LIQUOR LAW REFORM.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4207, 14 September 1874, Page 3

LIQUOR LAW REFORM.

TO THE COLONISTS OF NEW ZEALAND My Fellow-Colonists, Men and Women, —Now that the session of Parliament is over, X aak your attention for a few moments, that I may tell you what your representatives did in the matter of Liquor Law Reform. Mr. Vogel has well defined colonisation to mean “the making of homes.” You will be surprised to hear that I have had to fight tooth and nail to prevent his getting a Bill passed “ for the destruction of homes.” He did his very best to get the Legislature to help him to pull down with one hand what he is laboring to build up with the other. The spirit in which his Bill was conceived was to ’make it more profitable to sell drink than it already is ; to relieve the publican from any restriction ; to facilitate the obtaining of licenses wholesale and retail; to make the liquor monopoly permanent and secure ; to put it beyond the reach of the people to disturb or destroy ; to make the publicans’ bed a bed of roses, though the publicans’ victim might be left without a bed to lie on. Mr. Gladstone has said that the object of laws ought to be to make it easy to do right and difficult to do wrong. Air. Vogel’s Bill would have exactly reversed this. It would have made it easy to be a publican and very difficult not to be- one ; and if not one, still more difficult not to be a publican’s victim. The preamble of the Bill might have well been, “ Let those drink now who never drank before, and those who always drank now drink the more.” Its effect would have been to make New Zealand the paradise of publicans, and the pandemonium of all other people I am glad to say that those parts of his Bill which would have had such effects did not pass. The Bill as passed was comparatively harmless, and even contains ; some good provisions. The manner in which it was proposed to enlarge the boundaries of the publicans, and to set them in pleasant places, was such as I think you will hardly consider fair. The Licensing Act of last year was passed after three years’ hard fighting; it established the principle of popular control, and it recognised the right of the people to be consulted when a public-house was set down at their door. This was its one fundamental point, and this the Bill of last session proposed practically to repeal. Not, however, openly and avowedly, but by clauses which at first sight had nothing to do with the question of popular control, and did not seem to touch last year’s Act at all. The Bill innocently professed to be one to amend last year’s Act, to supply its deficiencies and assist its operation. It would bo charitable to believe that the Government did not know what would be the effect of the clauses which their draftsman had put into the Bill; but the pertinacity with which they clung to them, and the arguments used in their support, which were directly opposed to popular control, deprive them of this excuse. I fear that they knew too well that the practical effect of the Bill would be to nullify the principle of popular control, and that it was mainly with that object in view that the Bill was introduced. If it were so, then I say it was not fair to attempt the reversal of last year’s legislation by a side-wind, and without a hint to the Colony of what was going to be done. The clauses by which the mischief was to be done were these :

1. Clause 18 provided that, “Whenever a publican’s license or bottle license shall have been granted to any person, such person shall be entitled to a fresh license, as a matter of course, unless he is shown to the Licensing Court to have lost his good character ; and renewals of such licenses shall in every case be granted as a matter of course by such Licensing Courts, unless notice of objection has been given as before provided.” I need not say that practically this would have given the publican a perpetual vested interest in his license. It could never be taken away, even on a memorial being signed every man, woman, and child in the district, so long as x policeman could be got to stand up on licensing day and declare that the applicant “had not lost his good character.” There are a good many publicans who never had a good character. They would be safe for life ; for a man could not lose what he never had. But in other cases, a publican would be a very poor adept at his trade if he could not keep a character good enough to pass a Licensing Board. What did a good character mean ? What was this undefined commodity, “a publican’s good character ?” Practically the clause meant that no license should ever be taken away ; at all events it removed all licenses, once granted, from the operation of the prohibitory veto given to the people by last year’s Act. In no other country where the licensing system has ever existed, has the publican been placed in such a favored position ; never has he even dared to ask for such a vested right. The law has everywhere limited his right to one year’s duration, and retained in its own hand the unfettered power of withdrawing his monopoly on every annual licensing day. The clause > utterly repudiated all idea of taking into consideration the wants of the district, or the wishes of its inhabitants. It enacted, “Once a publican, always a publican,” unless in the almost impossible contingency that he lost that entirely undefinable thing, a “ publican’s good character.” It was an absolute reversal of every principle on which hitherto, and everywhere, the monopoly of the liquor traffic has been established, and more particularly of the principle of direct popular control established. by the law of last year. And this vast change was to be effected by an unobtrusive clause in a Bill introduced to amend last year’s Act, and make it work more smoothly ! This clause was, however, I am glad to say, first postponed, though not without much debate, and afterwards unconditionally withdrawn. ■ 2. The next provision which would practically have enabled almost any applicant to get a license, and effectually defeated popular control, was the proposed establishment of quarterly licensing days, at any one of which a license might be granted. Of course this would have put it in any man’s power to get a license. The people cannot be getting up memorials every three months, but the applicant has no difficulty in renewing his application ; defeated on the Ist July, lie comes again on the Ist October. If the Licensing Court remembers the previous opposition, he comes again on tho Ist January, and so on, - till by “ continual coming” he wearies out his antagonists and tho Court, and receives the authority of law to deal in “ liquid fire, and distilled damnation.” Mr. Yogel held stoutly on to this clause, audit was carried in the House of Representatives ; but in the Legislative Councilit was altered by a provision that; after the present year, licenses should only be granted at tbc licensing day in the month of June. The exception of the present year was understood to be to let in some publicans in the Middle Island who lost their licenses last licensing day, through noncompliance with the provisions of the Act. 3. A third blow at the operation of the prohibitory veto was attempted by limiting the time proposed between an applicant for a license giving notice of his intention to apply to fourteen days before licensing day, and the publication of such notice to only twelve days. This would have rendered it almost impossible for tho inhabitants to canvass the district to get up a memorial in time. Tho Act of last year allowed six 'weeks and five weeks respectively. Ultimately, this was compromised, by fixing the periods twenty-one days and eighteen days, just half of what last year’s Act allowed. This is a disadvantage to the public, and a gain to the publican,' in proportion as it lessens the period of publicity, and tho time for the operations of the opponents to the license. It will make it more difficult even than at present to exercise the prohibitory veto. ’ With the exception then of thistimelimitation, the great principle of popular control recognised by last year’s legislation may bo cousisidered to have suffered nothing. It still remains intact in the Statute Book, and whenever we are strong enough in the Legislature to add the necessary machinery for ascertaining * the popular vote, we shall bo able to exercise that right to the utmost. At present, with the imperfect machinery contained in last year’s Act, wo shall, I fear, do but little. There are, no doubt, many districts in which, if they had been defined within reasonable

limits, even volunteer action might have given the Act operation. The excessive size of the districts jn most instances has had the effect, if it was not ihe intention, of rendering it impossible to work the Act. If they were reduced so as to represent in each case the population interested in any one central group of public-houses, and no larger than a volunteer canvass might be supposed equal to cover, I have no doubt that many districts would put the prohibitory veto in operation. If the liquor law reformers in such cases would consider their position, and suggest to the Government suitable boundaries for their districts, I do not see how the Government could reasonably refuse to remodel them. Last year the Government consulted no one but the Resident Magistrates in the matter, and gazetted the districts without any reference to the persons interested ; and that at so late a date that remonstrance was impossible. But there is no reason why the boundaries then fixed should not be altered, and the Government will place itself in a very unfavorable light if it opposes the will of a Resident Magistrate to that of qualified voters of the neighborhood to be affected by the existence of the licensed houses. I, for one, never expected to see the prohibitory veto exercised in more than a few districts at first. But if a few did exercise it, I have no doubt the result would be such that others would follow the example, and as the Colony became more educated in temperance principles, we should see the licensed monopoly of the liquor traffic disappear from a large part of the country as it has done in Maine and many other parts of America. Let us hold fast that which we have got, and on no pretence suffer the recognition of the right of the people to control the liquor traffic contained in last year’s Act to be repealed, either openly or by the insidious operation of amending clauses. —Yours, &c., William Fox.