LIBERTY V. LICENSE.-A REPLY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5126, 28 August 1877, Page 3

LIBERTY V. LICENSE.-A REPLY.

Advertitement]

TO THE EDITOR OP THE NEW ZEALAND TIMES. Sib, —Your correspondent “ Caustic ” might have signed himself “Lunar Caustic,” for his rabid letter must have been inspired by the influences of the moon. It would have been more courageous of him to have given his real name, as his readers might then have judged whether his advice was disinterested or not. His letter has to my nose an unmistakcable smell of the mash-tub or rum cask, and if I were in the habit of betting, I would bet 100 to 1 that “ Caustic ” is one of “ the trade ” which flourishes on the dissipation and vice of the community. “ Caustic ” begins by gibbeting the poor Bishop of Peterboro’ on his sign-post, with his celebrated saying that he would “ rather see England free than England sober.” The Bishop by this time is very sorry he ever said anything so foolish, and has tried more than .once'to explain away the natural meaning of his words. But is there any reason why England (and New Zealand) should not be both free and sober ? What, the liquor law reformers are aiming at is to secure both. We are certainly not in the enjoyment of liberty when two or three magistrates can force public-houses upon us, whether we like it or not, and without even asking us whether we like'it or not. What is proposed by the local optionists is simply to give the majority of the

people the freedom to tell the Licensing Court whether they want drink shops or not. It the result should be that they get rid of the publichouse and become sober, then they would be both free and sober, and the poor Bishop no longer be put to the necessity of choosing between the two. . 1 “ Caustic ” asserts that the local option movement is the action of teetotal fanatics, of Good Templars, and persons who wish to dictate to others what they shall drink. The movement began in England before the Good Templars existed there, and the same in New Zealand, and certainly did not in this colony originate with them, or any other body of temperance reformers, though they cordially support it, The desire of its promoters is not to dictate to any what they shall drink, but simply to prevent certain persons from selling drinks which they alone are now permitted to sell. The movement is not against the drinker, but against the seller of drink. The law now says to about .199 out of every 200 persons, you shall not sell intoxicating drink ; to one favored person of the 200 it says, you may sell. All that is proposed to be done is to enable the people to say to this one favored individual, you shall not sell, any more than the 199 who are already prohibited. The local optionists are, “ Caustic ” observes, a “political” party. It is quite true, we aim at a political end by political means. We find our gaols, lunatic asylumns, penitentiaries, and workhouses filled by the public-house. We seek to give the people power to empty them by cutting off the source from which the vice comes which fills those institutions. We approach the subject as citizens, not as teetotallers.- We demand the power of saying “No ” to the Licensing Bench as a right, not as a favor. We desire to save ourselves from the taxation which is now necessary to maintain criminal judges, police, gaols, lunatic asylums, and other institutions of the sort; We are demanding the restitution of a political right which has been taken away from us by a long course of mistaken legislation. Our position is one of self-defence. We decline any longer to be dictated to by the liquor traffic and the Licensing Bench as to whether the nuisance of a public-house shall be set down at our doors. That is our position, and nothing else. “ Caustic ” draws a picture of the temperance reformers “ joining with those in fine clothes to enforce on the working man in common fustian a code of restrictive laws which can never be accepted.” Nobody wears finer clothes than the publican and the publican’s wife and daughters, purchased at the expense of the working man, who wears the common fustian, and whose wife and children too often are clothed in rags as a consequence of the publican having put into his till the money which ought to have clothed them. But assuredly the support of the Local Option Bill does not come either from the publicans or any other persons in fine clothes. The 16,000 signatures on the table of the House of Representatives are three-fourths the signatures of, men in common fustian and women in serge and cotton. “Caustic” knows well enough that the working man is the one chiefly interested in this question, arid he naturally tries to throw a little malt dust in his eyes. If the public-house be, as he implies, the working man’s cellar, who is so fit to have the key of that cellar as the working man himself ? If the publican be the working man’s butler, who is so fit as the working man to have the power of dismissing his own servant ? This is really what the local option law proposes : to give the working man the power of saying whether he wants a cellar to be put down at his door by the Licensing Bench or not. If he refuses, why should any bio 1 brewer, or importer, or publican have the po°ver to compel him to have it put where he does not want it ? I admit it is to some extent a question of fine clothes and common fustian. If the working man puts this Bill of mine in force, he will soon wear as fine clothes as the brewer and publican now wear. If some of the latter have as a consequence to 1 give over getting rich at the expense of the working man, they may have to come down a peg and don the common fustian, which their present victims will be able to abandon. This is what they are afraid of when they raise the compensation cry. It means, “ before we will relax our clutch on our victim’s throat he must pay us a retiring pension.” A greater iniquity has never been proposed than ,to bribe the wrong-doer to give over his wrong-doing, with money, the greater part of which will come out of the pocket of his victim, the “ man in common fustian.” There are nearly 2000 drink shops in New Zealand. If they are paid for at the publicans’ estimate, value of buildings, and goodwill of trade, &c., the compensation thus unrighteously demanded will not come to less than two millions of money. Supposing half the drink shops to be put down under the law now under discussion, it means a million of money, mainly out of the pockets of the working man. , As “ Caustic” began by quoting a Bishop, he winds up with a theological discussion on the place of intoxicating drink in Holy Writ. I had heard the blasphemous hustings’ cry of the British publican, “ Beer and the Bible ;” but I was rather surprised to meet with so much critical knowledge of Scripture as “Caustic” exhibits, iu a letter evidently written by one of “ the trade.” It occurred to me, however, that I had seen “ the fine Roman hand” before. On referring to my notebook, I find all this part of his letter, including the quotation from Dean Alford, to be taken verbatim, but without acknowledgment, from the Westminster Review. It would have been more honest if, when (like a certain other person, a great patron of the trade) he was going to quote Scripture, he had put his pickings and stealings between inverted commas. I will certainly not follow him into this region of discussion, one entirely unfit for the columns of a newspaper. I will merely say this :To adulterate beer and brandy with cocculus indicus and bluestone, is an offence of gigantic magnitude, deserving- the reprobation of every human being with a spark of moral sense ; but to pervert the Word of God into an apology for a traffic which destroys the bodies and souls of thousands and millions of men and women, created a little lower than the angels, is a course the heniousnesa of which cannot be estimated, nor by any possibility exceeded.—l am, &c., William Fox.