Correspondence.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 208, 4 March 1895, Page 2

Correspondence.

THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM. TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAR. Sar, — A local in your issue of Saturday last, in making mention of the Gothenburg system of liquor selling, says that the mixed nature of our population constitutes a barrier to the introduction of the system into New Zealand. Surely tbe opponents of the Gothenburg system have but feeble ammunition when they use the above. In England, notwith- j standing that the [immense majority of the population is of one nationality, we know there are large colonies of French, Germans. Italians, and other foreigners, constituting surely something more formidable in the matter of admixture of race than we have in our land. Yet, do not the master political minds of England look to find in the application to that country of the Gothenburg principle a remedy for the present unsatisfactory economic position of the liquor trade '? Dr Jayue, Bishop of Chester, one of tho most prominent members of the Episcopal bench, has tried for some years past to establish the principle from his seat in the House of Lords. He has been fighting not without some measure of success, i'or the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlaiu, in his policy already put forward for the impending general electiou, has incorporated, as number one of his projected reforms, the " Municipal Monopoly of Public Houses." Further, Lord Salisbury and the Duke of Devonshire have anuounced their satisfaction with Mr Chamberlain's policy, so that, on the next accession to coutrolling political power of the Conservative party in England, we may look for the interesting sight of an extreme Radical reform from a somewhat unexpected source. There are many reasons why the municipal control of the liquor trade should not be a success, but the Gothenburghers have done well in shewing that the sale of liquor can be carried on in an eminently satisfactory matter after the killing of the individual interest. What is wanted, the wide world over, is such a control of the liquor trade as would secure the vending of liquor of good quality under such restrictions as would ensure not as now a loss, financial and moral, to the community, but on the contrary a financial and educative gain. Whether such control be municipal, provincial, or national, is a more or less subordinate detail. In any case the enforcement of the law could be secured. I am, etc., Hr.i'.v. Feilding, March Ist, 18!>2.