THE LICENSING LAWS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3784, 31 August 1883, Page 3

THE LICENSING LAWS.

[TO THE EDITOB OP THE DAILY TeLEGEAPH.] Bib,—Permit mo to correct certain errors of fact in your article of yesterday. You state that Sir W. Fox and tho temperance party agitated for elective licensing committees. Sucli is not the case, and Mr Sutton's return is utterly misleading if it be assumed to represent the result of temperance legislation. Sir W. Fox, to whom you specially rofer, predicted, before the Act came into force, tho failure that must _ inevitably attend the wretched compromise of elective boards in place of the just demand for local option. You say that'" the amendment of the old Act, in the matter of the size of the district, was not needed." Certainly not, in that respect, as it was very explicit; but you must be aware that it was distinctly violated by tho Vogcl Ministry, who gazetted districts of enormous extent in contravention of its express provisions, in order to secure tho failure of the '' local option " clauses. Tho temperance party have never asked for one of the crude and expensive licensing , experiments which have been forced upon tho country, and it is tho height of injustice to attempt to fixj upon them the responsibility of failure which they were the first to X foresee. Endeavoring to make the best of a hopeless bad law —for which they did not ask, and against which they hayo vainly protested —they are twitted with its failure. They have never changed their ground, but still demand that the people of any district shall, if they so desire, be able to prevent tho establishment of the liquor traffic in their community; or, if it already exists, to suppress it as a nuisance. This demand the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone has characterised as "just aud reasonable"— and, more than this, has promised to give it effect in a Government bill for the United Kingdom. It will be time enough to proclaim tho failuro of local option when it has been tried. Allow me to refer to one more matter. You quite misrepresent tho action of tho temperance party in Napier at the election. They were the first, by_ some weeks, to "move hand or foot in the matter.'' A joint committee of tho various bodies held several meetings, duly advertised, in my office, and had their candidates chosen. Overtures were then ("at the eleventh, hour'!) made by tho L.V. committee, to prevent the expense., §c, of a contested election, and a compromise was arranged. As you take this case to bo a type of 139 others, it is as well that the facts should be correctly presented.—l am, &C.j

R. CoUPIiAND HaBDING. 31st August, 1883. [Our correspondent, conveniently for his argument, ignOres the Act of 1881, with its local option clauses and diminutive licensing tliatrictH, and runn back to tho time when Sir J". Vogel was Premier. Our correspondent is' also somewhat mixed in his recdl- \. lection 'concerning the first and last elections of licensing committees,—Ed. D.T.]