The Evening Star MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1871.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2733, 20 November 1871, Page 2

The Evening Star MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1871.

In small communities, difficulty is often felt in remedying an evil arising out of habits and customs which have grown up within them. Even plain speaking is attended with some risk, if vested interests are attacked. We do not believe, for instance, that in Ota go there is a man or woman who would not readily admit the multiplication of public-houses to be an evil, and yet the bulk of the people are someway or other so mixed up with friends who

have invested money in the liquor traffic, that the majority would hesitate to take a step towards stopping it, lest Mr or Mrs so and so should suffer. Such kindly feeling is, however, more honorable to the heart than to the head, and does not apply to the “ Per- “ missive Bill,” which has not been permitted, this session, to become law. It is one of those measures that have been remitted to the Country for consideration during the recess, and which demands the attention of everyone; because it is the first step towards rational legislation regarding drunkenness. A good deal of specious claptrap has been urged against it. One person seemed to think it good argument to say, “ You cannot make men “ sober by* Act of Parliament,” as if the Permissive Bill proposed to do such an impossibility. We are ready to admit that the argument was quite as sound as Mr Fox’s reply as reported in Hansard, where he is represented to have said, “ We cannot blind “ ourselves to the fact that we make a “ man drunk by Act of Parliament” — which is equally impossible. Such assertion and repartee may pass in the heat of a debate, but the country requires something more solid on which to base its judgment than smart rhetorical sparring. The questions for consideration are first, the reality of the evil; second, the means of its abatement or extinction. As to the first, there can be no doubt. There is scarcely a transaction in certain kinds of business, unconnected with the liquor traffic. It forms a heavy per centage upon a tradesman’s profit?; and entails an enormous tax upon the community, and misery upon families, if the united testimony of medical men, ministers of the gospel, and the police is to be believed. Crime, madness, poverty, and wretchedness, are amongst its results. Mr Fox's able speecli on the subject abounded with pertinent illustrations. But these are needless. There is not a family that has not in one form or other suffered from the false notions of hospitality engendered by it. There is not a newspaper issued without its tale of individual calamity or degradation through it. The evil therefore may be assumed without fear of contradiction, and the only question for the country to consider, is how to reduce it to its lowest point, consistently with justice to those who hare entered into the trade under the conditions of existing laws to supply present demands. As a first step in this direction, the Permissive Bill proposed during the past session, provided for placing the power to grant licenses in different hands from those who now wield it—in fact, in the hands of the people themselves. It was not proposed to interfere arbitrarily with houses already licensed, but to put a check upon the power of Justices of the Peace to licence more. It is time, in fact, that such transactions as have occasionally been enacted even in Dunedin should be rendered impossible. Mr Fox remarked very forcibly upon the necessity there is for taking the power to grant licenses out of the hands of the Bench of Justices, and confining it solely to the Stipendiary Magistrates. Illustrative of the necessity for this change, he gave an instance of a flagrant abuse of this power by a Bench of Justices at Wanganui, which is too striking to be omitted : The case to which I refer is that of a very frightful crime committed in this Province a short time ago, by a publican who, for certain reasons—the main one being, I believe, to cheat the insurance office out of its policy —wilfully burned his house down, and was the means of causing the death of one unfortunate fellow-creature, and nearly the death of three others, who only narrowly escaped. This publican was tried for that crime in this city and was convicted of murder. Well, while that man was lying in Wanganui gaol, waiting to be removed to Wellington to take his trial for the crime, and after the whole of the evidence in the case had been gone through, he was allowed, by the licensing bench, from his cell in the prison, with the crime hanging over his head, to present to them a petition for the transfer of the license of <h(- burni-dowr house, even ;.heu Miii.ilde uig hi its mins, and still recking wi'.h ihf. blood of his victim—he was allowed to present his petition for the transfer of that license to his own brother ; and although the police remonstrated against it, and declared that the brother had formerly occupied a public house, and had conducted it so badly that he was not a fit person to whom to grant a license, yet, under all these circumstances, two Justices of the Peace actually renewed the license, and transferred it to the brother of the criminal who in a few days afterwards was convicted. Wc have no doubt every Licensing Bench in the Colony could furnish corroborative testimony. Sometimes friendship, sometimes remote self-in-terest, sometimes political partisanship, or may bo political ill-will, induces Justices of the Peace to consent to be made tools of. instances could be given where chief magistrates of municipali ties could forget the dignity of their office, and become units of packed benches. This is an abomination that should not be tolerated, and one which the Bill proposed to abolish. The remedy was simple and two-fold. First, no fresh license was to be granted unless twothirds of the inhabitants, male and female of a licensing district, consented | , to the establishment of a now public 1

house amongst them. Secondly, us before stated, the power of granting licenses was proposed to vest in the stipendiary resident magistrate only. Were it not that past experience proves that teetotallers write letters too long for insertion, we should bo glad to throw our columns open to correspondence on so important a subject. We may remind them that such prolixity is unfair to the newspaper asked to insert such letters, to the public, be cause they monopolise space to the exclusion of other matters of interest, and to the cause itself, for comparatively few persons read them. If our correspondents will try to be short and to the point, we believe great benefit may be derived from public attention being given to the subject, and we shall therefore be glad of an intelligent discussion of it. Let it be remembered it is not tectotalism, but the Permissive Bill. ! I I j I