RATHER SEVERE.

Evening Star, Issue 3485, 24 April 1874, Page 3

RATHER SEVERE.

To the Editor. Sir,—The Press being a medium for the expression of private and public opinion, I desire to pass a few remarks on the seeming injustice which appears to have been done by the Licensing Bench the other day. when application was made to renew the license of the City Buffet Hotel. It appears from the evidence that although thehotel had been well conducted for five years, the applicant was refused a license on the ground that there was no necessity for such a place in that locality, at the same time granting a license to Mr Dunning, only a few yards from the Criterion Hotel. Had Mr Allen been ordered to convert his singing-room into bed-rooms, no doubt he would willingly have done so—two bedrooms and a sitting-room being the requirements of the Act, according to Mr Bathgate's opinion, which I suppose is the law. Several other applicants, who had either been convicted or strongly suspected of improper conduct, were caationed, and their licenses granted. The refusal in Mr Allen's case seems to have been based on the theory that accommodation for the class in the habit of frequenting the City Buffet was hot necessary; or, in other words, those who like to smg or dance must go out of Dunedin to do so; at least so far as public places are concerned, unless it be for a moral concert, or a bal masque for charitable purposes. Every seaport has more or less amusements of the kind, and seafaring men as a rule prefer some Buch opportunity of giving vent .to their pent-up joy in being able to reaoh the land once more, happy and free from the dangers ot the sea. The bane ef society is the hypocrisy which clothes it and renders toleration impossible. Our neighbors who raise their eyes in holy horror at acts which they long to commit themselves, are unfit to be judges of the standard of morality, and no doubt the time will come when many things which are now condemned by bigotry and intolerance will be accepted as mere ebullitions of i nature, as necessary to the happiness of the individual as sunlight is to the vegetable world. The administration of pure justice is no doubt a different matter when we take into consideration the complex position of society, and the innumerable rights, social and selfish, winch are claimed by human beings living in an artificial state and governed by written laws which give to certain portions of society a right to retain that which' was gained by force and fraud, and make it criminal on the part of the weak to reclaim it Still, no doubc there are men (aad let us hope there are) who, in their capacities as judges ov<t the weakness and misguided passions of their fellow men, will not allow personal or selfish considerations to influence their decisions in all cases of equity,.and more especially in the cause of the weak, whose only hope in this life rests with such men. The standard of morality exists in no particular country, but in the conscience of every individual who has the reason to discern right from wrong. lam no advocate of grog-selling, nor do I hope to see much reIT. ?, * trade B0 morally questionable, until all governments cease to regard it as a source of revenue Wh<n they do this, then hypocntesof all denominations may justly be horrified at the immorality and crime it produces ; but never while benefit is derived from it legally, and ye sell during the week that which ye make criminal to drink on the Sunday. Strange justice, but true.—l am, &c, _ ~ . .. n . Blunderbuss. Dunedin, April 24.