SIR WILFRID ON LOCAL OPTION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6255, 3 December 1881, Page 7

SIR WILFRID ON LOCAL OPTION.

| At the annual meeting of the Permissive Bill Association iu Glasgow recently—presided over by Lord Colin Campbell—Sir Wilfrid Lawson, in the course of a humorous speech, said there are a good many people in this meeting who do not exactly know what Local Option means in regard to the liquor traffic. It does not mean giving you any judicial power, any of those powers which now belong to the magistrates as regards licenses ; it does not mean giving to the people of this country any power to regulate the liquor traffic and arrange how it shall be carried on. It simply means giving you the power of the veto on the issue of licenses by whomsoever those licenses may bo issued—(cheers) —simply giving you the choice, the option of saying whether you will have licenses among you or whether you will not. That is the whole of Local Option, and it is very natural that our friends the publicans do not like it. There is a peculiarity about every institution and about every vested interest that they have —that they think the world was made for it, and not it for the world. It is the same with all sorts of institutions. My Lord, you and I have sat iu the House of Commons. Is not night made hideous by every colonel in the British army crying out that everything is to be done for them, that the country exists for them, and not they for the country? So it is with the officers of the law. Propose law reform and the lawyers are down upon you directly. They want to live by the law, to live on you, not you to live on them. (Laughter.) If you try to take away any privileges from the Irish landlords, it takes a whole session for us to do it, because they think the earth is not the Lord's, but the landlord's. (Great laughter and cheers.) Very natnrally our friends the publicans say—We are a great institution, and the country is bound to maintain us, and we ought to be allowed to carry on our trade wherever we like ; wherever we and a bench of three or four magistrates choose to say that our trade should be carried on there it ought to be carried on, and the people, for whom one would imagine it was carried on, have no right to say anything at all in the matter. Now, that, I think, is a grievance. I think that the privilege which is granted to the drink sellers, whenever they can got the magistrates to agree with them, of setting these down wherever they please, is a very serious evil to the people of this country. And why ? The trade is not like any other trade, as my rev. friend. I think, explained to you. If a butcher's shop be set up, or a baker's shop, the people deal with it. It does not increase the rates. That man does a fair business and lives by legitimate profit. But the publican, when he sets up a shop, immediately increases your rates and taxes for the crime and the pauperism and the riots which are produced. You see that they have some disturbances in Ireland now and then—it is not so peaceful as Glagow. (Laughter.) And in Belfast I think they have religious fights now and then, but I do not believe they would fight even about religion there if it was not for the drink, bccause I have observed over and over again, after they have been at war in Belfast for a day or two, you see a telegram in the Times, " About five o'clock in the afternoon the magistrates decided that all the drink shops should be shut up; since then the town lias been perfectly quiet." (Laughter and cheers.) Ah, now mankind are the same all the world over—lreland, Scotland, and England —in this respect. One more case though for Ireland —I got it only the other day, and it is rather good. It is connected with the Limerick races. Now, I should think that if there was a hot-bed of riot anywhere it would be Limerick races. But the magistrates took a sensible course this year, and they shut up the drink shops. They said there should be sold no drink on the racecourse of Limerick, and the sporting correspondent of the Freeman's Journal, writing from Limerick on the 13th September, says : —" All was peace and harmony at Ballinacurra to-day, and not even a passing thumping match called for the intervention of the police. I have never been on a racecourse where I saw les3 rowdyism or intemperance. Peace, absolute and utter, characterised the opening day of the Limerick meeting." Now, 1 say if the prohibition of the liquor traffic can produce peace at the Limerick races, there is no spot in the wide world which it won't help to pacify. Wherever we find the drink traffic boycotted, put a stop to just as at Limerick races, there you have peace, order, and increasing prosperity. (Cheers.) Now, I do not propose, I never have proposed in the House of Commons, that you should have a law shutting up all the public-houses. We do not want to shut up a single public-house, we only want to prevent them selling drink. I never proposed to stop the sale of drink. I would do it in a minute if I thought I had a chance of carrying it. (Laughter.) What I have said is, "Let local communities have their option in this matter—-(cheers)— leaving all the machinery, licensing magistrates to license the houses, jailors to carry out the manufactured article, policemen to look after them—leaving everything exactly as it i s _only, I say, put a key into the hands of the people by which they can turn off the steam and prevent the machinery going to work if they wish to do so. Now, lam not going into the compensation question. You have heard a good deal about that already very ably put. All I say is that if the publicans have any right to compensation, I sincerely, earnestly, and cordially hope that they will get it. (Laughter.) lam waiting anxiously every day to see their case. Nobody pays a bill until it is sent in, but when we get our Local Option Bill —which I hope, as the chairman says, the Government will soon bring in—when we get that Bill into committee, then the publicans, no doubt, will state their case; and you may be quite sure they will have a very favourable jury, for the House of Commons has an affection for all sorts of scoundrels—(laughter)—and 1 have not the slightest doubt that the publicans will get what they deserve, and perhaps rather more. (Laughter.)