Correspondence.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VII, Issue 333, 25 February 1874, Page 3

Correspondence.

CLYDE AUCTIONEERS. {To tlie Editor.)

Sib, — " Twice armed 7is he who hath his quarrel just." That Mr. Stanbrook should make a ooast of setting the law at definance is perhaps not wonderful ; but that the press should support him in so doing, if not wonderful, is certainly disagreeable, and not the less so because a fifty pound note hangs in the balance. When the legislators framed the Licensing Act, I suppose they had good and sufficient reasons for stating that the holder of an auctioneer's license could not also be the holder of a spirit license. One reason is self-evident. No man would pay £50 per year for an auctioneer's license if he had a publican to compete with. The letter sent by Messrs. Fache and Chappie to the Superintendent was not, as everyone knows, against Mr. Stanbrook, but against his partnership with Mr. Eames, the proprietor of the Dunstan Hotel. That Mr. Stanbrook was not a partner in the hotel I am bound to believe, because he says so. Nevertheless, when I happened to see him there, he acted exactly as if he were. Perhaps Mr. Eames was not a partner with Mr. Stanbrook as auctioneer, but everyone reading the advertisement in the "Dunstan Times" would imagine he was. Perhaps it was all a myth, like his residence at Cromwell; but the man is quite apart from the principle. The keeper of a shanty may be a good moral character, whilst the holder of a spirit license may be a depraved wretch, yet anyone who would aid and abet the shanty-keeper in setting the law at defiance, let him be either editor or Superintendent, would only merit contempt. Could the" proprietor of the principal hotel in Dunedin advertise his auction sales in the daily papers, to be held on such and such a " date ? or if ha did, could the Government give him the waste lands to sell ? I don't think they would attempt it. If they could no,t do it in Dunedin, I most emphatically deny their right to do so on the goldfields ; but the Superintendent, though often guilty of acting in opposition to the spirit and letter of the law, k, rf I am correctly informed, this time innocent, Mr. Stanbrook's license being granted on his o\«i representation that for 1874 he had no partner whatever, which was the only thing asked for by Messrs. Chappie and Fache. In a letter senv, to the Tttapeka Times, a statement is made to the effect that Mr. Chappie offered to sell for oi^-ualf commission for the purpose of undermining Mr. Fache. I can only say the statement is a most deliberate falsehood. lam informed that one of the partners in the Ovens Wafcer Race was sent to Mr. Chappie by the Company to ask him his charges for selling, and' Mr. Chappie's answer was the same as it would have been to any other party. So I presume his charges did not suit them, as Mr. Fache got the sale. But perhaps Mr. Stanbrook's champions think it is the right of ev©ry true born Englishman to send false statements to the newspapers, to amuse himself by paying into one treasury what in justice belongs to and afterwards to consider himself "very ill-used when made to walk 4n the" path trodden by other men^ All those tningg are very hard on some people, especially when they have been in the habit of consulting their own convenience in preference to that of the British public.— l am, &c., »i , „. Tbub Blue. Alexandra, February 17th.