LICENSING NEW HOUSES.

Waikato Times, Volume X, Issue 632, 8 June 1876, Page 3

LICENSING NEW HOUSES.

Sib,' — Eyery loTer of temporanoe, and every on« anxious for good accommodation of the publio, man and beast, will be glad to know tnat the Licensing Bench hare here again refuted a lioenie to the new house applied for by Mr Gaudin. No one his my objection to him, bat it is a fact notorious to every one that in no township in the Waikato u a second house required. It it as much as one house in any case can do to make an honest Hying ; and if competition is introduoed, what it bad now will be worse then. Everybody knows what competition does for the pnbiioans' business. Unable to make a fair profit at competition prices, he hat recourse to the adulteration of liquor*, and the publio suffors in health and pocket. It wo*!d be the tamo here. There is not room for a second business to make it pay —one or other, or \>oth, must resort to unfair dealing, the traveller and the public being the victims- Possibly your readers have n t found it in Hamilton, for, though you have two houses, you have really, sir, two separat* and distinct townships ; but depend upon it, it will be just the same if you got a second public-houst in either. One wiU cut under the other, md the oonsequenca will bo, not a healthy competition as in any other buiinen, but free trade in indicus coculus, bluejvitriol, and othor poitonoua campounds. It is, too, a yery unfair thing, after a man has expend© 1 two or throe thousand pounds in .'establishing a well appointed house to enoourage a second party when the public traffic 'locs call for it, to come in and play a game ai beggar my neighbour. It would be well enough in the owe of a publican who provided inferior accommodation to let in competition upon him, inde»d, the public interests would oall for such a step i but when any nan goes to considerable expense and outlay to proyido accommodation, even more and above what could be expected in up country townships, it is not only hard, % bat positively unjust IVto saorific* his property and means by permitting someone with perhaps a longer purse to stepintockoo like, drive him who has borue ths burden and hsat of the day out of the business he has made, and reap all the benefit- This was the case with us, and it is the case, I am told, with you at Hamilton, for I am informed that the old hottl there i* one of the most comfortable aid best conducted houses in the Waikato district, or indeed in any other diitrict, mid that the proprietor has been to a largo outlay in meetiuj tvery poesibe public requirement, and tint the po'ice can testify to the uniform freedom from ordinary publio house abuses which has marked its conduct during the last 12 or IS month*. — I am, &c, T 3. Te Awamutu, June Oth, 1876.