Public Opinion.

Hawke's Bay Times, Issue 1582, 5 June 1874, Page 241

Public Opinion.

CHBISTOHUBCH LICENSING COURT. Press. We are exceedingly glad that the members of the Licensing Court stood firm yesterday, and were not induced even by a petition bearing 692 signatures, to grant the certificate they refused at the last sitting. For our part we. attach little importance to the petition. As a rule such addresses are got up too easily to have any real value; and the present one was no exception. The great majority of those who put their names to it could have formed no judgment of the merits of the case. They had probably not considered the question at all, The Justices qf the Peace, the members of the Assembly or Provincial Council, the merchants, bankers, &c, who showed such aolicitude for the preservation of Tattersail's bar, ape certainly not in the habit of frequenting it. Many of them, we dare say, only know the place by name, and very few had any motive for caring whether it were licensed or not. They signed the petition partly, as is common on such occasions, because others did ; partly out of a feeling of good fellowship, and a willingness to lend a neighbor a helping hand. " The latter disposition was doubtless much quickened by regard for a very popular member of the firm con: perbed.

We join in regret that the action of the Licensing Court should have pressed hardly on Mr Bennett. But we have not Altered our opinion that the licence in questipn qu,ght qot to have been given, in the firet instance, and that the Court did its duty in refusing to renew it. Looking to the circumstances if the case and the requirements of the Act, we do not see how either this licence, or the othe r which was refused yesterday, could have beeu granted. If anything had been wanted to confirm our opinion it would haye been, supplied by the applicant's counsel. Mr Thomas, in urging the Court to reconsider its previous decision, declared that if the licence was refused his clients would be ruined, and the Repository would have to be shut up. Surely the learned counsel did not perceive what his words implied. They involve an admission that the Repository is not a paying concern, that the proprietors depend entirely on the profits they derive from the sale of drink, and that their nominal business is kept up simply as a means of bringing people together, and creating custom for the bar. We are far from.saying that such is the fact. On the ounlirary, we make no doubt that the owners of Tattersall's do a satisfactory trade, irrespective of their profits as publicans.. As Mr Bowen remarked, the Repository did very well before the licence was granted, and may continue to flourish after „ the licence is withdrawn. But, according to their own counsel, it is not a place which ought to be licensed. For the only ground on which the right of retailing drink: there could be defended, is thqt it is required for the convenience of people who resort thither on their affairs. Even then f the obvious answer would be,.that there is,a public-house just over the way. ' But the argument addressed to the Court reverses the case.

It makes the bar trade the first consideration. It represents Tattersall's as kept on foot, not for the transaction of legitimate business as a horse bazaar, but simply for the purpose of selling liquor. According to Mr Thomas the bar is noc merely an adjunct to the business, but the whole establishment is maintained for the sake of the bar.

We have pointed out on a former occasion what a heavy responsibility is thrown on the Licensing Courts. The Act requires them, before granting any certificate, to satisfy themselves that " there is a necessity for the public house, or establishment for the sale of spirituous liquors, for which application is made." What construction is to be put upon the phrase Hi a necessity ?" In deciding, as they have in Christclmrch and Dunedin, to demand of every licensee that he shall provide suitable sleeping accommodation for the public, the Courts have we think) acted in compliance with the spirit and intention of the above clause. But the two applications which were refused yesterday were rightly rejected. A place which affords no bed-room accommodation whatever, and which exists only for the sale of drink, cannot by any stretch of meaning be called a necessity. THE LESSON OF THE CRUSADE. BY MARK TWAIN. The women's crusade against the rnrasellera continues. It began in an Ohio village early in the year, and has now extended itself eastwardly to the Atlantic seaboard, 600 miles, and westwardly (at a bound) without stopping by the way), to San Francisco, about 2,500 miles. It has scat' tered itself along down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers southwardly some ten or twelve hundred miles. Indeed, it promises to sweep, eventually, the whole United States, with the exception of the

little cluster of commonwealths which we call New England. Puritan New England is sedate, reflective, conservative, and very hard to inflame. The method of the crusaders is singular. They contemn the use of force in the breaking up of the whisky traffic. They only assemble before a drinking shop, or within it, and sing hymns and pray, hour after hour—n6F6^irvup,,^^til6 surrenders. This is not force, at least they do not consider it so. After the surrender the crusaders march back to headquarters and proclaim the victory, and ascribe it to the powers above. They rejoice together awhile, and then go forth again in their strength and conquer another whisky shop with their prayers and hymns and their staying capacity (pardon the rudness), and spread that victory upon the battle-flag of the powers above. In this generous way the crusaders have parted with the credit of not less than three thousand triumphs, which some carpipg people say they gained their ownselves, without assistance fiom any quarter. If I am one of these, lam the humblest. If I seem to doubt that prayer is the agent that conquers these rumsellers, I do it honestly, and not in a flippant spirit. If the crusaders were to stay at home and pray for the rumseller and for his adoption of a better way of lite,-or if

the crusaders even assembled together in a church and offered up such a prayer with a united voice, and it accomplished a victory, I would then feel that it was the praying that moved heaven to do the miracle ; for I believe that if the prayer is the agent that brings about the desired result, it cannot be necessary to pray the prayer in any particular place in order to get the ear or move the grace of the Deity. When the crusaders go and invest a whisky shop and fall to praying, one suspects that they are praying rather less to the Deity than to the rum-man. So I cannot help feeling (after carefully reading the details of the rum sieges) that as much as nine-tenths of the credit of each of the 3,000 victories achieved thus far belongs of right of the crusaders themselves, and it grieves me to see them give it away with much spendthrift generosity. I will not afflct yon with statistics, but I desire to say just a word or two about the chaiacterof this crusade. The crusaders are young girls and women—not the inferior sort, but the very l-est in the village communities. The telegraph keeps the newspapers supplied with the progress of the war, and thus the praying infection spreads from town to town, day after day, week after week. When it attacks a community it seems to seize, upon almost everything in it at,once. There is a meeting in a church, speeches are made, resolutions are passed, a purse for expenses is made up, a "praying band" is appointed; if it be a large town, half-a-dozen praying bands, each numbering as many as a hundred women, are appointed, and the working district of each band marked out. Then comes a grand assult in force all along the line. Every stronghold of rum is invested; first one and then another champion ranges up before the proprietor, and offers up a special petition for him ; he has to stand meekly" there behind his bar, under the eyes of a great concourse of ladies who are better than he is and are aware of it, and hear all the secret iniquities of his business divulged to the angels above, accompanied by the sharp sting of wishes for his regeneration, which imply an amount of need for it which is in the last degree uncomfortable to him. If ho holds out

• bravely, thg crusaders hold out mor I bravely still—-or at least more persistently i . though I doubt if the grandeur of th ' performance would not be considerabl; heightened if otie solitary crusader wer to try praying at a hundred rumsellers ii a body for a while, and see how it felt, t< have everybody against her, instead o: for her. If the man holds out, th< crusaders camp before his place and keei up the seige till they wear him out. In one case, they besieged a rum-shop two whole weeks. They built a shed before it, anr. kept up the praying all night and all da) long, every day of the fortnight; and this is the bitterest winter weather too. They conquered. You may ask if such an inI vestment and interference with a man's business (in cases where he is (i protected ,: by a licence) is lawful ? By no means, But the whole community being with the crusaders, the authorities have usually been overawed and afraid to execute the laws, the authorities being, in too many cases, mere little politicians, and more given to looking to chances of re-election than fearlessly discharging their duty according to the terms of their official oaths. VVor.ld you consider tiie conduct of these crusaders justifiable? I do—thoroughly justifiable. They find themselves voiceless in the making of laws and the election of officers to execute them. Born with hraius, born in the country, educated, having huge interests at stake, they find their tongues tied and their hands fettered, while every ignorant whisky-drinking i'oreigu-born savage in the land may hold office, help to make the laws, degrade the dignity ol the former and break the latter at his own sweet will. They see their fathers, husbands, and brothers sit inanely at home and allow the scum of the country to assemble at the "primaries," name the candidates for office from their own vile' ranks, and, unrebuked, elect them. They live in the midst of a country where there is no end to the laws and no beginning to the execution of them. And when the laws intended to protect their sons from destruction fiom intemperance lie torpid and without sign of life year after year, they recognize that here is a matter which interests them personally—a matter which comes straight home to them. And since they are allowed _to lift no legal voice they suffer under this regard, I think it is no wonder that their patience has broken down at last, and they have contrived to persuade themselves that they are justifiable in breaking the law of trespass when the laws that should make the trespass needless are allowed by the votors to lie dead and inoperative I cannot help glorying in the pluck of these women, sad as it is to see them displaying themselves in these unwomanly ways; sad as it is to see them carrying their grace and their purity into places which should never know their presence ; and sadder still as it is to see them trying to save a set of men who, it seems to me, there can be no reasonable object in saving. It does not become us to scoff at the crusaders, remembering what it is they have borne all these years, but it does become us to admire their heroism a heroism that boldly faces jeers,-curses, ribald language, obloquy of every kind and degree- in a word, every manner of thing that puiv-hearted, pureminded women such as those are naturally dread and shrink from, and remains stead fast through it all, undismayed, patient, hopeful, giving no quarter, asking none, determined to conquer, and succeeding. It is the same old superb spirit that animated that other devoted, magnificent, mistaken crusade of six hundred years ago. The sons of such womeu as. these must surely he worth saving from the destroying power of rum. The present crusade will doubtless do but little work againsHntemperance that will be really permanent, but it will do what is as much, or even more, to the purpose, I think. I think it will suggest to more than one ma*!) that if womeu could vote they would vote on the side of morality, even if they did vote and speak rather frantically and furiously; and it will also suggest that when the woman once made up their minds that it was not good to leave the all-powerful " primaries" in the hands of loafers, thieves, and pernicious little politicians, they would not sit indolently at home, as their husbands and brothers do now, but would hoist their praying banners, take the field in force, pray the. assembled political scum back to the holes and slums where they belong, and set up some candidates fit for decent human beings to vote for.