Daily Circulation, 1660. The Oamaru Mail. SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 1895.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XX, Issue 6330, 10 August 1895, Page 2

Daily Circulation, 1660. The Oamaru Mail. SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 1895.

If the Government play their cards well they will in their treatment of the licensing question this session win the applause of all the classes whose opinions and sympathies are worth anything. The feeling in the country may not be intensely Temperance, but the people are heartily sick of the drink traffic and would not object to see it curtailed and fettered to the utmost. lb appears to us that the solution of the trouble which faces the Premier over this question is within his own grasp. The Abolitionists ask for the power to abolish on the strength of a bare majority. The reply to this is that such a radical and sudden change ought not, even if it could, to be effected without the authority of a 3-sths majority of the nation. We largely sympathise with those who reply thus. But why this haste for that sudden relief from the traffic which only creates vexation and delay 1 In gradual reduction there exists all that is, necessary to rid us of the evil by those slow stages which would avoid hardship and gradually accustom the people to the change. To adopt this method of abolishment would be to recognise local option in piinciple as well as in name, It is absurd to say that the people shall have the power to abolish drink altogether in one act, but that they shall not be allowed to do so gradually. If total Prohibition be admissible on the voice of the people, any objection to gradual extinction of licenses below a certain percentage because the convenience of the people must be consulted is untenable. The public convenience is consulted by the abolition of the houses gradually in accordance with the public sentiment. This plan "would do away with all sorts of objections and would be both just and effective. Publicans and owners of houses would benefit by the increased trade as the houses were reduced in number—this would be their compensation—and. the people would find such advantage to society as the reduction progressed, as the result of popular antipathy to the trade, that they would cot leave a solitary house open for the sale of intoxicants. The great objection to extinction under such a system is that it would he local and that drink would still come into the country and would probably be sold on the sly in Prohibition districts. This is a substantial objection, and although it would nofr"nave so much force when the local option vote abolishes every system of aale, as it will do under the new Bill, yet it is a serious drawback. The difficulty might, however, eventually be surmounted, and oolonial prohibition might be attained by this gradual, prpcess, if when the votes by which local option

had been decreed in the districts reached a certain proportion of the total votes recorded in the colony at the licensing election immediately preceding, they should be deemed to authorise universal abolition.