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Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 73, 22 April 1909, Page 2

PUBLIC OPISIOX FLOUTED. Considerable interest will no doubt be aroused when the public learn that wholesale licenses to sell liquor have been granted to applicants from llokau and Awakino respectively. We are not

disposed at tin- moment to question tlio ; legality or otherwise of the decision of the Tautnanmui Licensing Committee : and llr. Fitzherhert, S.M., lint from the standpoint of ethics we consider u distiuetlv wrong procedure lias been adopted. We hold no l.ricf for the advocates of no-license. We do insist, however, that the mandate of the people must lie respected; and the desires of the Government complied with, and not flagrantly llonteil as has been the ease in this instance. We never could understand the justice of closing the King Country against licensed trade, for. to our mind, it has not resulted in keeping, liquor from those whom it was primarily, inI tended to prohibit—the natives. From our point of vjpw, therefore, and on the score of public convenience and moralitv. we believe licensed trade, under hotel conditions. in the King Country, would be infinitely better than the present condition. Hut that is impossible under the present state of the law. While, however, we would support granting the same measure of freedom as enjoyed by this rest of the Dominion, to the residents of the King Ciuntry to choose for tliemselves whether they should or should not have hotels, which serve an important public purpose quite irrespective of the licensed liar, we do not view with favor granting these wholesale licenses, the purposes of which is to sell liquor in bulk. In the present state of the law it is illegal to take liquor into the King Country, yet we have the spectacle of a licensing court granting wholesale licenses right on the boundaries of a prohibited area, and practically offering lurid inducement for lawbreaking, it is a matte,)' for regret that the public was not made aware of the nature of these applications, for we have no doubt that objections would have been raised that would not have been so easily swept aside by Mr. F-'itzhcrbcrt as were those advanced yesterday. The applicants were perfectly 'within their rights in making, the applications, and the, Court may not have been legally wrong m granting them, but that these licenses have been granted distinctly against the intention of the Legislature, ] and against the weight of public opinion (and public opinion practically is the law on this subject) we have not an atom of doubt. We do not believe for a moment that those to whom the licenses have bee-.i granted will conduct their trade other than in strict accordance with their conditions—that is not sug- ' gested—but their 'business is merely to • sell, not to enquire the destination of I the liquor. In the circumstances, we : can only express-our regret that a very , questionable decision lias been given. • Public opinion, upon which hotelkeepers i nowadays depend for their licenses, is - opposed to these methods, and such ac--1 tions as that under review only tend to t injure the cause of license, no matter .'I how honorably it might be conducted.