SIR ROBERT STOUT'S LICENSING BILL.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXV, Issue XXV, 9 August 1893, Page 5

SIR ROBERT STOUT'S LICENSING BILL.

(From our Special Correspondent.) Wellington, August 4th. There is much jubilation among the various shades of temperance people both inside and out of the House as a result of the overwhelming majority on the second reading of Sir Robert Stout's Bill on Wednesday night or rather early on Thursday morning. It has once aud for all finally established the principle of the direct veto, for that is practically what the Bill aims at. The form of voting paper in the second schedule of the Bill leaves little doubt on that head. It puts four issues before the elector, giving him the option of voting that no publicans' licenses be granted ; that the uumber of publicans' licenses be reduced ; that the number be increased or that they may not be iucreased. In any case the committee must be guided by a majority following one or other of the four courses that has the largest number of votes recorded for it. There is also this wholesome restriction that however large a majority might be for an increase of licensed houses the number will not be allowed to exceed one for every 750 people iv the licensing- district. As a measure to reform the drink traffic, it is direct, simple, and deadly in the manner with which it proposes to deal with the main features of a great and momentous question. When Sir Robert rose in the evening, armed at all points for what he described as " the great curse of our civilisation," the galleries were literally crammed, many Legislative Councillors swelling i the crowd. The speech was an earnest ' aud eloquent one, the speech, indeed, of a man who has his heart in the great humanitarian work for which he pleads and argues to a House crowded and, for the greater part, sympathetic. In less powerful and abler hands than those of Sir Robert, it would have been relentlessly talked out of existence by the friends of the liquor party in the House or else quietly squeezed to death by the weight and pressure of the Ministerial hand. The Premier's speech shows the dilemma in which the Government are placed. To u^e an expressive phrase, they are " between the devil and the deep sea." They dread to provoke the anger of the trade, and they are anxious to placate, as far as some regard to the interests of the othor side will permit, the temperance party in the country. But the question has now become too red hot, too gigantic, and too ripe for legislation to allow of Mr Seddon continuing for any time his game of fast and loose. What, then, will the Govern men t do? I They will, I believe bring down a Bill, but such a Bill as~wi]l please neither side; I aud they will then shunt the question on to the constituencies. The position at the present moment is not, in some respects, dissimilar to the state of things that existed when the Licensing Act of 1881 came into force. In 1880 a Bill was brought in by Mr Saunders, now the father of the House. There was much divided opinion and much contention, j and the situation was complicated in the *■ extreme. Then the Government came forward stating that after the opinion of the House had been taken on the Bill they would bring in a measure of their own during the next session. This they did, and the result was the Act of 1881. The difference in the present instance is that, such are the forces abroad, they will not wait until next session to bring iv a measure, while the reforms now demanded will admittedly shake the trade to its very foundations. The financial aspect of the question has, of course, a very important bearing \ on the attitude of the Government and, everything considered, it is as well that the question should be remitted to the electors and their dictum obtained before the legislation now proposed should be made the law of the land. The enactment of such a law would, no doubt, for some little time seriously disarrange the national finances, but the benefits would be immense; they would soon show themselves in a hundred different directions : in a larger purchasing power in every community, an increased consumption of dutiable articles— better food, better and more clothing, less charitable aid expenditure, less crime, less disease and less of everything that entails heavy expenditure by the State and much suffering and demoralisation amougthe people and, worse still, among the weakest and most helpless portion of the people. You can guage the feeling that exists on the subject from the fact that among Sir Robert Stout's majority are many men who are themselves not by any means teetotallers; men, for instance, like the member for Rangitikei, who, though not believers in Prohibition, feel that drastic and vigorous legislation is needed to cope with this formidable evil and with the formidable force at its back. The prevailing opinion is that Sir Robert Stout's Bill will be passed substantially in its present shape, as all the large cities and town constituencies will send men into the Houso pledged unconditionally to extreme legislation on this subject. There is now practically an amalgamation of forces between the temperance and prohibition people and the trades and labour organisations; and powerful as the liquor interests are, they will find themselves outmatched in a contest with such a combination in all the large centres. No well-informed person here has the slightest doubt about Sir Robert Stout coming into the new House as leader of the Liberal party. He cannot be allowed to remain in his present position. His rightful place is as Premier. He is in every way you like to look at it a giant among pigmies, and ■ there is nothing more certain than that he will occupy the position of Premier when the newParliament meets next year, and that his first business will be the passing of legislation, not like that promised by Mr Seddon, guaranteed to " please all parties," but such as will give intelligent and effectual expression to the voice of the country on this most pressing and i important of all other questions. J