CORRESPONDENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11975, 26 May 1902, Page 7

CORRESPONDENCE.

» • WEASELS AT MOUNT ALBERT. TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—My boy was riding along the high road hero yesterday when a lady ran out of ono of the houses with an animal laid out on a board, and asked him if he knew what it was. He told her it was a weasel, and a large one. She said her cat had caught and killed it. Bravo puss! Another lady at Mount Roskill says her cat often chases these imported " cusses" under her henhouse. Mothers of little babies beware.—l am, etc., l'V-ED. A. G. COTTEBELL. Mount Albert, Auckland. THE MANITOBA REFERENDUM. j TO THE EDITOR. Sir.— the papers to hand the mail before last were only to a date a week prior to the poll, I was unable to refer to the above at an earlier date. As stated in my previous letter, the Prohibition party abstained from voting; a number of temperance electors, principally Government supporters, did record their vote. The question submitted was, " Are you in favour of the enforcement of the Liquor Act?" The Winnipeg Daily Tribunal said: "Infinitely better would it have been for the Government to have frankly repealed the Act than to refer it to a vote, and then have the vote taken as it was. Their opposition to the Act, their determination to get rid of it, has been shown justas plainly; their offence to the temperance people has been just as great, and, in addition, they have presented a contemptible spectacle of dishonesty and duplicity." The voting has not repealed the prohibitory law. That law, as brought down by the Government of the day, was enacted by the Legislature and assented to by the Crown, and it cannot be removed or repealed without similar legislative action. Evidently the Government are in a interesting predicament. In, ail probability they will bring in a Bill to repeal the law; if so, the legislators who will vote for it will have the hostility of the prohibition voters at the next election ; the vacillating policy of the Government has placed them between the devil and the deep sea. .

Our friends, the enemy, played some of their old tricks, as, for instance, the Ontario liquor men sent their expert organisers, with barrels of money, and the "corn" was placed where it would do the most good. In the town of St. Boniface. 1800 votes against enforcement were recordeda number far in excess of the male population of the place. It reminds one of our 1893 electoral roll, which contained 14,000 male names in excess of the colony's male population. One paper describes the voting as a screaming farce, as voters could go to as many polls as they liked, unchecked by anything but their own conscience.—l Dm, etc., R. French.