A QUESTION OF FRANCHISE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume I, Issue 34, 14 June 1907, Page 3

A QUESTION OF FRANCHISE.

. TO THE EDITOR. Sir—Before I redeem my promise that I would outline how, and why, the Rohe Potae -became delivered to the prohibition fanatic and his singular craze, I must devote another chapter to a summarisation of the principal reasons why I and every man, not afflicted with mental myopia, protest against the infliction upon us of his Utopian nightmare. (1) We are members of a nation which upon every available pretext shouts itself hoarse that its components " Never ! Ne-e-ever—will—be—-slaves !" (2) That I, and every decent man within the Rohe Potae, loathe and abhor drunkenness and debauchery, and by this protest neither invite, nor seek to introduce these excesses within its borders ; but because of the innumerable preventives extant against said excesses, without trenching upon privileges the moderate partaker of life's nutriments is by law and birthright entitled to, these ridiculous innovators, and pretended accelerators of millenial impossibilities, do forthwith cease to force them upon us;

and for their own and human charity's sake, do not further expose here their incr. dible i. norance.

(3) That to curtail the legitimate enjoyments of whatever race, colour, or calling, is an unwarrantable impertinence, and is indefinitely duplicated when imposed upon the greatest Empire builder and out-picket ci civilisation: A country's pic.neer, whose manifold disabilities inseparable from his mission ought to receive every indulgent consideration, and not as here, be singled out for pusillanimous experiment, espionage, and degradation; and that besides bein;. the harbinger of the ages to come, anc compelled to pay exorbitant freight; and taxes that these dictatorial autocrats may take their mighty ease in the surety that on the morrow beef, bread, and butter, will decorate their breakfast table, and-wool be fed and shorn to clothe them in fine raiment, I say, our noble pioneer refuses to be disfranchised by creatures to whom dungaree pants and clay-spattered clothes are a shuddcrsome abomination, and who would not share his hard life, even if their after-death paradise depended on the exchange ; and he hotly resents their dictation as to what he shall eat, drink, and be merry upon !—A presumption perfectly in line with artists the vanishing point of whose perspective ends in a cork!

It may be asked : " If you do not desire drunkenness, what are you clamouring for ? " To this I, and those with me reply : We seek to emphasise the principle : that, forming the advance shinnishers of the great industrial • army to follow, as we do, we shall be officered by commanders of oui; own selection, and not have thrust upon us the incompetent, and visionary : In other words that we have a voice in all that affects our requirements, as have our brothers and sisters in every other electorate, and shall have a vote of local option. Further, we absolutely object to have Order-in-Oouncil by-laws, which infringe the liberty inherent in every free man endowed with common sense forced upon us ; and resist an imposition which in other free lands would promptly invite righteous rebellion : We demand an abolition of the degrading inquisition whereby the privacy of our parcels and travelling receptacles may be tampered with by legal (?) authority: That further, .until we have decided by a majority vote whether a keg of beer, or spirits, for our own consumption shall be excluded from our settlements, the railways, which our taxes assist to build and maintain, shall bring to us unmolestedly such liquid nutriments when we deem we require them. We make this protest and demand not from any spirit of trivial or cantankerous oppositions ; but we recognise that if we allow these illegalities

to pass unopposed now, it needs no inspired prescience to predict that other vexatious restrictions will be shackled on our already heavily gyved wrists. And it will come to pass that when our best girl looks us hard in the eye wondering whether she dare kies us a rail-journey farewell, she will be an angered when she searches her inscrutable pockets and finds that a certificate to that end permitting has been left at home or mislaid ! This is not said in levity : we have read of the pharasaical Ghoul who obiected to the exposure of worldfamous art pictures, lest they attract and pervert the glass-pure mind of the street larrikin, who failed there ; but whose din;ry soul v/ill bo suffused with the nimbus of an unholy sanctimony when the knowledge that here in the Rolie Potae, every maggot, however obnoxious to common sense, _ may be imported and nurtured, and will hasten him hither toxic with joy that the Gods have spared hi in. one spot upon earth where to practise his eecentric gyrations. The aspect of how this prohibition affects the Maori I shall review later; but so much I may premise.—lf this alleged British subject objects to the importation of beer or spirits to HIS portion of this district, his objection must be sacredly sustained, and every care taken that the wastrel of his tribe cannot procure it; as even now he may not run by rail to Te Awarnutu and drink to repletion !! But of this also I shall say more in its place.—I am, etc., W.B.