HOTEL POLICY.

Patea Mail, 15 January 1881, Page 2

HOTEL POLICY.

The propriety of licensing the new hotel near Patea Railway Station is questioned in a moderate letter from Mr Kenah in our last issue. Some of his objections apply to all hotels, some only to this hotel. Those of the former class are simply the doctrine of total abstainers from intoxicating liquors, and need not be discussed in relation to a particular hotel. Those objections which really apply to this hotel are worth consideration. The first is that the interests of the public do not require licensed premises in this place because it stands in a partially reclaimed swamp, nearly alone, and almost within a stone throw of another hotel. The second is that the presence of a public-house always deteriorates the value of adjacent land. All the other objections apply too generally to affect the licensing of this house. Now is there no intelligible principle on which licensing is based ? Firstly, a license must be reasonably required for public convenience. The persons who do not require this convenience are teetotallers, and any protest from them is therefore out of the question. The persons who do require the convenience are those interested in getting the license. If they don’t want a license in this locality, their protest will settle the question. If they do want it, they will say so in form of a petition. Secondly, the licensing law imposes restrictions because experience has shown that some members of a community cannot have access to intoxicating drink without getting intoxicated. Hence the necessity for limiting the facility of getting drunk. If all persons could control their appetites in drinking as they do in eating, there would be no more restriction on selling intoxicants than on selling milk from the cow. Persons who cannot control their appetites are proper subjects for temperance lectures. Persons who can and do take intoxicating drinks in such moderation as experience shows to be reasonable, ought not to be restricted like suspected criminals ! Yet the teetotal doctrine as applied to this hotel is that those who have petitioned for this convenience ought not to have it because teetotallers don’t want this hotel, at present. What teetotallers don’t want, nobody else shall have !

As to the hotel being on a swamp, &c., it is a practical certainty that there must be a hotel near the Railway Station, which we hope will be built within a year. If there must be a hotel near the Station, which cannot be questioned, why should not this hotel be licensed in advance of the Station being opened ? It is only human that there should be competition to put up a Railway Hotel, but the fact that this hotel

is ready before a rival hotel is commenced

is so much in favor of the first hotel being licensed in order to reduce the number that might be started near the same site. The contractor has publicly engaged to complete a bridge over the creek before the next licensing day. We suppose this hotel is built on a swamp because the Railway Station is to on a swamp. To say that a hotel always deteriorates the value of adjacent land is a proposition which cannot be sustained by reference to any one of the hotels in Patea. We need not go outside to answer this argument. Teetotalism is a desirable restraint for those who cannot control their appetites. We do not agree that the majority of man* kind should be forced to wear strait jackets because there happen to be among us a very small minority of creatures with weak intellects. The evils of drunkenness are gross and disgusting ; but let us not destroy human liberty in a violent attempt to curb the gross appetites of a few.