CLUB LAW.

Marlborough Daily Times, Volume III, Issue 250, 27 June 1881, Page 3

CLUB LAW.

A correspondent of the New Zealand Times thus discourses upon this subject: —W hat profundity of unwisdom there is in the recent decisions of the House of Representatives ns to clubs! Gulliver cid not discover the country of Duffcrdom ; but it must have existed, and our law-makers must be degraded descendants of its inane sages. Since the days of Ben Jonson there has been no social characteristic of the English people more distinctive than their " 'aptitude for establishing clubs and their love of club life. Addison delighted in them ; and some of his most charming essays in the Spectator deal with them, their members, and their ways. Dr Johnson prized them ; and when he started the Essex Head Club he invented a werd in order to declare of Boswell that he should be a member, because he was “a very clubbable man.” Of late years there lias in England been a wonderful development of the club system. The thing and the name are of English origin. The name, and at least an imitation of the thing, have penetrated into all lands. In England, in Canada, and in Australia, at the Cape and in India, throughout the United States clubs flourish. But certain of the elected as representatives in Parliament of the people of New Zealand, have now made the discovery that this singularly-marked social development of English-speaking folk everywhere is a thin" not to lie encouraged in our midst, but to be squelched under the heel of the policemen. Happy legislators ! With what wondering pity and contempt will you and your discovery be looked down upon. What delightful incongruities are associated with these discoverers and their discovery ! A combination of teetotallers and members of «< the great Liberal party ” find now that it is not desirable places for social life should *Texist without compulsory use of intoxicating drinks, that people who arc willing to club their moneys so as to maintain such nieces must he drunkards or rascals, and therefore, are fair game to be hunted by Tjolicc officers. Not long since, Sir George Grey encouraged the work g- men of Wellington to establish a club. The newspapers praised him and incited em. They have established a club which, according to all evidence, is creditable to e founders and to the city. Then the adva .tage of the club was recognised to be, that a place existed where its members could meet to read or to discuss without being compelled or tempted to drink. Now the members are told that whether they drink or not, they shall pay a license fee, and be put on the same police-haunted footing as a man who desires to sell liquor miscellaneously, in order to live upon the profits. In e .ch of the large towns of the colony there is at least one club, and against them no reproach can fairly or truthfully be urged. Apart from the pleasure they yield or the conveniences they provide for their members, every one of them is used so as to be a convenience to visitors to the colony as well as to colonists travelling within its bounds. In several cases heavy obligations have been incurred for suit* -Aable club-houses. But now the unsocial )>Solons of our representative Chamber say that such places are nuisances, or shall be treated assuch, by being inspected whenever a police officer through mistaken zeal or ignorant fervor of deteotivism, chooses to intrude himself. That some teetotallers should think their social camisole so sweetly pleasant a dress that it is desirable police officers should be employed to prison men in it, is not wonderful. Enthusiasm has swallowed up their reason. But that supposed politicians, who call themselves Liberals, should be willing to have license fees and police supervision used to gag and blind men, whose only faults arc that they have social instincts, and are willing to pay for harmlessly gratifying those instincts —that is a cause for wonder. It would, indeed, 'not be understandable, did one not know that loud protestors of love for freedom have often been grosser tyrants than the most feared autocrats. Nothing that has taken place in connection with pretended working-men’s clubs really justifies the recent votes in the House of Representatives. Granted that such houses are evils not to be tolerated, they could have been suppressed without stupidly outraging the social desires and habits of very considerable sections of the community. R.X.