PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2008, 18 August 1892, Page 40

PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

The Planet Mars.

Last week's Witness contained some very interesting notes on Mars, but there are still one or two points of interest in connection with our brilliant visitor that have not been referred to.

Its day is rather longer than ours, being 24br3 37min, while the length of a year extends to 6G9 days. A peculiar thing about the poles is that they are not exactly opposite each other. The seasons, too, are very unequal. Spring has 192 dajs, autumn 130, summer 180, and winter 117. Ib has two satellites or moons. Deimos (Terror) i.3 about 13,000 mile 3 from the surface of Mars, and revolves round it in about 30hr 18min, while Phobos (Fear) is onlj about 4000 miles from the surface, and revolves round its mother planet in about 7hr 39min or three times a day, while our moon takes a month to perform one revolution. To us, two moons, one revolving so rapidly and so close to the earth, would be, for a time at anyrate, rather an uncanny sight, but the ggodo o d folk, if there are any on Mars — and w h should we suppose our puny planet is the only one of the solar system inhabited? — are of course used to it. Tnere is, however, no moonlight in the Arctic regions of Mars, for the moons revolve round the Equator and so close to it that its curve shuts out their light from the poles. To sea Paobo3 one must not be more than G9.leg away from the Equator. Have you read Gulliver's Travels ? In the voyage to Lupata Swift announced that the astronomers b/id found two siteltt'cs to Mars, and th"y also discovered that one recolu.d in 10 hours. It isn't long since that both statements would have been laughed at as astronomical tiuths. These guesses of Swift's (there's that possessive 1 ) were c^rtaiuly extraordinary.

Prohibition.

Some of my critics could not have read my notes on Prohibition, or they would not have written as they have. I said distinctly that the lime was not ripa for Prohibition, but that it was only by striving for an ideal that an approximate could be gaintd. lv discussing this question we mu=t bear in mind three points. (I) la the liquor traffic an iniquitous one ? (2) Ought compensation to be paid for suppressing an iniquity previously sanctioned by law, wh-n public opinion has been for years gradually lining up against it 1 (3) If we are to have universal suffrage is the majority to rule or not 7 Public opinion has, since 18S0, been working towards Prohibition, and in that way has been declaring that the I raffle is an evil which, though sanctioned by law, has been threatened with suppression since 1880. It seems to me that publicans from a purely business point of view ought to have looked ahead and converted their properties into accommodation houses pure and simrle, or business place 3. To my mind equity does not demand compensation for the suppression of what public opinion is declaring to be an iniquity ; and if one-man-one-vote is the law, the majority must rule. If any of you feel sufficiently interested to read up the speeches given on the subject in Parliament send to the Government Printer, Wellington, for the No. 5 issue of Hansard,

The main reasons given in favour of compensation were :

1. Publicans are deprived of their licenses because irresponsible bodies (.why "irresponsible" when thpy represent a majority .'— Pater] have the power of saying the house is not raiuirod. — Mr La wry.

2. Licenses are annually renewable f»ra reasonable period.

3. The act passed some years ago was not intended to be used to suppress the drink tratlic. — Mr Fish.

4. Prohibition is taking away the living of honest men xmrsuing a trade sanctioned by law. — Mr I'ish.

5. The law requires a man to build a houso according to regulations before a license is granted. — The act. C. Committees closing all hotels are biassed.— Mr Fish.

7. Compensation was given when slavery was abolished.

The opinions of several eminent men including John Ruskin — I'll concede compensation to-morrow if publicans will live up to Ruskin's teaching — are pressed into service, but I'll not qnote them because eminent men have spoken for Prohibition too. The points I have given rest on fact or equity, and aro not to be settled in the same way as, say, Protection or Freetrade. Now for replies to the arguments advanced: — 1. If the people are competent to return members to the House to deal with the high interests affecting the destinies of this country, they are perfectly competent to elect licensing benches to deal with luch a comparatively small matter alfuctintf the country as> the administration of the

licensing l.vw».— Mr Mkhkditii. 2, :), 4, 5. — Since the passing of the act in ISSO there has been an acknowledged insecurity of tenure and tho act was intended, by the prime movers in passing it, to act in the direction of Prohibition, and a.i I wrote before, anyone holding or buying hotel propel ty has— at least since the last act was passed, if not before— been alive to the risk run. It has been and is still a business lisle pure and simple. The less said about taking away an honest man's living the better. Many are honest, but the vast majority of hotels aro drinking hells, and their keepers know it. li. A New Zealand judge (Mr Justice Richmond) siys :—": — " If to have their minds made up upon this question is to have a bias, then the Legislature has advisedly piovidecl for the appointment of judges with a probable bias, and no ens can complain that they are what the statute means they should be."— [Are not all men biassed who content elections?—Paikk.]

The fact; of compensation being awarded wlien slavery was abolished has been made a great deal ot ; but in lhat case property was absolutely forfeited. In closing public houses as di inking saloons, they are not closed to the true use of a hottl — viz., as accommodation houses. Spirituous liquors are not a necessiLy with a meal or bed. But was the payment of compensation for the liberation of slave 3 one demanded by equity 1 I think not. The slave holding was an iniquity, and should we pay to abolish what tho majority think is iniquitous 1 Certainly not, especially when repeated warning has been given of the giadual but certain change of pubiic opinion.

Compensation to slaveholders was not given because of the justice involved but because the Parliament then was legislating for the upper and middle classes, who were so directly interested in the land and in the products of slave labour, and the compensation came largely from taxes levied on the masses, who were not represented in Parliament. We are legislating now under different conditions. Again, it was not such a long time before the liberation of slaves that England had lost her American colonies, and followed up the War of Independence by a war with the United States ja3t before Waterloo. When the L 20,000,000 was voted there was a feeling of disc jnt ens in the West Indies, and the United States would only have been too glad had the Indies rebelled. It was deemei politic then — not necessarily equitable— to give the planters a sum to cover losses.

I have, I think, written sufficient on the subject Effectual Prohibition cannot be got yet ; but because we cannot attain to the ideal, that is no reason why we shouldn't approximate to it, and I ask my young friends not to be swayed by sympathy, but to face the question fairly. Is tho liquor traffic a curse to the country ? Does the suppression of an iniquity demand compensation ? We now have one-man-one-vote. An?, then, majorities to rule or not? Answer these questions without quibbling, and act accordingly.

Here is "A B C's" letter. It will be seen that the writer supposes that wholesale houses will bo allowed to flourish when hotels ate closed vp — that men must be allowed to make beasts of themselves. ' Reformers don't intend to allow either. "ABC' forgets, too, that all great reformers " see only in one direction." The compliment a!; the end is rather a left-handed one, but as I like candour I have taken the trouble to decipher the hieroglyphics of my c ent, and recast the letter to make it " read " — I won't do it again though for anyone— so that the compositor shall not be tempted to use too forcible English.

Dear Pater, — I have read your article in last week's Witness about Prohibition. You wish your readers to write what they think about the matter. I think your kl&as are rather narrow about publicans in general and compensation. In the first place, hotels in the proper souse of the word are a great convenience to the public, and it costs a lot of money to fit one up as it should be. What sane man would build such a place for only one or two years' license? So .long as a hotel is conducted in a proper manner it is cruelty to take away or refuse the license through the influence of energetic faddists without some sort of compensation — say a half or two-thirds compensation — [bow calculated ?] for closing such places, if it v thought necessary to iuterfere with the hotelkeeper's livelihood. As for men's drinking habits, I believe the so-called temperance people know very little of human nature. To me they resemble a horse with a pair of winkers on — they only can see in one direction, and that not always the right one. I have known many cases in the country districts of Obago as well as Australia, where men having, say. LlO or L2O to spend, spend it they would, and if the hotelkeepers would not let them and their companions get drunk and spend their money what, think you, would these men do ? Why, send to the nearest wholesale spirit merchants for, say, 2gal of one liquor and 2gal of another, and carouse in their own huts. As a consequence, they drink five or ten times more grog than if they got it at a hotel, where it is well watered. Which are the most likely to get the D. T.s ?

Please excuss this scrawl, as it is now post time. Allow me to say I read your chats as a rule with great relish when upon geography and history. ABC (Goldfields).

— Of the 657 existing kinds of reptiles, 400 species are harmless,