THE ORMONDVILLE LICENSING COMMITTEE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3722, 20 June 1883, Page 3

THE ORMONDVILLE LICENSING COMMITTEE.

[To hie Editor of TnE Daily Telegraph.] Sir, —There has been a good deal said about the inconvenience to travellers, &c., caused by the refusal of the Norsewood Licensing Committee to grant Mr Stevens a license for the house he occupies at Jlakatoku, most of which is simply nonsense. How is it that these people who pretend to sympathise so much with the travelling public never expressed any sympathy until nearly two years after the railway reached Makatoku ? No, nobody cared a cent how the travelling public fared then nor up to tho time those heavy contracts were offered. Then some people became sympathetic all of a sudden, and thought it a pity the bushmen and laborers did not have some quick way of swopping cheques for sore heads. At the present time pherp arc already three hotels in this noighbourhord, jirainjng j;he district of probably about £25 per day. Some pepplp have a heap of sympathy with the travelling public, if we believe all we hear, but let any well disposed person see the numbers of men and youths hanging around these country hotels day and. night, half drunk, playing cards, talking big, &c., and meet them going along tho roads riding rocklessly, and whooping like Cheroku Indians, or notice the poor wives and children of drinking men waiting and weoping outside at late hours, with neither sufficient food nor clothing at home for ordinary comfort, and then say whether it is not better to allow the travelling public to rough it a little for a short time. It will now be but a short time before the railway will be extended to a point at which hotel comforts are in readiness. We have hotels enough, and the majority of the people here know it, and do not desire any more. Tho Licensing Committee did not grant any ono a license in this district, and were there no hotel at Makatoku, and they obliged to

grant a license, they certainly would give Stevens a preference over some who have them, so those blaming this Committee need not do so, because they.know the difference between a qualified person and the opposite.—l am, &c, Bush. Ormondville, June 19, 1883.