COMPENSATION

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XX, Issue 6785, 23 September 1893, Page 4

COMPENSATION-

T'ik City Rink was crowded on Thursday c. ing when tli • R-v. Mr lsitt dealt with La compaction phase of the liquor question. Uvnon lA>x ..ecu pied the chair Tlie lecturer commenced by quoting that Civ ...y old Scotchman Carlyle, who when dealing with these claims for compensation said, " Let them go to their father the devil for their compensation." They won't take this advice, so they come to you. They appeal to their charity, to their love of justice, to their sense of fair play, pleading for that which they were not legally entitled to. Why did they come in that way ? For the past 2o years they had played the bully and had most miserably failed. Sharpe v. Wakefield had decided once and for ever that the publican has no shadow of a claim for compensation if you refuse to renew his annual license. If they had any legal right, was it likely that they would come in this way appealing to the sense of fair play. No, they would demand their pound of flesh. (Applause). The men who spoke about the moral right of the publican to compensation ■would always argue " upou the broad general principle," but never come down to details. Ho heard a man lecturing for compensation and he said, " If you see the sea gradually encroaching upon the shore in one direction it recedeß from the shore in another place, therefore you ought to give compensation to publicans." He might aa well say " When a man gets a wife he* generally gets a mother-in-law, therefore you ought to give compensation to publicans." (Laughter). Upon what did they base their claim ? "We have been lured by the people into this traffic. Wo have been given to understand that our licenses would be renewed unless forfeited because of bad conduct." If he was a millionaire and had a very large estate with factories on it, and gi anted a publican the right to sell grog to his workmen upon a yearly tenancy ; and supposing he found that the drink was demoralising his workmen and causing him great monetary loss, would the publican have the slightest claim for compensation if he gave him notice to clear at the end of his term. It was a well-known legal axiom that " Criminality never establishes moral right where legal right does not exist. It forfeits legal right where legal right exi9ts." If he lost hi 3 life on a railway through negligence, his wife had a claim on the railway company for -the life destroyed. But supposing he gave way to drink, or in a fit of insanity murdered the Chairman. He would be hung by the neck until he was dead, and would deserve it. His wife asks for compensation, but would be told " Crime forfeits all claim. Your husband's life is the penalty of the law he has broken, and there is no compensation for you." Not because they preached against it, but because it persisted in setting the law at defiance and degrading the people, would the liquor traffic be adjudged as a criminal to be destroyed. The publicaus said " they were given to understand" that they had a vested interest during good behaviour, and they had been moving heaven and earth to get the law altered to recognise it. The temperance party assumed that the 1881 Act was a prohibition Act, and men like Fox, Dick, Hursthouse, and Wakefield were prepared to make affidavits that when the law was passed it was the intention of the Legislature to give the people the right to decide upon closing houses. Yet the judges in the Sydenham case said that they could not imagine the legislators iutended it or they would have expressed it in the most emphatic terms, and so the Committee were ousted, and had to pay costs. What was sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander. They say they " had been given to understand," but if the law iutended to give compensation it would have stated it in unmistakeable terms. They said they had been " lured into tb.fi traffic." Who lured them ? For years they had been told that the trade •would be swept away without compensation, and they could not have shut their eyes to the growing sentiment against the trade. The large majority of the present licensees had not been in their houses over five years and could not say they had been lured. Prohibition would not take any man's property away. It would leave it on his hands, nor ■would it seriously depreciate the value of a man's property unless he had been working a public swindle. A place that was used as a draper's shop in Wellington with a rental of £80 was turned into a grog shop with a rental value of £440. Take away the license and bring the value down to £80, would not that man deserve compensation '! Would he ? [silence]. If a generous man gave you £6000 and next year said "I wont give you £600," would you deserve compensation? Supposing the committee said to the man ■with the grog shop " This is simply a grog chop and unless you comply with the Act and add the necessary accommodation to your house it will be closed." He does so and then prohibition is carried and his money gone. If as the Act provides he is running

an hotel and not simply a grog shop, his hotel business is left, but" if his long rows of bedrooms are simply an accoutrement "To a grog shop the bottom is knocked out of a sham, and he was responsible for the los 9 and not the public. Tho distinct iutention of the Act was that no licenses be granted to mere grog shanties. If compensation were to be paid who should get it ? A and B had seclions adjoining, aud both applied for licenses. A gets a license and B doesn't, B deserves compensation and A doesn't. When the license is granted up goes the value of Bs property, and A's greatly depreciates. He cited au instance in Christchurch where a lawyer at the East Belt had a beautiful home. A public-house was erected two doors away, and the lawyer removed his family, declaring that he would not bring up his children next door to a public-house and let them see the sights that there went on. That house, which wns fully worth a rental of 25s per week, could not now be let for 17s (id per week. What about the scores of miserable women and children who were in misery and wretchedness and extreme poverty and crime because of the traffic ? The kind moderates had treated the publicans so badly, and had obtained such good value. He had boen told by one of the best informed business men in Gisborne that there were £25,000 spent in thia town annually for liquor, returns showing £4000 for beer alone at the wholesale price. The wise moderates paid £10,000 in sixpences for that £4000 worth of beer. They ought to feel kind to tboso publicans. When they went into the grocer's, did they often say "You had better have a pound of tea along with me old man, and I will pay for it." (Laughter.) There were those who had their money invested in the liquor traffic by trustees without their consent. No doubt these would suffer by noncompensation, but he quoted the ruinous losses of scores of farmers by the repeal of the Corn Laws, in order that the bulk of the people might have bread. Not a penny of compensation was paid them, and how much more they deserved it than the publicans. Why make an exception to a publicans. Here's a man who invests his capital in a line of coaches. He has every reason to believe that a railway will not be built for 25 years at least, but in a j'ear or two an M.H.R., by logrolling, succeeds in getting a railway. No one speaks of compensation to the coachman. Tompkins invests in a stone flour mill to the great delight of the Poverty Bay fanners, but in a short time along comes another fellow with a roller mill, and of course all the farmers leave the stone mill high and dry. No talk of compensation. So with the hard-working man who invests his earnings in a little corner in pork, and his pigs are ousted from the borough by the nuisance inspector because they are a menace to health. The liquor traffic was the vilest, dirtiest, most contemptible traillc on the face of God's earth. Deny it if they could?

He would point them to what it had done in their own neighborhood in the past 10 years. He reminded them of the men it h,ad ruined, degraded, drowned. And that was the hand that was stretched out as the mendicant and appealed to their sense of justice and fair play to give compensation. (Applause). Mr Wallace Good asked aquestion as to how Mrlsittwoul I make up the £500,000 revenue, and the reply was that it was proved that for every 20s the colony received from the drink it paid out 30s". No man would suppose that prohibition would be effected with such a suddenness all over the country that the finances would be disarranged. A vote of thanks to the chair terminated tho proceedings.