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Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 5193, 13 April 1888, Page 2

The ratepayer of the Central Ward have, \ by their votes yesterday, given tho Licensing Committee power to increase the number of licensed houses in that portion of the ] town. In the North and South Wards the - voting went in favor of tying tho hands of tho Committee, and of committing those i districts to tho number of houses that are j

now licensed. Of tho total (803) ratepayers on the burgess rolls of tho borough, only 309 went to the polls, 149 voting for an increase of publicans' licenses, and 100 against such increase. As a matter of course, with their usual shortsightedness, tho temperance people voted in the interests of the publicans; while the great bulk of the ratepayers did not caro ono way or the other about the question at issue. We say it was shortsighted policy on the part of tho teetotallers to have voted against increasing the number of licensed houses for tbo simple reason that it is distinctly in the interests of temperance that mere drinking shops should be closed and respectable hotels take their place. Our remarks are not so applicable to Napier as to other district- where the teetotallers act in the same way as they did here. Once every year the ratepayers elect their Licensing "Committees, so that practically the local option clauses of the Act are brought into operation once in twelve months, instead of once in three years, and if the Committees havo the confidence of those who elected them, they might at least be entrusted with the power to grant or withhold licenses. Iv many districts thero are houses which would undoubtedly lose their licenses if the Committees had been allowed to grant others in their places, but those licenses are renewed from year to year because to cancel them would be to inconvenience the public. While we are thoroughly opposed to what is called freetrado in liquor traffic, we most certainly think that if tbe ratepayers permitted a wider latitude to tho Licensing Committees the publio would be better served, and temperance advocates would be better pleased.