CORRESPONDENCE THE PROPOSED LICENSING COMMISSIONERS.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2451, 13 February 1882, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE

THE PROPOSED LICENSING COMMISSIONERS.

To the Editor of the Globe. Sib, —Four correspondent “Ballot Box,” besides being amusingly ignorant with regard to Scriptural facts, appears to me to be laboring under soma very strong emotions, because of the manner in which the nomination of the licensing committees for Christchurch has taken place. I was not aware, till I read the letter in question, that Pilate and Herod were on terms of intimacy; in fact, I never knew that their existence was contemporaneous, till I read Saturday’s Globe. I suppose, however, it’s all right; else why did “ Ballot Box ” liken the licensed victuallers and tern-, perance reformers to Pilate and Herod P Had he have likened the publicans to Herod, and the Good Templars to Pilate, I should not have objected ; neither should I have referred to the fact that Pilate lived some thirty years after Herod, and consequently was not on visiting terms with the slayer of juvenile Jews. However, these are mere matters of detail. With reference to the manner in which the publicans and total abstainers arranged the nomination of five gentlemen to constitute the licensing committees for the four wards of the city, I must, in opposition to “ Ballot Box,” express my general satisfaction. It’s a good sign to see the lion and the lamb lying down together in peace. When the two extreme parties in the community can agree as to the selection of a licensing committee, it does seem passing strange that the “ moderate ” middle party should feel hurt. Not that I would, for a moment, wish the largo body of “ moderates ” to be precluded from putting forward gentlemen in whom they have confidence. By all means let them nominate as many as can be persuaded to stand for election—the more the merrier, and the larger the choice ! Of course, I don’t suppose anyone but “ Ballot Box” regards the compromise on the part of the licensed victuallers and temperance societies as being a dictatorial action at all. What they desired was—first, that the election should not fall through ; and second, that any and all party feeling might be avoided, and the elections contested in a perfectly friendly spirit on both sides. It speaks well for the “ two extremes” that they have been enabled to meet, and I hope that when Mr “Ballot Box” has read his Testament a little more, and finds out all particulars about Pilate and Herod, that he will bo imbued with a more charitable disposition, and not run away with the idea that the general public are to be debarred from having a say in the election of the licensing committee. Yours, &c., PAX.

[The anxiety of our correspondent as to the election “ falling through,” if the two bodies had not taken the step they have, is best answered by the fact that the Governor has power to nominate in the event of such mischance.—[Ed. Globe.]