Untitled

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 643, 6 March 1879, Page 2

The Gisborne Licensing Bench, of which Mr. H. Kenrick, R.M., is Chairman, are once more putting, or rather endeavouring to put, their own construe- ' tion upon the Licensed Victuallers' Act, to enable them to carry into force their ! arbitrary regulations. This time it is m the instance of Mr. Page, landlord of the Masonic Hotel, which is among the most costly, best built, and ablest managed of public hotels m the Provincial Districts of Auckland and Hawke's Bay. Some time back, Mr. Page, " to comply with the wish of the Court," put up a partition between a side-bar window and the hotel hall which is some twenty feet wide. Finding this partition inconvenient, Mr. Page removed it, and substituted a substantial screen screwed down securely to the floor. Mr. Kenrick stated from his place on the Bench, that this screen had been subsequently removed. Three weekß would be allowed Mr. Page to put up the partition again, or the license would be refused m June. In the first place, we may state that the screen which was substituted for a partition has never been removed. It has remained where it now is from the hour it was placed and secured m position. Will Mr. Kenrick point out wherein the Act says a landlord, for the convenience of his house, and his customers, may not have a substantial screen? He says, if Mr. Page does not comply with the wish of the Licensing Bench — that is with his (Mr. Kbnrick's) wish — , that he will deprive Mr. Page of his license. Well, we shall like to see Mr. Kenrick try this experiment. We shall like to see that he dares to deprive a landlord of his license, for such a miserable reason ; because should he do this, it will be m all probability the last act he will be permitted to excise as Chairman of a Licensing Bench. Public feeling has, of late, been growing very strong against the Chairman of the Licensing Commissioners, and we thins: not without very good cause. We know of ourselves that it is the wish of a number of the residents of Gisborne to present a memorial, at the proper quarter, to pray for the Chairman's removal, and that functionary may assure himself that this will be likely to be carried into effect unless he can show that the Licensing Act justifies his arbitray rulings. Because the landlord upon the mere dictum of the Chairman of a Licensing Bench refuses to comply with an extemporised, and, m his case, quite an unnecessary regulation, he is, forsooth, to be deprived of his license, and the public to be subjected to a despotic rule. Mr. Page does not intend to remove his screen for something else which the Chairman of the Licensing Bench may dictate. For from a wooden partition he may go en extending his demands to a founteen-inch brick wall, or insist upon some other of his crotchets being carried out. The people of Gisborne have not been accustomed to such attempts at oppression, and if we mistake them not, they wU not any longer toi rate such exactions without a very strong protest.