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Gisborne Times, Volume IX, Issue 917, 16 June 1903, Page 1

SOME AUOKLAND OPINIONS

A N.Z. Herald reporter interviewed a number of gentlemen on the question of the proposed abolition of elective licensing committees. Representatives of the brewing interest preferred not to give expression to any opinion until it was known what the Premier’s proposals really are. 13ut those on the temperance side expressed themselves in strong opposition to the change proposed. Mr George Fowlds, M.H.R., said he was a democrat in politics, and carried his democracy all through—he was prepared to trust the people even when he thought them to be wrong. If Mr Scddon had got tired of trusting the people, and wanted to hand over licensing matters into the hands of magistrates, he could go his own road, and Mr Fowlds would go his. He (Mr Fowlds) knew too much of the character of some of the,magistrates to trust them with any functions properly belonging to the people, lie gave as an example of the violation of local opinion strongly expressed the Maungaturoto ease. Now that the boot Was getting on the other loot in regard to licensing matters, the position had ail of a sudden become intolerable, and that portion of local government was to be wrested from the people’s hands. “ But I don’t think it is likely to come off,” added Mv Fowlds, with emphasis. Mr Wesley Spragg said that the proposal was outrageous, and was a sorry .comment on Mr Seddon’s repeated declaration that he was willing to trust the people. He had noticed that while the elective licensing committees were only called upon to grant licenses they were to be trusted, hut now that the trend of public opinion was the other Way, they were not to be trusted to administer the law. His opinion was that the magistrates were not to be trusted to register Ihe public will to the .same extent that the committees were, lie did not think that Mr Scddon, with his acknowledged power of dominating men and things, had the slightest chance of carrying such a manifestly retrograde through the House. Indeed, he was astonished that the Premier had even dared to suggest it. The recent elections had in almost every case, bound members to retain the rights of people to control the liquor traflie in the interests of the people, and members generally were not likely to forfeit the trust which the people had put in them. After a denunciation of “ the trade,” Mr Spragg said that many people who did not care a button for Prohibition would yet resist the change, because of their interest in democratic principles, which after all were dearer to the collective New Zealander than even the. existence of the popular tiedcion Administration. Mr Robert French declared that the pioposal was a peculiar one for a democratic leader to take up. To his mind it was a retrograde movement, especially from a Premier who was always saying, 11 Trust the people, trust the people.” When Mr .Scddon made his objection to licensing committees arrogating to themselves rights never contemplated by the Legislature, he was utterly wrong in his assumptions. It should be 'b,,rne in mind that the people had first voted for reduction of licenses before the licensing committees wero elected. As to partisan committees the Act did not now recognise such. Those returned were not partisans, but the people who elected them. Mr French, continuing, said that about thirty years ago we had the same class of licensing committees as the Premier now proposed to restore and this did not look like a forward measure. If. in the new proposals, the people generally were to he safeguarded by having larger powers conferred on them, it might minimise seme of the objections to the proposed change. He could not, he remarked, help regarding the Premier’s * pioposal as an anti-temperance one.