Hawke's Bay Herald. FRIDAY, JULY 4, 1879. THE LICENSING LAW.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5425, 4 July 1879, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Herald. FRIDAY, JULY 4, 1879. THE LICENSING LAW.

fWe are promised a ; new Licensing Bill next session: It will decupy a peculiar ; position', as it is the work of , Mr 'Stout, who has left the Ministry, and is tp.be introduced by those who remain of his! late colleagues, but they, we are can.-. tioned, in no way hold tliemselves ' responsible for it. The bill, will thus stand in the position of an orphan, or at best a sort of step-child of the Ministry, and they have given fair wai'ning that they intend to extend towards the, helpless infant no more protection than' is commonly supposed to be vouchsafed by step-parents towards the offspring of others. • Under such conditions we should imagine that the Bill stands. a poor chance of success; Tho Apostle of Temperance may buckle on his armor and fight for the luckless and fatherless legislative infant,, but Sir William's arm has lost much of its old cunning, and his championship will hardly do much to benefit the bill. The bill is, a contemporary informs us, already in type. In its main features it is a modification, of Sir "William Fox's Local Option Bill, and is decidedly an improvement upon that impossible measure. The licensing districts are to be identical with boroughs or wat'ds of boroughs, ridings of counties, or road districts, Existing licenses, are not to be interfered with, unless a petition signed by at least two-thirds of the residents or ratepayers "in the neighborhood" object to any particular license, when the Court must refuse a renewal. The clause has some good features, but the words we have quoted ; would leave the matter too anuch to the discretion or caprice of the Licensing Bench, as the Commissioners are, called upon to define what is the ' " neighborhood" of any house. ' A certain radius should, if possible, be fixed in the. bill, though we are fully alive to. the great j:>ractical difficulty of "framing a rule to act fairly in all cases, as circumstances must to a great extent determine what can be considered the " neighborhood" of a public-house. ■What might fairly be considered the neigborhood of a house in the suburbs, where there are few travellers, and where a great part of the population is absent during the business hours of the day, would be far too large if. applied tb f a house in the centre pf a town or near a wharf or railway terminus* It was doubtless this difficulty of denning districts which should be fair in all : cases that led Mr Stout to leave the question to the decision of the Court. This clause might perhaps once in a century be of good service in causing a badly-conducted house to be closed, but we believe that in its present shape it would, if not absolutely unworkable, act very unequally. "We see no real necessity for it, as the Court has now the power to refuse the renewal of any license, and if any house be conducted in a disreputable manner the inhabitants of the neighborhood could communicate' with the police, and act with them in ■■ opposing a re-issue of the license. This is really all that is wanted, and we imagine that the House will take a. similar view, and strike out the clause. What we consider the best feature of the bill is a provision which places in the ' hands of the ratepayers in anylicensing district the power to say whether the number" of licensed houses shall be increased. This is the permissive principle on a workable basis. The simple question *' shall the number of licenses in this district be increased ?" is to be put to the ratepayers (not to the residents), and a majority shall decide either in the affirmative or the negative. It is probable that the votes polled would be very few, the Good Templars mustering on one side and the publicans on the other, but inasmuch: as the clause confers on the ratepayers a privilege which they may exercise if they choose to do so, we consider it an improvement on the present system, which places in the hands of three or four men, sometimes more or less concerned in the liquor trade, the power of deciding whether a new license shall or shall not be granted. Sunday-trading is to be. as at present, .strictly prohibited, except in the case of bonn fide travellers, under a heavy line. A " traveller " is deline'l to be a person who shall have travelled at least five miles that day, and anyone falsely representing himself to be a traveller renders himself liable ta a fine of £5. A somewhat similar law is already in existence, but it has hitherto remained all but a dead letter, its very stringency defeating its object. "We confess that we see no reason, why.

public-houses should be open on Sundays, and we . believe that.it would be more cpnducive\to (morality if , they were clojsjedij but, lbplahg to .i%e;: facb that the law as it stands is naßitti'aliy broken, i^rpuld it not; bS-i better" to^|tse rather 'tfian render "more strihgenfc?the restrictions on Sunday trading 1 There might then be a hope that the police would , s,t.ricfcl£, , enforce ....they. ..law. .t.Theponteniporaxy ffom whose columns we. have extracted th : e above details of the prpj)'6sed" hew" : Act does "riot : 'give any fvivfcher particulars, and we may therefore assume, that in other respects the bill does not propose any stdVfclifig'departure from the existing law. ' On : the whole,' Mr Stout's , bill'" ."appeals. : to . fee dn imm-ovement^ipbh' the present .inconsistent and obscure : Act, -Byrb it will require some : modification if it. ' is. ; to pass from its fledgling state into a fullgrown Act of Parliament.,? .;-. ■•. . . *