Correspondence.

Hawke's Bay Times, Issue 1579, 26 May 1874, Page 230

Correspondence.

~—— ■ ■ ■■- 7 ■~~-~*~-^ 83T We invite temperate ditctution in thit column on all mattert of public interests but do not identify oumlvet with the opinion"! of Correspondent!. The Pohui Licence. [Wc have been requested by the Hon. W, Fox to publish the following cones* pondenceQ— Mr W. B, Hill of Pohui to the Hon, William Fox. Pohui Hotel, 2nd May 1874. Mr Fox. Sir,—So you have succeeded at least in one case in your efforts to obtain a refusal from the Licensing Board, to grant a renewal. May it strengthen your ease on a Rechabite as well as a political footing, for I firmly believe one is subservient on the other. | I used to think that one of the qualifications of an M.H.R. was,—that he should be a gentleman at least, but I am evidently in error.. j I wonder if you will ever come up this way again and require accomodation at Pohui, and should you come and find no license, have to pay ten shillings a meal, same for beds, other charges pro- ; : portionately dear, how will that suit you? or even worse—told to sleep in the fern, for the owner of an unlicensed house can refuse whoever he likes. Instead of that, picture to yourself what I did for you when you came to my house ;.in the first place, when you arrived I gave oats upon a constable's requisition which I had no need to do, and for which I do not receive one penny, as in such cases they are returned by the contractor. In the second place, you know well how full my house was on that night of my regular customers, and for whose sake I could, if I had liked, not given you any sort of accommodation, telling you I was full up (it had* been better for me had I done so); instead of that I turned my servants out of doors, and slept with j several others on the floor in order to make room for your party. On the night in question, the men were all sky-larking one with the other, but no one was drank ; they were just merry, a state I believe some people cannot stop at, they must be ' either total abstainers or drunkards. I knew what you meant in your letter about the language used by some of the men, and I fully believe you knew who made use of it, and it was through giving you accommodation that the said language was uttered, as I had to put three A.C. men in one bed in the next room to you, and I was very sorry at the time that they annoyed you, and did my best to prevent it. So could I turn your orderly out of the house and leave you to take care of yourself and lady together with your helpless nephew. Yoii said next morning to me you liked to see men amuse themselves so long as they were not drunk ; and if you say that my house was dirty or stinking you simply tell a lie, for it was certainly no dirtier than the presence of so many men on the occasion would make it, and I can safely assert that ray house is the cleanest house on the line; ft is very well for you—a fanatic in the cause of teetotalism, to mane all sorts of charges against it, but you will find that the voice of the general public will have -more weight than your letter, and that s licence will still exist id Pohui, as there are a number of influential gentlemen who have kindly promised to interest themselves in the matter, as many of thera know from personal ejfperienpe how the house was conducted \ and had you published the names, of the houses you complained of, they would have appeared at the Licensing meeting on my behalf. Hoping you will never have more to complain of than you have had on this matter, I am Sir, yours obediently, Wm.B.Hill. The Hon. W. Fox to Mr W. B. Hill, (Per favor of the Hawke'i Bay Times.) Sir,—l have received your letter dated " Pohui Hotel, 2nd May, 1874." I have occasionally received letters of a similar rude aud unmannerly character, and have consigned them to my waste paper basket without a reply. In the present case, how-' ever, I shall send yours to one of the local papers for publication, in order that the public may judge whether you are the sort of person to whom a licence to keep a public house ought to be granted. Such a course may also protect me from being subjected to a similar insult on some other occasion. Through the same channel I shall now offer a few words in reply. 1. To my complaint of want of accommodation you reply that you had put yourself to great personal inconvenience to •■ accommodate me. I can only say that'if it were so I pity those who may have been obliged to use the accommodation ordinarily afforded by you. It must have been of a very sorry character indeed. 2. As regards the charge of dirtipesg. you s.ay ypur house was full of Armed Constabulary, and there was no more dirt then might have been expected from their presence. As the Constables did not sleep in my bed-room, I do not understand how their presence could excuse the conditio in which it was; nor can they beheld responsible for the army of fleas which I found domiciled in the bed. I have not disputed that your house might be the cleanest on the line. That is very possible, but it might still be exceedingly dirty— 1 and certainly was so when I slept in it. 9 3. You have very adroitly based your ■ attempted justification jn fhe cpwdeq 1 state pi yquE house' on thp night slopped there on my road up. You have 1 entirely omitted all allusion to the fart M that I called there again five weeks after- ■ wards on ray return journey, at half-past ■ nine in the morning." What I tlien'fiPrß countered, was as follows;—My' horses ■

had had nothing to eat Bince the afternoon of the previous day at Tarawera. You had not a single feed of corn, bran, or hay to give them. Wo had ourselves ridden fifteen miles without breakfast. That which we got in your house was so bad that we could scarcely "eat it, notwithstanding we were very hungry. Drunken men were reeling ,about although it wtos only half-past nine in the morning, and one of them whom I beard addressed as 1 " Shoemaker," had a pair of new black eyes, and was howling and blaspheming in front of the house, entirely unnoticed by you. J was obliged to request you to remove him to some place where his in- ' decent and beastly conduct might not meet the eye of my wife who was sitting in the room in front of which he was exhibiting. So far as your house was concerned, it was this man's language and not that of the Constabulary on the previous occasion (and from whom I heard none of the sort,) that I had in my mind when 1 complained to the Licensing Bench. On this occasion your house was not specially crowded, nor were I and my party expected ; and I had, I suppose, a specimen of its usual condition. If it was gnch it certaiuly ought to be suppressed, and the Licensing Board have done no more than their duty. You appeal to " the voice of the public," and to" certain influential gentlemen in the neighborhood" against my representation. I can only say that before I started on my journey I wrote to a friend who had more than once travelled on the line himself, to ask what accommodation I should find. He replied that the whole of the houses on the line were " simply beastly"—quite unfit for a lady, and recommended me carrying a tent rather than being obliged to put up at them. This then was the reputation your house had in "influential quarters" at Napier. "While on the journey I heard the same from other "influential" persons, who knew your house well. Ido hope if yon apply for a licence again, as you hint will be done, the Bench will take the trouble to ascertain the truth from those who may have experienced your tender mercies as a recipient of travellers and their horses.

6. You mention that if I again come to Pohui I shall probably find an unlicensed accommodation house where I shall be charged ten shillings a meal, or worse still, be told to sleep outside in the fern. I have stopped the night at a good many unlicensed accommodation houses in New Zealand, and been much more comfortable than at any up country licensed house, and been charged quite as reasonably. Why should the keeper of such a house tell travellers to sleep in the fern? He keeps his house for the accommodation of travellers, and is glad to Bee them. I can understand a publican who makes all his money by his bar, disliking to see a bond fide traveller who does not drink, and, if he dared, telling him to camp in the fern. But why the keeper of an unlicensed house should drive away this sort of customer for whom he keeps the house, I cannot understand. I have however slept in the fern many a time in my life ; and would gladly do so again rather than spend the night in one of the low drinking houses which disgrace this Colony. I should at least have a clean bed, though it were of fern; I should have no fleas for bedfellows ; I should have fresh air instead of an atmosphere rodolent of rum and tobacco; I should be spared the blasphemous and obscene voice of the poor victim of the grogseller; I should not have to wituess the staggering drunkard waking up after his night's orgies, his face covered with blood, his clothes in rags, his eyes in mourning, his hat withouta crown, and his pocket without a penny, howling for more drink, and getting it too, Such as on more than one occasion met my gaze on turning out to greet the early day during my late journey to the interior. In conclusion, I regard your letter as an attempt to intimidate me (and others) from the exercise of a legitimate constitutional right—that of complaining to the constituted authorities against a public nuisance. There are some persons, and I am afraid even some magistrates, who neem to stand in awe of the publican. You will find that I am not one of them, and will not be intimidated by a course of insolent letters from the performance of a duty or the exercise of a, right. I am, sir, William Fox,