The Press. MONDAY. JULY 8, 1889.

Press, Volume XLVI, Issue 7356, 8 July 1889, Page 4

The Press. MONDAY. JULY 8, 1889.

The proposals of the Government with respect to the Otago Central Railway appear to be receiving general support in the House, and, as far as wecau ascertain, are likely to be accepted by Parliament. In many respects the measure is a great improvement upon the Bill which passed the House of Representatives in 1887, and the one which was* read a second time in 1888 by a large majority in the Lower House. The measure which was before the House last session proposed to hand over to a syndicate a large area of land in Central Otago in exchange for the construction of the railway, on the same principle as the Midland line is now being proceeded with. When the matter was under consideration, the Bill was referred to the Waste •Lands Committee, before which body the Surveyor-General, amongst others, was examined. In the course of his evidence, Mr. McKerrow laid great stress upon the difficulty of arrauging the land grants so as to avoid injuring the mining industry. Discussing the matter at the time, we said that we bad for many years advocated : the system jof land grants in connection with railI way construction in preference to the system of borrowing ; and that we saw no reason why the Otago Central Railway should not be made under the land grant system,. , &.t the same time we W-te'd but that Mr. McKerrow's evidence could not be set aside without full consideration, and that the advocates of the line would have to face the facts stated in that evidence, and show, if they could, how it was possible to proceed with the railway without injuring what is admittedly the great staple industry of Central Otago.

The Bill under notice embodies the method which the Government propose of getting over the difficulty. Had Mr Pykb's Bill, as we have said, been carried a large area of laud would have been handed over to the syndicate in payment for the construction of the line. ' The Government Bill does not propose to hand over the Jand, but to certain pastoral revenue for the purposes of the railway. After stating that the Otago Central Railway will be shortly completed to, Miadlemarch,- and it is essential, in order to render the line remunerative i and beneficial to the country, that it should be extended to Eweburn on the Maniototo Plaius, and easily accessible to the Ida Valley and other adjacent agricultural, pastoral, and mining Crown landi, the Bill goes on to provide that a trust account shall be opened. Into this account £15,000 of the £70,000 unallotted by the last Loan Act is to be paid, and the balance qL the cost of the contract to Eweburn is to be provided for and paid out of the pastoral rents arising from several runs specified in the schedule. The rental of these runs is J-U5,000 a year, and power 13 to be taken to advance money from the Trust Account in anticipation of those rentals. This in a few words is the proposal of the Government. It will be seen that the point raised in Mr. McKerrow j s evidence is got over, by retaining the land in the hands of the Crown aud only using the pastoral rentals. It, moreover, carries the line •to a point which, in his opinion, will open up communication between the coast and the interior. On the other hand, were it stopped at Middlemarch the line would only serve a small area and be of very little benefit to the country. The point, Eweburn, to which it is proposed to carry the line, is thirty-eight miles from Middlemarch, and would, we learn from a memorandum submitted by the Railway Cbnimissioners, take it to a point which would " absolutely

c^mand/the traffic of an. open country of about a million acres, mostly Crown lands, now accessible in every part by a network of excellent roads, and occupied by a pastoral, agricultural, and mining population of about 5000 persons." The Commissioners do not expect that the line will pay much more than working expenses. But, as the Premier points out, the colony has spent half a million on the line already, and that half million will practically be thrown away if the line is to terminate at Middlemarch. The House of Representatives was willing last session to grant concessions of land sufficient to make the line the whole distance to Lake Hawea. It is now asked to give its consent to a much more modest measure. In the former case large areas of the best land in the district would have become private property. By the Ministerial proposal it is only proposed to utilise for a time the rents derived from a portion of that land, while the land itself will remain the property of the Crown and be available for settlement in such a manner as not to interfere with the mining industry.

Why should a married woman be disqualifiea from holding the license of a hotel ? A question was asked of the Govelnment in the House whether they would amend the Licensing Act so as to admit of married women holding licenses, and the reply was given that the Government could not sco its way in the meantime to alter the law. That was a reply prompted by natural caution, but is there any real serious reason why the desired alteration should not be made? Every properly-qualified person ought to have a right to follow any lawful calling unless there is good reason to the contrary, and we would ask in the present iustauce what the reason to the contrary is 1 It is not that the duties and responsibilities of hotelkeeping are" unsuited to women, for there is no disqualification in the case of widows and the unmarried, and if any question of relative suitability arose between the married and the unmarried we should unhesitatingly declare in favor of the former. Nor is it a question of husbands' rights. They could be guarded sufficiently—and in the case of husbands not living apart from their wives we think they ought to be guarded —by requiring the husband's consent to the wife's application. But in the present state of the law the husband's consent does not help matters, the wife is as incapable of holding a license with his permission as she is without it. She may be the owner of hotel property,—under the Married Women's Property Act she has the right to own and dispose of it as freely as any man—yet by reason of the defect, as we regard it, in the Licensing Act, if she wishes to manage the business herself she cannot take the license in her own name. The Legislature in the one statute does what it can to neutralise what it has done in the other. It gives with one hand the right to hold separate property and to enter into contracts, and it takes away with the other hand the right in a special case to manage such property without a special risk caused by the license having to be taken, out in another person's name. If the Married Women's Property Act is right in principle, and we hold that it is, then married women ought, with their husbands' consent at least, to be allowed to hold hotel licenses in their own names. The last argument against the concession is that married women dor not want to become hotelkeepers. The majority, we grant, do not, auy more than do the majority of men desire to marry their deceased wife's sister. Nevertheless if an appreciable number do desire it that is, until reason to the contrary is shown, 9uffi-. cient. In one special case, that of wives who are deserted by their husbands, it is an obvious hardship that this means of earning a livelihood should be taken away from them. Already. suffioient interest has been taken in the question to get a decision first of the Supreme Court, and later un of the Court of Appeal. The IdQensing Act ia silent on,.the precise point at issue, but both Courts have,decided that the disqualification existed. It appears that it exists also in England and Victoria, but the reason is that the Licensing Acts were passed before the days of the Married Women's Property Law. Married women at that time had not the freedom of contract which they now enjoy, and that was why they were not included among the persons who could hold licenses. It was no oversight of tbe draftsman of tbe Licensing Act that they were overlooked; at the time the Act was drawn tbey were still under the disability which used to attach to their condition. When the time came for their emancipation, and the Married Women's Property Bill was'submitted to the Legislature, the special ease of their incapacity to hold hotel licenses was lost sight of. The Bill was not a measure removing generally allthe disabilities of coverture, and placing married women on the, same footing ~a& their unmarried sisters. 'It gave them the right of acquiring, holding and disposing of property as their own, and where they had such property it gave them the right of making contracts that would bind it. That was'the whole scope of the Act, and the Courts, both in England and here, have declined to carry it one step further. We remember when Lord Cairns introduced the Bill in the Lords how men of the old school, whose motto is to stand in antiquis viis, held up their heads ia dismay as to where this newfangled notion of woman's rights might not lead them to. The Act has been tried, and if it has been found wanting we should say it has been wanting in not going far enough rather than in going too far. The doctrine of a married woman's separate estate has in fact been found to answer admirably, and we think the Legislature might go a little further on the -same*'lines, and remove from married women such disqualifications as the one we have been discussing.