LET THE PEOPLE VOTE.

Evening Star, Issue 7431, 28 January 1888, Page 4

LET THE PEOPLE VOTE.

TO THE EDITOK. Sin,—-Under the above Leading in your last night’s issue, I gather that the representative men of the New South Wales temperance party desire a similar measure of popular control of the liquor traffic as is now enjoyed by the sister colony of Victoria. Victorian legislation is a decided contrast to the legislation of New South Wales and New Zealand. There seems to bo a practicability and sound common sense embodied in Victoria’s financial and social enactments that would well repay a careful study by thinkers in our own Colony. Victoria s Customs Tariff, their railway legislation, and lastly, their Licensing Act, are such as to gain the admiration of specialists in financial anil social reform, and the community nt large see disnlayed the sound common sense and grasp of the question legislated upon by the success attending Victoria’s fiscal and social laws. In marked contrast to Victoria’s way of doing things in a direct and simple way, we shall in a week or two, I presume, bo called upon to vote in a roundabout way upon the liquor traffic. What a farce the whole thing is. A more unpractical scheme for getting at the desires of the electorate could not be formulated. To judge by results, look at the composition of the present Licensing Committee, two of whom— Messrs Gourloy and Stanford —judging them by their votes and pdblic utterances, believe in ftcetvadeiu liquor, and would, if they could, grant licenses to all comers. Mr Sligo, I presume, thinks that the double of a working man’s day is not long enough for his friends of the tap, but that seventeen hours is more commensurate with their wants. The Messrs Hialop think six teen hours arc long enough, and possibly too long, to be a benefit to the community. Looking at the constitution of the Committee, I think it would take a very cute Yankee lawyer to guess what measure of licensing the people of Dunedin required. Why not do ns in Victoria ; let the people vote on License or no license? Then, should they decide on license, the Magistrates could surely judge characters as well as any Licensing Committee, and would be better able to have the Licensing Act enforced as licensing business as well, ns its outcome would then come under one juris, diction. There are other provisions of the Victorian Licensing Act that would commend it to us, the least of which are certainly not those that stipulate that nt unlicensed hours the bars are not to he lighted, and shall bo kept padlocked inside the hotel as well as outside. That lodgers are to bo only served during ordinary license hours, and that the traveller must, to be bona fide, have come a distance of ten miles. These provisions and others for enforcement an enlightened Legislature has given Victoria; may ours go and do likewise. — I am, etc., Let the People Vote, Darned iu, January 2G.