SIR WILLIAM FOX IN REJOINDER TO MR. MIDDLETON.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume II, Issue 106, 20 April 1881, Page 3

SIR WILLIAM FOX IN REJOINDER TO MR. MIDDLETON.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAB.

Sib, — I am glad to observe that Mr. Middleton does not deny one single fact stated by me in my last, except the unimportant one of the hour at which my carriage was ordered, but in respect of which the member of my party who ordered it, and who had himself to harness the horses and yoke them up, assures me that I am right, and Mr. Middleton is wrong. All the other circumstances he admits to be true ; he cannot contradict one of them. The roaring, blaspheming drunkard, who spoiled my sleep ; the pugilist with the blood streaming from his face, and curses from his mouth ; the poor fellow lying on his back, dead drunk, in the noon-day Btin, uncared for by any ; the impudent sot, who gave us a drunkard's farewell as we got into the carriage ; every word is confessed to be true. There were too many witnesses for Mr. Middleton to deny these facts. So he tries to excuse them. He explains that I unfortunately, came to his hotel while he was doing, what they call in Australia "lambing down" a number of working parties employed in the formation of the road to Eahotu. " These men," he says, « having been paid by the road engineer for work performed, went in for what Sir William would call a debauch, but which others " (including, I presume, Mr. Middleton) ** would call enjoyment." Well, that is the very thing I complained of; that I should be obliged to witness this operation of "lambing down" a large number of working men, who were spending, in drunken debauchery, the fruits of a month's hard labor, for the benefit of the "respectable licensed victualler." I objected to seeing these poor fellows emptying their pockets into the publican's till, while they were degraded into something worse than wild beasts, and then sent back to work another month to raise more money to be again deposited in the safe keeping of the publican. Because I remonstrate against this sort of thing, Mr. Middleton calls me "illiberal and partial." Should Ibe more liberal, and more impartial, if I saw such things going on, and held my tongue? They say "Britons never will be slaves"; but I know of no slavery worse than that of an able-bodied man, whose life is spent in working for the pubh'can. A life made np of a month's hard work, and then forty eight hours of what Mr. Middleton calls " enjoyment," while the hard earned wageß of the month are swallowed in the operation ; it is a worse slavery than that which Uncle Tom suffered under the savage Legree. Mr. Middleton prophecies that this sort of thing "will continue in spite of Sir William's unceasing efforts to suppress it." I never prophesy; but I venture to think that it will not continue an hour longer than the traffic in which Mr. Middleton is engaged continues. It was the presence of his bar that was the cause of the drunkenness I saw. Let our licensing benches decline to establish such bars, and the drunkenness would disappear with them. But Mr. Middleton asserts that men get drunk at the Constabulary canteen, half a mile off, and then come to his house to disturb his visitors. The men I saw did not do so : I saw them get drunk in Mr. Middleton's bar, and from the state they ultimately got into, must have had liquor sold to them contrary to law — long after they were in a forward state of intoxication. The " roaring trade" I saw going on in his bar quite accounted for all the drunkenness I saw, without debiting any of it to the canteen. But Mr. Middleton himself tells us that there had been an influx of working-men into his house, who had just been paid off by the engineer, and then went in for a debauch. Will he pretend that the canteen had their money, and he had not ? that after these men had arrived at his bar, and gone in for a debauch, he allowed them to slip through his fingers and get their drink at the canteen? The public allows a great deal of dust to.be thrown in its eyes by the publican, but there is a limit to its credulity, and Mr. Middleton has certainly reached it, when he insinuates that the horrid sights I saw were due to the canteen, and not to his bar. If it ever so happened before, it did not so happen then. But let us look at the subject for a moment from another point of view. It is of the utmost importance to get this West Coast settled by an industrious body of farmers. The finest land in this Colony is being offered on terms suitable for working men. The Government is spending thousands of pounds in employing on road-work able-bodied laborers, of exactly the stamp, if they were sober, to make good settlers. If they would save thenmoney for a few weeks, every one of them might have a farm of his own, and lay the foundation of independence for life ; and the colony have the benefit of their prosperity. But Mr. Middleton stops the way. He places his bar between these men and the prosperity which might be theirs; and a very fatal bar it is. Month by month their hard earned wages go into his till in return for the " enjoyment " he provides. The day will come when the Government employment will cease, and those men will leave the district, without an acre, and without a shilling. But the respectable licensed victualler will remain : or, if he leaves, will go with a fortune, a great part of which will have been wrung out of the sweat and life-blood of the working man. Nor is the working man the only sufferer. Every body suffers by the waste of the two millions which are annually spent in strong drink in New Zealand. The butcher, the baker, the grocer, the blacksmith, the carpenter, and all other dealers in dry goods, suffer by the trade in wet goods. The money that goes into the publican's till, is kept out of theirs ; and it is surprising that the tradesmen in our towns and villages should submit, as they do, to the presence of these sinks, which swallow up so large a portion of the money whioh would otherwise come to them. What a revival in trade there would be, if those two millions, or half that sum, were spent among the storekeepers and mechanics in the colony, instead of being sent out of it for intoxicating drinks, with which to demoralize,

pauperize, and ruin so many of those who ought to be their customers. Who prevents it? Mr. Middleton, and the other drunkard-makers of New Zealand, who are authorized by the Licensing Benches to follow up the road parties, and new settlers, into the remotest corners of the country, "wherever two or three are gathered together." I can understand how Coster Dick, who keeps the Devil's Arms Hotel at Deadman's Gully diggings, can follow such a trade. It is on a level with his instincts, and experiences of life, and if you remoLstrate with him on the wickedness of ruining his fellow-mejn, he will probably 1 reply that "he never know'd no better.' But it does surprise me when I see men, who have been well-educated, who can read, write, and spell, and even pen a passable letter to a newspaper, engaging in such a traffic, and defending it. It only proves what a heart-hardening thing this traffic is. And it passes my comprehension to understand how men who have lived in civilized society, and assembled with persons of tastes even moderately refined, as many publicans have done, should find it possible to breathe in the constant presence of the surroundings of the bar, to eat their food with an appetite, and sleep in their beds at night,, knowing what are the results of their traffic. The tigers at Singapore swim across from the main land, every night, and carry off at least one human victim. They never eat other tigers. They scorn to be cannibals. But our social tigers feed themselves fat on the flesh and blood of then: own race. The picked bones of their victims are thick in the" graveyards of New Zealand, while those, whose victims they were, survive in wealth and prosperity, and men touch their hats to them, and call them respectable. I never could understand how a man, who lives by a trade that is not respectable, can be respectable. "Bespecfcable" means, I presume, deserving of respect, not merely having men touch their hats, or call one squire. If I were compelled to choose between the lot of the poor drunkard lying in a dishonored grave, and that of the " respectable " man, whose trade sent him to it, I should prefer the former. I would rather be the sacrifice than the eacrificer. I should have to bear the burden of my own individual ruin ; but it would be lighter than that of having ruined hundreds of others, for the sake of putting into my pocket, what Canon Wilberforce calls, " blood-stainedjnoney." — I am, &c, J William Fox.