Poverty Bay Herald AND East Coast News Letter. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1879.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 619, 6 February 1879, Page 2

Poverty Bay Herald AND East Coast News Letter. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1879.

The present article, will, for a time, conclude what we have to bring under notice respecting the very unsatisfactory administration of the licensing laws in Poverty Bay. . We have shown that a man's interest in hotel property should be as secure as his interest in any other kind of pioperty — say, a baker's or a storekeeper's shop, or a piece of land, or anything else that is his. "We are quite sure that, in this matter, public opinion will be with us. But there is an Act which still disgraces our statute books, known as " The Tippling" Act. If a man is sued for drinks which he has ordered, either for himself or for others, and he pleads the Act the law is powerless to enforce payment. When he does not so plead, and from sheer shame few men do, the Magistrate may give judgment for the plaintiff, and the debt may be recovered by the usual processes of the Court. Mr Kenrick, however, in all such claims, not making any distinction, nor allowing special circumstances to weigh, makes it a rule to pass his pen through the items comprised in the demand. Why he should do this, we do not know. It is not the ruling in any other Magistrate's Court in the Colony, so far as we are aware. The Tippling Act is the remains of an almost barberous era, and was framed and passed to meet the particular circumstances of the times. Agricultural laborers, in English counties, were, at one time, paid their wages monthly, and it was between the intervals of these long payment periods that laborers run up long scores in the beer-shops. This was found to be an evil, and so a Tippling Act was passed into law, and we have no doubt answered the purpose it was intended to subserve ; but the condition of things in this Colony is altogether different. Here the Tippling Act really gives encouragement to .drinking. If a man felt that what he drinks the law would compel 1 him to pay he would drink less and probably pay as he went along. Now, lie wheedles himself in to the confidence of some twisting landlord or barman with specious pretexts and

excuses ; runs up a debt, and when the bill is presented sneaks out of his liability. If a man knew that he would be made to pay for the beer or spirits he consumes as he has to pay for his beef and bread, he would be more careful of the amount of his indebtedness to the hotel-keeper. At any rate, the men of this Colony who run up drink scores need no such protection. They are not poor starvelings, earning only such a bare pittance as will keep the souls and bodies of their wives and families together. They are not men ground to the dust by tyrannical landlords and employers. There is no absolute want, and no real destitution. The men who have been brought before the Courts for drink debts are men who, for the most part, pay neither butcher, nor baker, nor any one else. They will be found, with few exceptions, to be scamps of a low grade. Men whom landlords should not have trusted, but, having made a mistake, should surely be protected, more especially when even such case-hardened men have not the audacity to plead the Tippling Act. We trust that in the next Session of Parliament such a disgraceful immunity will be repealed, and that men shall be made as responsible for what they drink as what they eat or wear. We have to answer a letter of a Good Templar which we can only do briefly in our present issue. He says that Magistrates cannot be too strict in enforcing the Licensing Laws. That it would be much better if there were no public-houses, which bring men with their wives and families to misery and destitution, ruining body and soul alike. We go heart and soul with Good Templar in admitting that excess in drinking does produce, in too many instances, all the wretchedness and all the terrible evils he complains of ; but that at present is not the question. The State permits licensed houses to exist, charging very high for the previleges conceded. The State at the same time, has made laws for the governance of such houses, and beyond an intelligent intei'pretation of such laws, Licensing Commissioners must not be permitted to go. In our next or in some later issue we shall address ourselves to the contents of the letter we have received from " Good Templar," when we think that we shall be able to show that the denizens of countries to whom drink is as an abomination are even more wicked than those living in countries where drinking customs prevail.