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Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 815, 1 February 1877, Page 2

It seems that, not very long ago, special instructions were issued by the Government to the effect that publicans’ licenses were to be made payable to the various Collectors of Customs throughout the colony, for the purpose, we presume, of the amounts they re*

present being placed to the credit of the Colonial Treasury. Looking at the provisions of some of the new enactments, upon which the new state of things is based, it appears to us that the legality of so appropriating the funds in question is, to say the least of it, very doubtful. By the Abolition of Provinces Act, 1875, which came into force on January Ist, 1877, all licenses and fees specially named —including publicans’ licenses —payable under Provincial Ordinances, became the property of the Borough or County, as the case might be, where the same might be raised or issued, and in the case of selling or making spirituous or fermented liquors, chargeable under any Act of the General Assembly, the same are to be paid over in the same manner as if they were payable under the old Provincial Ordinances. The Financial Arrangements Act, 1876, confirms the Abolition of Provinces Act in this respect. If our reading of the statutes in question is correct, instead of their going into the vast depths of the Colonial chest, the license fees for all publicans’ licenses, as well as the £1 per license chargeable under the Act of . the General Assembly called the Distillation Act, should be paid into the accounts of the Municipalities or of the Counties, which alone are entitled to receive them. No notification, that we are aware of, has been made by the Colonial Government that it intended making necessary arrangements to have the monies, so ordered to be received by the Collectors of Customs, transferred to the local bodies to which we have made reference.