Direct Veto or Local Option.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XIV, Issue 3050, 12 August 1893, Page 2

Direct Veto or Local Option.

(From the " Otago Daily Times.")

It is the practice of the advocates of what is called the "direct veto "to term the proposal an appeal to Government by the majority, and to apply to those who object to it such epithets as sham or bastard Liberals. The proposal ia really an appeal from the majority to the minority. Except in the case of a comparatively insignificant minority, liquor and the right to purchase it are not opposed as in themselves evil things. The common consent of mankind shows that wine, beer, or other fermented liquors are the means of pleasure and eujoyment. If the right to obtain them conveniently ia to be taken away, it will only be so taken on the ground that the evils caused by the abuse of liquor justify such interference. If the general sense of the community, declared in the constitutional way by the representatives of the people, decides in favor of such interference, the minority, as in other cases, must sub* mit. But at present, tested by the existing state of the law, the majority of the people has not so decided. Subject to certain restrictions for police purposes, liquor can now be drunk and purchased. What is proposed by the " direct veto" is the substitution of local majorities for the majority, of the whole people. So important a restriction of an individual liberty should not be so imposed. It may be necessary to submit, eve» in so strong a restriction, to the declaration of the national conscience, should it ever bo declare; but not to the conscience of an accidental majority of a ward of a borough. If it it against the interests of^public morality —and nothing short of this can justify the restriction—to purchase drink on one side of a street, it most be equally so to purchase it on the other. It may be said that the control of licensing questions has already been given to local bodies—that is, to local majorities. But such control, as defined by the highest court in the colony has been limited to regulating selling of liquor, not to abolishing it. Such regulation must be gone about in a manner consistent with the requirements of such of the population as desire reasonable facilities fur obtaining liquor. The right to such reasonable facilities is not at the mercy of local majorities. Whether, even to the limited extent now given, the judicial duties which licensing bodies have to perform should have been entrusted to elective bedies may be open to question. Very many think that the licensing Acts were administered with most fairness when such ad* ministration was in the hands of capable and impartial magistrates. The fact that a limited right of veto, in the local option clauses, has been given to local majorities does not prove the right to further powers. Certain matters such as involve merely local interests are properly the subjects of lecal control. But these considerations do not touch the main question, which is : Why should the right of any individual to reasonable facilities to buy »nd drink wine or beer, conceded as such right now is by the voice of the majority of the colony, be taken away in any small subdivision in which for the moment a part of the minority of the colony has accidentally a majority 1 It is idle to say that the" direct veto " i« not prohibition. It is local prohibition to a large part of the community ; for the denial of the power to buy liquor in small quantities at convenient places. is to very many the denial of the right to buy it at all, National prohibition by the national majority may in the opinion of many be tyrannical, but it would be sanctioned by democratic principle. Local prohibition contrary to the national majority is illogical and unjust. There are very many people who object to compulsory vaccination (prohibitionists will not object to the illustration) and who produce very strong reasons for their objecttipns. At presept the majority are against such objectors, and they arg obliged to submit and to. have their right of managing their children interfered with in what is to them a very objectionable way. But suppose the majority the other way. Would a nmn be a *' sham and bastard Liberal" who objected to a law which allowed hU rights aiid liberties on this point to be controlled by the accidental majority in the borough or ward of a borough in which he lived ; compelled to have his children vaccinated if he lived in one side of the street, and nojt so compelled if lived in the other? ■'"."''■: '