THE LICENSING BENCHES.

Evening Star, Issue 8506, 4 May 1891, Page 2

THE LICENSING BENCHES.

TO THS SDROB. Sib, —Can anybody tell me the nee of a licensing committee? 1 don’t know; does anybody else? We neglect onr affaire, upset the neighborhood, and tear round generally for weeks beforehand. We spend money and time and energy, on both sides, to elect a licensing committee. And when they are elected, what do they do ? Grant licenses! That’s all they do. They take oath to administer truly the licensing laws; but as to any administration thereof, the licensees might as well have the licenses posted to them from Fiji, as far as concerns any supervision over their conduct Yes, they grant licenses. They never refuse them, no matter which party elected them, or whether the licenses are legal or not. L«gal? Are there any licenses illegal? Certainly there are. The licensing committees onght to know the laws they are called npon to administer. They must know that those laws allow them to license only snch houses as have a certain specified amount of accommodation for the public, in the shape of board and lodging. They do not recognise mere drinking ban, and they forbid any licenses being granted to them. And any licensing committee which grants a license to any such house is guilty of a violation of the law, and may be brought to account for it. There is likewise another point, which seems to have been forgotten by licensing committees in their reckless disregard of the laws. However ample the accommodation may be, yet if the house be not needed in the locality, the Committee may not grant that license. It is bound to refuse it. The law does not suppose a license to be granted for the convenience of the applicant because he happens to have the required accommodation, but for the need of the public; and not the most rabid member of the liquor traffic can truthfully say that one-half the hotels in Dunedin are in any sense needed by the public. They exist here so thick together that they are ready to eat one another up like rats, and resort many of them to Sunday trading and all other questionable devices to “make a living.” Indeed, probably not less thau one-third of the “ hotels ” are not hotels at all, but mere drinking bars—many of them, it is to be feared, gambling dens, and worse, And whatever committee granted licenses to these was guilty of wilful and deliberate defiance of the law.

Now, this is the natural and proper solution of the difficulty between the present Licensing Committee of Donedin: Let them refuse ail future licenses to such homes, and thin out the remainder. By the very terms of their office they are bound to such a course. They cannot avoid it without breaking their oath. There will be quite enough "hotel" accommodation left than to satisfy the most 'exigeant " moderate." If any doubt remains on that point, the overwhelming local option vote against all increases shows the public will towards reduction, if the local option vote could have effected it. Let the Committee be wise in time and make the reduction the public so manifestly showed its will to make. Let those drinking bars, those surplus bouses, be wiped out. They have no legal existence—they have no right to be.—l am, I etc., Peter Geeephe. Dunedin, May 4.