CURRENT TOPICS.

Thames Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 9619, 23 April 1900, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

The anti-federal spirit is a wonderful thing. It is a common* sight to see different nations of the human family at logger-heads—country against country, district against district, even borough against county; but street against street, the issue raised at the last meeting of the Borough Council, is narrowing things down to a very fine point indeed. Withini a borough; where the intersection of interests is complete, where the community "is a unit and its affairs a network, it is absurd to say thati one street isbenefiting at' the expense of another or that one that is paying for what will only benefit another. If the from street man walka into a back street and catches a fever, he will need no further proof that it is, to the interests of the whole Borough that every street should, be looked after: In .the matter of Borough improvement, tbe ratepayers are all in the same boat.

Mr. (VC. Kettle, S.M., in giving judgment at Wanganui in a licensing prosecution, drew the attention of publicans to a fact which some at least were probably not aware, namely, that in order to constitute an offence under the Act, it was not necessary for an hotel-keeper to supply a person with intoxicating liquor —it was sufficient if he allowed a person in a state of drunkenness to remain on his premises for an unreasonable time. The object of the law was to keep hotels free from anything that might shock women and children -who had occasion to frequent them; He was not aware that there were many cases where this' question had been before t"he courts of this colony, but he thought it was necessary that it should be prominently brought before hotehkeepers.