The Timaru Herald. SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 1895.

Timaru Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 1775, 8 June 1895, Page 2

The Timaru Herald. SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 1895.

At the hearing of one of the applications, at the Timaru licensing meeting yesterday, the Rev. Mr Gillies made a characteristic speech, confining himself chiefly to the question of hotel "bars." Under the circumstances, our readers will perhaps pardon us for referring to the subject again, though only a few days have elapsed since we touched on it m connection with the Prohibitionist letter addressed to the Christchurch Licensing Committee. It gives us great pleasure to be able to render the Rev. Mr Gillies a service by showing him that his argument was not worth a pinch of snuff. We have no doubt that he will fully appreciate the extent of the obligation under which we lay him. But before dealing with Mr Gillies, it will be convenient to allude to a few remarks made by the chairman when another member of the Committee suggested that the applicant should reply to what the Rev. gentleman had urged against the granting of the license. The chairman said : — " If they heard the licensee, the Committee would be landed m the difficulty of denning what f bar ' meant. They would have a dozen opinions about it. Magistrates, lawyers, prohibitionists, and publicans were all at loggerheads over the question, and the Committee could not settle it." That was hardly a correct- statement of the position. We should say that Magistrates, lawyers, and publicans, are pretty well agreed as to what a " bar " is, as denned by the interpretation clause of the Licensing Act, 1881. To put the point shortly : A " bar " is where intoxicating liquor is sold m a place that opens straight — that is, directly — on to a public street or thoroughfare. The prohibitionists put a totally different construction on the plain words of the Act, but the courts have over and over again pronounced against that construction. And now let us return to the Rev. Mr Gillies. He urged that the license be not granted, on the ground that the conditions upon which it had previously been granted had

not been satisfactorily fulfilled. His contention was that the license stipulated that there should be onlyone "bar," whereas m this house there was more than one. He knew, he said, that the one " bar " was that which came under the definition m the interpretation clause (the " bar " open " immediately " to the street), but the other drinking places were also " bars," and therefore they were illegal. The reasoning, if such it can be called, is as crooked as a ram's horn. It is difficult to understand how a man of Mr Gillies' intelligence could honestly make such a deliverance to the committee and the public, and yet we must suppose that he spoke exactly as the case presented itself to his mind. The real position is that a license under the Act is for a particular house, and that there is no limitation, save one, as to the places, or kind of places, m which intoxicating liquors may be sold on the premises. That limitation is that there shall be only one " bar " has defined m the interpretation clause. If the licensee complies with that requirement, he can sell liquor on the roof, m every room, every passage, and m the cellar, if he pleases and the public choose to buy ; always provided that he does so m an orderly manner. Mr Gillies fell into the old error of using the term " bar " m its ordinary colloquial sense, but the Act takes no cognizance of the colloquialism, and does not forbid the sale of liquor from behind counters, or from tables or any other kind of convenience. As such sales are not forbidden, it is absurd to say that they are illegal. Prove that there are two or more " bars " within the meaning of the interpretation clause, and there is a breach of the conditions of the license; without such proof there is no ground of complaint on the score of illegality. The Act does not say that liquor shall be sold only m the statutory " bar." We have expressed no opinion as to whether the legislature should impose further limitations with regard to the sale of liquor within licensed houses. We have simply dealt with the law as it stands ; and we repeat what we said the other day, that those who, like Mr Gillies, disagree with the interpretation placed on the section to which reference has been made m this article, should once more test the point by laying an information. The police will not do so because they know that the result would be failure to secure a conviction. Their duty compels them to read the Act like reasonable men and not like fanatics, and they cannot see the use of wasting the public time and harassing licensees with prosecutions which must inevitably prove abortive.