REPLY TO “ FOXTON REST DENT.”

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 3495, 11 March 1905, Page 3

REPLY TO “ FOXTON REST DENT.”

TO THE EDITOR OP THE MANAWATU HERALD. Sin, —As, regards the occihferice in Main sti'cet on Saturday night, to which I referred in my former letter, H seems evident to me that a “ Foxton Resident ” shares with other mortals the disability of not being omnipresent Had he been as übiquitous as the “ Devil on two sticks,” he would have known that my statements, for the truth which I can bring unimpeachable witnesses, were absolutely correct. He seems to base his denial partiy on the tact that no one was arrested by the local constables. If “ Foxton Resident ” imagines that all misconduct that is ever prepetrated is immediately punished by the police he must be a very young man indeed. The police simply share with “ Foxton Resident ” the disability of not being omnipresent! I ani glad to accept “ Foxton Resident's ” statement that there has been great improvement since the early days of the colony. It tallies with what has been told me by others who have known the district and the colony for a long time. My point is not that things are worse now than they have been, or even as bad, but that improvement is urgently needed, not in Foxton or New Zealand especially, but in Anglo-Saxondom at large. The weakness I alluded to is well-known by foreigners to characterise the English-speaking people to a large extent, as it at one time characterised (to a much larger extent) a certain section of the Scandinavian race. Now I should rejoice to see a reformation in ArtgloSaxondom comparable to the sweeping reform which has taken place during the last decade or two in Norway. Yet I am not a prohibitionist: and this proves to me that “ Foxton Resident ” is quite mistaken as to my identity. I have always been strongly opposed to prohibition, though I am in favour of drastic reforms in the liquor laws. Above all I hold most strongly that jus ice requires the most liberal compensation to existing vested interests if legislative changes have the effect of prejudicing those interests pecuniarily. Those who have invested their capital in good faith in a business sanctioned by Parliament must not be pecuniarily injured by reforms designed for the good of their fellow citizens—but rather the reverse. Anything like confiscation produces so fatal a sense of general insecurity, besides being so monstrously unjust, that schemes of compensating should err, if at all, in the opposite direction, And these vews that compensation should be at least amply liberal, are shared not only only by anti-prohibitionist reformers, but also —as often aa not—by those prohibitionist* to whom I have talked on the subject—l am etc. Stilt. “ Disgusted.”