HAWKERS' LICENSES.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXVII, Issue 4344, 18 July 1871, Page 3

HAWK ERS' LICENSES.

TO THE EDITOK. Sir, — In the Cross of the 15th July you favour us with some remarks on the above, and reasons, showing the expediency for protection to the public from men who have many temptations to dishonesty, and, as you justly say, possess peculiar facilities 'for assisting the burglar. True. The same may be said of the bottle-buyers, bone-collectors, and some others, particularly servants. - You say there appears an attempt to excite opposition to this licensing. I have read in, your paper a few condemnatory remarks respecting the taxing, but nothing yet against the licensing. License them ? Yea ; by all means, if bringing them periodically under supervision will be any safeguard to the public. No honest hawker, or bone-picker either, can object to that. But what do theae need a fee for— except it be for prosecution ? You seem to infer that the wise reduction to the small sum of £4 quite meets all necessary cases. But is it xeaily so ? Why, &ir, if these people at all approximate to their kind~in England, not one quarter of them could raise the money. Ah, perhaps, it will be said by some, it is proportionally small to those who are expected to pay. If so, we are driven to this : The chief hope for the £4 fee is that it will crush all the little ones out of the, trade, and that thia is necessary to protect the public. Now, is it true that all thorough scoundrels come from the poorest, and that to have a "respectable class" of hawkers you must only have those who can pay a good fee. Why you know, sir, that all experience falsifies such an assumption, and that there are as many rogues with a hundred poands in their pocket as amongst these with only a hundred pence. And I am sure you •will acknowledge that some of the greatest and.best of men have started from the lowest position ; and can you not also call to mind some who have wielded their thousands, and yet whose beginnings were so small, in this s T«ry trade, that even a ss. fee would have stopped them, and made their obtaining a livelihood — at least in that way (perhaps the only one they were fit for) — an impossibility? Governments are secure to do almost any amount of injustice before much opposition can be raised. Here, then, they should see their power, and be all the more careful that it is exercised with well-considered discre* tion. And, now Jam so far, allow me t«i ask would it bo unworthy of these Uouni cillors, instead of jingling precedents so mucli of other countries, &c, to take more counsel of the people, and not dub so quickly theio pet notions into Jaw ? No doubt they take: all the wisdom they can, but half a dozen to mumble and report can't be much if the subject has not been well thought of outside England our governors" most affect to follow j but have they yet to learn that she has done a thousand things that had better a thousand times never been done — many which she is now trying (perhaps too late) to alter ?— I am, &c, ' ' 'A Looker-on 1 /