' mercy of a man made beast at the hands of an unscrupulous vendor of ardent spirits. It would bo interesting if we could analyse the real motives thai; influenced

the action of the noblo eleven who asserted that wives and daughters and mothers should have no voice in staying the flood of ruin that is poured forth on a district from the doors of a disreputable taproom. Had their desires been gratified it would indeed be carrying the negation of " Woman's Eights" to an extent that should gratify the will of the veriest household tyrant. As to the plausible arguments advanced, that such, matters avoulc! pollute the pure minds of the gentler sex, that women would neglect their household "duties and loave their husbands without their dinners, that it would be the cause of household brawls if women should have the right to vote in vetoing the establishment of a drinking hell in their neighbourhood, these were, of course, mere flimsy disguises to real views and feelings, and we are really astonished that full grown men, arrived at the years of discretion, should have the. impertinence to insult the sober reason of sensible people with, such maudlin cant. Far more mauly to say that woman being dependent on man for her daily bread has no right to interfere with his daily drink ; and if under its influence he becomes playful in his cups, and smashes furniture aad beats and terrifies his wife and children, woman should bear with it in return, for the food he gives, and should notdaretointerferewith the jolly landlord who supplies his tipple. We would then respect the mauly. honesty of honorable members whatever we might ithink of their brutality. ■ But where hypocrisy and heartlessness are combined they deserve no respect; and the eleven members who used their efforts to take away from the women, of Auckland the right of saying whether or not a public house was required in their several neighbourhoods, should have won for themselves an unenviable notorety. The pure feelings of woman about which some cf these members were so sensitive, have probably sometimes to encounter somewhat ruder collision in lelatioii to intoxicating drinks than mere deliberations as to the signing of a petition. . If ever there was a question on which woman's mouth should not be shut it is the traffic in drink. From the domestic' misery which it entails there is for her no escape ; and when we see the heartlessness of some publicans, the cool deliberate indifference to consequences with which some of them day after day sell poison to the hopeless inebriate, within hearing of the wail of broken-hearted misery that 1 proceeds from the home made desolate, we cannot but rejoice that there was ■goodness and wisdom enough in the Council io place in woman's hand the ! power of bringing down the terrors of the law on the head of the unprincipled trader whom no other pica or power can move.