THE PERMISSIVE BILL.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 12, 15 April 1871, Page 3

THE PERMISSIVE BILL.

At a soiree held in the Wesleyan Church, Thames, to celebrate the adoption of the permissive clause in the Auckland Licensing Act, recently passed, the chairman, Mr Gillies, Superintendent of Auckland, in the course of an interesting address, gave the following account of his conversion to the permissive principle:—"l can scarcely take credit for any great courtesy in presiding over a meeting like this—a meeting having in view the celebration of a step in advance—the advancement of the progress of the province, as 1 hope it will turn out to be. As I said already, I am only a recent convert to the Permissive Bill doctrine, and perhaps not a very sanguine one yet; but I may perhaps tell you what converted mo, for, as I said, 1 have always great doubts about making laws to interfere with the liberty of the subject When I came to look around, and to ascertain the responsibilities I had taken upon me as Superintendent, I looked first at whence the revenue was derived. The first startled me, for I found that £II,OOO or £12,000 of provincial revenue was derived merely from licenses for liberty to sell liquor—a sum equal to os a head upon every man, woman, and child in. the province. 1 thought that it was something startling that this amount should be paid for the mere liberty to sell. I came to think ' Well, this must fee a very large trade when so much is derived merely for the liberty to sell.' Then there is the value of the stuff, the cost, and the duty, which is more than that. When I began to look into

1 this, I found that, as near as I could calculate, for there are no exact statistics on the subject, at least £60,000 or £70,000 of the revenue of the colony was raised from the duties upon spirits consumed in tbe province, in addition to this £12,000 for the mere license to sell. Thus, beyond this amount — £60,000 or £70,000 at least—l think all these figures are understated—must be allowed for the ordinary value of the goods. This makes a sum of £150,000 spent on liquor. Then I came to look round and see what all this was for. Did it add to the wealth of the community ? Instead of that I found that just in proportion to the amount is the misery of the community. We were, in fact, with one hand taking out of the pockets of the community a revenue of £12,000 for leave to sell liquor, while we had just got to pay out that, with a little more, for gaols and lunatic asylums. When I looked at these things I began to think how they must affect the prosperity of the province. Things are very dull in the province; we hear of a want of employment—of nobody having capital to go on with improvements; it seemed to me that capital was the thing wanted, and I began to ask where is all our capital going to ? and I found' that £150,000 was going down our throats, which might be much better employed in productive labour. I thought that, if we employed that amount in capital—it is an annual amount, —we should not hear so much about want of employment, or people being in want of capital j for reproductive works. Looking at i these things, and although I fully recognise the undesirability of making; laws to compel people,—for I do not ! believe any law will make a man moral or sober—l do not believe in laws doing these things. Ido believe in laws withdrawing temptation from a man. That is all the measure does. It is not a teetotal measure; Ido not go in for that: but it is a measure which will tend to assist those who are apt to be led into temptation. It simply takes temptation out of the way, and if it is for that only, I for one would rejoice in it: and I think that any little deprivation that may occur in one not being able to get a glass of beer when he is thirsty on a warm day, will be willingly put up with for the sake of the removal of this temptation, for the sake of the saving to the province of Auckland of the capital, and for the aid it may be in reducing our taxation, through poverty and misery. These are the reasons which caused me, when I had occasion to prepare the new Licensing Act, to introduce the permissive clause."