EDITORIAL NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXV, Issue 10009, 27 November 1908, Page 1

EDITORIAL NOTES AND COMMENTS.

As 250 I'ecrs have assumed an attitude *" of hostility towards the tiik lokds Licensing Pill it is consriiirruor/s. eluded that tho House of

Lords will despatch the measure without ceremony. In. a country which boasts of its Constitutionalism, it is singular that .men who belong to a most strictly proper legislative body should meet privately to such a number to settle the fate of a measure which has been approved by an enormous majority in the Representative Chamber of the Empire. The full membership of the House of Lords is 616, but there are always many absentees; so that the 250 Peers who met private'^ - and resolved to kill the Licensing JJill -can and will do it. Mcmce, the people of England, arc to be controlled by a set of individuals who .have no other right to direct the nation's affairs than that their forbears did something, good, bad, or indifferent, that pleased some monarch or Administration. As in the past, the* occupants of the gilded chamber stand in the way of reform in opposition to the popular will. That the Licensing Hill was largely approved by the House of Commons and presumably by the masses, is evidenced, by the great majorities which voted on its vital clauses in Committee. Three divisions resulted as follows: For 261, against 99; 284, 109; 315, 117. Some of the criticisms of the Tories on the principles embodied in the liill shew ,how little their cut has progressed, in spite of the enlightenment due to scientific investigation and the newer developments and disclosures in the realm of economics. No one expects a Tory to be moved by sentimental considerations; but, when the drink system of the United Kingdom has become so mighty an iiiHucnue .in the promotion of its own aggrandisement, and when, according to the greatest minds in the departments whence emanate the highest educative influences, the '"trade" Haunts its victims in the face of a shocked community and proclaims its right to scatter demoralisation all around because it brings them such colossal profits, surely a nation of reasoning beings will rise in its might and sweep away the vampire which gorges itself on the \ital and moral elements which go to the sustenance of a nation's righteousness, prosperity, strength, and happiness. After all, there was nothing harsh in the Licensing IJill which has aroused the activity of a moribund Legislative organisation of morally palsied inheritors of medieval prejudice. It prolonged for 14 years the period during which compensation could be claimed for the non-renewal of licenses, the prohibition of new- licenses 'by a bare majority of the people of 'a district, and the withdrawal of existing licenses at the end of 14 years by a more ample majority. There was n:i intention to take from the ''trade" anything that was theirs by right :ind nothing was to be taken awav without the demand of thoso who had the best right to deckle in matters which so seriously affected their ii.fv Those who have read the debates on the ISill must have struck with the meanness, the antiquity, and the stupidity of the arguments used by the friends of liquor to defeat the ends of a reform which is so imperative that it has seized the nation with an irresistible impulse. When it- is contemplated that during the last 35 years no Liberal Government- in England has carried to a second reading a Licensing Bill, it will be realised what a marked change must have come over the nation. We who iive in Now Zealand and take an interest- in politics know so much of the ways of Tory politicians and newspapers as to set no value on the suggestion that ".Mr Asquith is secretly glad that the Licensing Hill is dead," or upon the counsels or abuse- which emanate from sources which are either connected in the traffic, or are profiting indirectly by its bounty. As to the proposal to bring the trade to reasonable proportions by high license charges such as obtain in America, the results of the system in America condemn it. Xew York is not a pattern even for drink-sodden England. There is only on.' method of dealing with the drink evil and that is to cut it off as one would any other undesirable cancerous excrescence.