HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 80, 1 October 1896, Page 2

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

Wellington, Sept 30. The Minister for .Lands brought up the report of the conference on the Government Advance to Settlers Act Amendment Bill. He explained that a compromise bad been effected with the Legislative Council by which advances would be made under the Act up to ±3000 instead of £4000 as passed by the House. —The report was agreed to. In the House, the Mining Companies Bill passed and the Inspection of Machinery Bill and the Canterbury College Bill were read a second time. In the evening Mr Seddon moved the second reading of the Alcoholic Liquors Amendment Bill in an hour's speech. He sketched the progress of the licensing legislation since 1890, and referred to the personal abuse indulged in by the j Temperance agitators during the recess. The policy the Government had pursued in the past on the liquor question would be continued. That policy was not to go to extremes, and not to permit harshness and injustice on any section of the community. If extremes were allowed, revulsion of feeling would set in, and reforms already carded would be swept away The present Bill was a fair corn promise and he hoped it would be passed so that there might be an end to the present state of unrest in regard to the Licensing question. In some respects he thought legislation had gone too far and the law should be amended in regard to prohibited persons, determination of hotel leases and compulsory endorsement of licenses for two years. Mr Lawry thought it should be put in the hands of the inmates of a lunatic asylum, because no country except a country of lunatics would submit to a proposal of that nature. It was the most abominable thing he had ever seen in his life, and it made one ashamed of the name of Englishman. It this Bill was passed, it would make the Britain of the South the laughing stock of the British nation. In Committee on the Alcoholic Liquors Bill a very long discussion arose oq Clause C, which empowers the Governor to appoint chemists to dispose of liquor. Considerable opposition was shown to the clause which, it was contended, placed enormous powers in the hands of the Government, and would tend to wholesale lying and contemptible subterfuge on the part of people who wanted to got liquor. After three hours' discussion on tne clause, Captain Eussel protested against the Bill being stonewalled i n this manner. Although he disapproved altogether of Prohibition, he objected to the Bill being stonewalled. Mr Collins said he and other members who were opposing the Bill were acting from conscientious motives. On a division the clause was retained by JJI to 12. Clause 7, which provides the Governor shall determine what liquors are to be manufactured, provoked another lengthy discussion, during which some of the speakers were warned that under the Standing Orders their remarks were tending to irrelevancy and tedious repetition. The discussion on this clause went on for hours, although the Premier appealed to the opponents of the measure to allow it to proceed as they had made a sufficiently emphatic protest against it. The Opposition to the Bill came from Messrs McLachlan, McKenzie Lawry, Collins, and Willis, who moved various verbal amendments in the clause all of which were negatived by large majorities, as also were several motions to report progress. No progress whatever was made with the clause, and eventually at 8 a.m. the motion to report progress was carried by 20 to 15. The House adjourned till 2.30.