AUCKLAND AND THE £50,000.

Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 36, 13 February 1885, Page 3

AUCKLAND AND THE £50,000.

* TO THE IDITOR. Sin— lt may bo admitted that the i) 50,000 said to be saved in Auckland as the reanlt of closing the bars at 10 o'clock is not put in the most oorreot form in the advertisement out of which yon mako capital for your article against the effort t? close tho bars at that hour horo. The gain to the publio should have boen jBIOOO a week, which really comeß to tho same thing in tho ond. You havo fallen into a similar error in your effort to disprove tho truth of tho above snm in the returns of duty on drink. To be of any value they should have been for six months instead of twelve. Yon should also have shown, to mako your contention of value, that the population has boen the same, instead of whioh it has probably increased 20 per cent. The general truth of tho losa of .£lOOO a week oamo first from the publicans themselves, and has been reaffirmed by tho Auckland Press. And it surely contains the truth, otherwise why any opposition on tho part of the publicans against closing the bars at 10 o'olook? If they sold as muoh by closing at an oarlior hour, then, in all common senso, thoy would havo no objootion to such an arrangement. There is another matter whioh the public, as distinguished from the publioans, should note as boaring on this question — the oft-furnishod evidence of tho police that the earlier closing of tho bars has been followed by a groat falling off in arrosts for drunkenness, and the Crimea that Bpring from it. There oannot be two sidoa to this qnestion, and it loaves but ono oourso open to overy eleotor who wishes to lessen drnnkenness and orime. I am, &c, W. C. Oliver.