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Dunstan Times, Issue 786, 11 May 1877, Page 2

The question as to what right an Auctioneer possesses under Lis License, and whether that right is merely a local one privileging him to exercise his calling merely within the limits of a Borough nr a Comity as the case may be, in which he has taken out his License, from what we can clean, is one upon which some of the County Councils do not appear to bo particularly clear. At a late Meeting of the Waitak' Council, an instruction was issued to the County Solicitor to proceed against all Auctioneers selling in the County, but who had. paid their money to the Borough; next in suit follows Mr J. C. Brown, of the Tuapeka County Council who, according to the local journal, “remarked that he thought the Council was entitled to license fees taken out in municipalities —at all events to part of those fees. He instanced auctioneers’ licenses, as a case in point, and lemarked that auctioneers’ often held their sales within the comity boundaries, ami the county, therefore, should get the benefit of the licenses which entitled them to sell. There was one thing certain, he contended, that the Council could prevent the auctioneers’ selling in the comity unless they held a license issued by the county.” Section 23 of the Financial Arrangements’ Act, 1876, includes, as a source of Comity revenue, auctioneers’ licenses ; as docs also the Otago Local Revenues’ Ordinance, 1872, include auctioneers’ licenses as borough revenue ; but, as neither Act or Ordinance repeals the Licensed Auc ioneers’ Ordinance, ISG2, under which all such licenses are issued ; and further, as such Ordinance licenses the holder to act as an auctioneer within the Province of Otago, which, we take io means in any and every part of the said Province, wo must hold that the contention on the part of the Counties will be futile and of no effect. The license fee demanded is in all conscience heavy enough even with the right of exercising tiie privilege in ail parts of the Province, but to curtail that right to either a Borough or a County would be monstrous We do not blame 4he Counties for trvirm for the full share of the good things going with the view of increasing their revenue, as we are of opinion they will be aide to expend all that falls to their lot, but they will have to seek elsewhere than in Hie Boroughs, which bodies they will find but little inclined to give up any of their rights.