THE LICENSING COURT.

Evening Star, Issue 4314, 23 December 1876, Page 4

THE LICENSING COURT.

To the Editor, Sir, — I read with interest the leading article in your paper recently, with examples anent the (in your opinion) unjust action of the Licensing Court at its last quarterly session. As a constant reader and regular subscriber to your paper for a considerable time, I have frequently remarked a most liberal tone, as well as an advocacy of mea-. inres feuding to benefit humanity, whether preventative or curative, in your articles. Now the action of the Licensing Bench was a preventative one, as all will acknowledge, and many of us say beneficially preventative; but you cited Mr White’s case to prove that it was prejudicially preventative. That your inferences are mistakenly made I will endeavor to show, if you will kindly bear with me. Now I nee not the great necessity existing for a refreshment inn to accommodate travellers. The house is too near town for such, and no bond fide traveller could be benefited by an inn ten minutes by rail, or twenty minutes ride at most from the city; or, take a traveller from Port Chalmers, should he so far pass the “halfway” in his journey as to reach Havensbourne, say on horsebacK or on foot, he would surely be better abe in mind and body to finish his journey if he did not take “ a liquor ;” he has a lonely, narrow (and to a weary man at all inebriated) dangerous road to travel across Pelichet Bay. Again, the liquor laws, as at present made, are very stringent for the regulation of tho traffic (and there is oft-proven necessity for it), I therefore take it that when Mr White was legally opp.osed on his first application, and a strong petition sent in against his license, the Bench could not well grant him it until a change took place in the opinions sf Ravensbourniansandßothesayites. Yesterday, we found a householder- not a property owner, I believe—signing himself backwards, and writing some nonsense about putting ‘ ‘ Matau” on his beam ends, apparently to prove to “Matau’’that the inhabitants of Ravensbourne would resist the temptations of drink the better if the same were in their midst. W hy, sir, some who now manage to get home sober (none can deny) will be found occasionally at midnight or sunrise sobering down under a hedge or amongst the scrub ; and if this can be avoided in half-a-dozen cases—a month even—look at the adflammation on chest or lungs so caught, or from D.T.’s in one or two cases, together with a few drunken brawls and much maudlin blasphemy, aud the avowed necessity of keeping up a lock-up, with a constable, sufficient to overbalance L 3,000. What is a man’s soul worth ? The L 3,000, as one of the Bench remarked, is so far not wasted ; the house is good and the land is good, aud if Mr White can be persuaded to go in for making it a good boarding-house and restaurant he will encourage the influx of far more respectable settlers into the township than he could by the other course. The writer Yelroc, in your issue of yesterday, indulges in a personal style of invective which can never decide any question. Let “Matau” rest, if he will; it matters not though even “on his beam ends.” Consider and decide upon the arguments and facts enunciated, and not the writer, I crave the same indulgence for myself.—l am, &c., Rothesay, December 22. Don Carlos.