The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Saturday, July 21, 1888. SOMETHING AMISS.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 172, 21 July 1888, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning.

Saturday, July 21, 1888. SOMETHING AMISS.

Be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country’s, Thy God’s, and truth’s.

In these days of local option, Sunday closing, and the various other evils which beset the licensed publican, hotel property is, at the very best of times, a risky thing to hold. Seldom, however, do such a series of complications arise in connection with any one hotel, as have done in the case of the one at Makaraka. It will be remembered that six months ago this Hotel—the Roseland—was burnt to the ground. Immediately afterwards the then licensee, Mr Waugh, applied for and was granted a transfer of his license to temporary premises, pending the reerection of the hotel. This temporary license lasted six months, and expired on the 7th inst. Meanwhile, at the annual meeting in June of the Gisborne Licensing Committee, the license of the new hotel was renewed subject to certain conditions which necessitated the providing of stabling accommodation

and some other small matters. Mr Waugh took up and paid for the license, but, we understand, refused to enter, into possession until the conditions imposed by the Licensing Committee were complied with by the owner, and which, it is said, are still unperformed. A new tenant was thereupon procured, and as the holder of the license refused to transfer it, an order for the new tenant to carry on the license was obtained from three of the Licensing Committee, and this curiousily enough was not signed by those members after a hearing of the matter, but individually in the street or elsewhere. This may be quite according to the Act, but it will be noticed that no opportunity to object was given to the holder of the license. But now comes the curious part of the affair. Two public houses are open at Makaraka. The license for the temporary hotel has expired by effluxion of time : the license for the new hotel was granted upon conditions which appear to have not been complied with. Are both, or is either of the hotels legally open ? We should be sorry to see anything happen that might close up the Roseland Hotel, for it has, we believe, been a boon to settlers, and would be satisfactorily conducted under either of the two persons at present in the foreground ; but it is manifest that it was only intended to have one hotel at Makaraka. We have no doubt that the whole matter will be threshed out in Court, and therefore we make no comments upon it. But we think that it is at least injudicious for the members of the Licensing Committee to add to the complication by signing any document affecting a license without having ail the parties concerned before them. If they are not well acquainted with the licensing laws themselves, then they have the Clerk of their Committee—a gentleman well up in licensing matters—to whom they might refer. [Since the above was in type we learn that the matter has been satisfactorily settled, but the point of our remarks is in no way weakened, though we are glad to hear that matters have assumed this promising phase.]