THE GLOBE. SATURDAY, MAY 15, 1880.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1942, 15 May 1880, Page 2

THE GLOBE. SATURDAY, MAY 15, 1880.

The progress of the question as to regulating the liquor traffic in England must not altogether be measured by the degree of success attained by its exponents in the House of Commons. If such degree were taken as a criterion, it might be argued that the movement was losing instead of gaining ground. In 1879 the majority against Local Option in tho House was 88, whereas in 1880 it had increased to 114. But if we examine into the causes which appear to have led to this result, we shall find va'.id reasons for the belief that the loss of ground is more apparent than real. The ruling spirit in the crusade against the present state of affairs is, of course, Sir Wilfred Lawson. Ho has clung to his annual proposals on the subject with a tenacity which the importance of tho point at issue may well warrant, hut which would probably havo annoyed that eisily bored audience, the House of Commons, if his effusions had not been enlivened by a ready wit and a liveliness with which hut few men are gifted. Ever since 1864, with a few years’ intermission when ho was out of the House, his annual jokes have been looked forward to by all sections of the House. But he has to a certain extent shifted his platform, and to this new basis is probably duo the lessened support which was granted to him this year, as compared with 1879. At the outset of his speech the jovial baronet led off with a statement that “ho had not in tho present case pressed his Bill because ho found it did not receive the favourable acceptance ho wished for it, but he had proposed a resolution instead,” which resolution ho wont on to admit was so framed as to “catch votes.” But the resolution contained in it germs which the House were not at all willing to see developed into facts. Firstly, there was the proposed reduction of the majority necessary to veto any license from twothirds to a hare majority; and secondly, there was the favour with which tho plebiscite was viewed by the mover, regarding which latter he is reported as having said that “he did not, as a matter of fact, wish for a plebiscite to settle tho matter, hut, if he did, he thought no great harm would result from it.” ¥e quote from a home paper in fuller illustration of the matter. “ Instead of a two-thirds majority of the ratepayers of any locality having the power to put a stop to tho sale of stimulants, it is now demanded that a bare majority shall have that power. Of course Sir Wilfrid Lawson does not deny that local option may mean popularlyelected licensing hoards, empowered to deal with the liquor traffic in the best "Uj —-, to suppose that he would be disappointed if the people had recourse to a remedy so constitutional. He is enamoured of tho principle of the plebiscite, tho favourite instrument of despotism, which Louis Napoleon found so serviceable for the overthrow of his country’s liberties. We regret this exceedingly. If he had defined local option—as he must have known nineteen-twentieths of intelligent Radicals have been defining it—as implying the supersession of our irresponsible licensing Magistrates by thoroughly representative local authorities, the experiment of the Gothenburg system, of free trade, and of no trade, might all have been tried with great advantage to the public, and by machinery familiar to freedom-loving Englishmen from tho dawn of their history. As it is, local option, as now defined, must he regarded as a treacherous jumble of representative and plebiscitary principles of local government.” But applying the state of affairs as existing in England to review tho licensing law now in force in New Zealand, it may he generally stated that the rock on which Sir Wilfred Lawson’s proposal was specially wrecked in March possesses hut few terrors to tho public hero. Neither the hare majority or the plebiscite frighten us. But the points that have, and probably will for many a long day prevent a solution of the question favorable—wo do not say to the ultras, for nothing short of total prohibition of the liquor traffic would please them—but to tho more moderate among the local option party, are tho compensation clauses and the fact that even tho moderates will take no energetic steps to construct a system that may in some way replace that which they propose to pull down. There are no evidences whatsoever that they possess any constructive faculty whatsoever. They can hardly point to a single spot in the inhabitable globe where the poorer classes are deprived of what is granted to the rich in the form of clubs. They ignore the instinct which leads all men to seek occasionally in the society of his fellows recreation after the day’s labor. Have any of our local movers in the matter bestirred themselves in tho direction of forming a working men’s club ? By due rights we hold that such clubs should exist in almost every district. They are tho means which would empty the publicans’ bars. The evil that our agitators seek to eradicate should be gradually pushed out of the way by a better system. To destroy it and leave a chaos is not a rational solution of tho question.