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New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4178, 11 August 1874, Page 2

TlfE lion, member for Bangitikei took little by his effort last night to interrupt the progress of the Licensing Act Amendment Bill. His speech was not a happy one. It was not sensational in the estimation of the hon. gentleman, but it was highly spiced with the elements of sensationalism for all that. Widows and helpless children on the one hand; wealthy brewers and distillers on the other, driving in golden carriages, and buried at last in golden coffins, bought at the price of the happiness of their victims, presented something of a sensational contrast surely. It was not delivered in happy mood. It was marked by all the exaggeration which for some time past has characterised all that the hon. gentleman has said and done on this subject. It was so evidently the emanation of a mind which, on this question at least, is unable to appreciate the true bearing of the facts of the case, and so warped and prejudiced by long study of one aspect of the subject onl/as to be incapable of looking at the whole question from a plain common-sense view, that it had not even the negative merit of falling flat upon the House. Those who are opposed to Mr. Fox in this important matter, and who may have entertained the fear that “the old man eloquent” might work a miracle in moving the minds of hon. members to oppose the will of the Government, may take heart of grace. His great effort last night certainly made no convert in the House to his views ; but apparently rather disengaged from his following members who lait session to some extent sympathised with him.

Nothing which fell from Mr. Fox last night in the slightest degree improved the position the hon. member has taken up, or weakened the arguments which have been urged in opposition to it. He succeeded in drawing from all sides of the House, however, an opinion that the legislation of last session, of which he was the author, was a gross mistake, which was permitted in error. He admitted, with not a little regret, that the Bill now before the House —whether it was so intended by the Government or no—simply repealed the permissive clause of his Bill, which he regarded as the very essence of the measure ; and the House received the assurance, not merely with indifference, but with an apparent satisfaction. He protested against the multiplication of the number of licensing days ; he was indignant that applicants for a renewal of a wholesale license should not be compelled to apply for it in person ; and he saw in the Bill not merely the repeal of his own measure, but one which went far in the opposite direction. To almost, every clause of the Bill he gave persistent opposition ; but the majority were not to be persuaded. They listened with impatience; and when the hon. gentleman complained that the House was a thin one—forgetting that it was in a thin House that he carried his Bill last year—and proposed that there should be an adjournment, ho was met by a reminder that the House was really a full one, and that the majority were ready to sit till daylight that the Bill might be disposed of, and the way of the Government cleared for other business. Nemesis, in short, had overtaken

the hon. member for Bangitikei. The kernel of the whole question was touched by the Premier in reply to Mr. Fox. There can be little or no objection to the permissive principle if its exercise is accompanied by compensation. Without a condition of that kind its operation would simply be confiscation of property. A publican would be continually at the mercy of the busy-bodies of his neighborhood, bent on working out their “crotchets of the brain,” without regard to the interests of those most directly affected, in the hope of accomplishing some possible but probably visionary good, unless their efforts were hampered by a necessity of buying out the person or persons whom they desired to evict from ’ their neighborhood. There is no doubt that if that had been the proposition of the Good Templars to whom the public owe the late agitation, it would have been received with much more favor than it has been. Possibly the utter defeat which the party are now sustaining in this Province may induce them to entertain more moderate councils for the future. They may be assured that the mere renewal of their agitation on the old basis will bo labor in vain. The House has shown that it is not composed of men of one idea, and the comparative'unanimity with which it was ready last night to do away—for that will be the practical effect of the new measure—with Mr. Fox’s legislative effort in the session of 1873, does no more than show that the public are divided much in the same proportion as members were on this subject. The great majority of the people,not merely in this Province, nor in this Colony, but all the world over, are opposed to legislation of a repressive character and “permissive” is only another name for “repressive.” We may accept the vaticination of the Premier as perfectly true, that rio permissive law which does not also embrace compensation for the dispossessed hotel-keeper or publican will ever become law in England, orany of her Colonies. But Mr. Fox’s effort, last session, has not been unproductive of benefit. Out of evil good has come. The effort to restrict personal liberty is likely to end in the removal of many restrictions uponaperfectly legitimate trade, and for this benefit the public have to thank the ill-directed enthusiasm of the hon. member for Bangitikei. After all, moreover, Mr. Fox is not left without some consolation. We had it on his own authority last night that “once upon a time ” in this Colony it was not impossible that aperson walking abroad would find that two out of every three persons he met were more or less intoxicated. He admits that such a state of matters does not exist now. The community has greatly increased in sobriety. The great evils of intemperance, on which he dilates with so much eloquence, must consequently have been lessened in proportion. And yet this has been brought about in the ordinary course of things, without legislative interference—without a Permissive Bill!