Wairarapa Standard Published Tri-weekly, Price 1d. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1885. The Local Option Vote.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XVIII, Issue 1663, 21 January 1885, Page 2

Wairarapa Standard Published Tri-weekly, Price Id. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1885. The Local Option Vote.

Thu time is approaching when the ratepayers in the various licensing districts throughout the colony will be called upon to decide by their votes the question whether during the next three years any new licenses shall he granted to hotels, or any Now Zealand wine licenses. The yote will be taken in April next, and it would be well that the ratepayers in the various licensing districts in the Wairarapa should carefully consider beforehand what will be iheir decision on this important question. We have no doubt what would be the right decision. In Featherston, Greytown, Carterton and Masterton, there are already a sufficient number of hotels to supply the wants and provide for the convenience, alike of residents in those districts and of travellers, both now and during the next three years. Should the necessity fop increased hotel accommodation arise in any of the districts referred to, the licensing commissioners could make it a condition of the renewal of licenses that some of the existing hotels should be enlarged. That would be decidedly better than granting licenses to new houses. The hotel business in the Wairarapa townships is rather overdone, and to increase the number of those houses would result in making the trade so unremunorative as to give no fair return to those who have embarked considerable capital in build ing large and commodious hotels. The object alike of the ratepayers and the licensing commissioners should be to get the existing hotels improved, and to make first class and well conducted houses, giving a good table and the best kind of bedroom accommodation to visitors and travellers, and at the same time keeping the best qualities of liquors, so that those who use those articles may not be obliged to consume what is adulterated and specially injurious. If the ratepayers, by the necessary majority of votes, decide that no new licenses shall be granted during the next three years, then the licensing commissioners will be entitled to insist that all the existing hotels in the Wairarapa district shall be kept fairly up to the mark in point of sufficient accommodation, and bo properly and respectably conducted. These being our views, we decidedly think that it will be well that the rate payers should decide when the vote is taken in April, that no new licenses should be granted in the Wai*

district during the next thrive vcirs. ' We notice that in Wellington the I temneranee party have held n meeting and have nnnarently resolved to agitate aeninst the granting of anv new licenses. They have also declared in favor of all public hopseq h a in(r closed at 10 pm ; and that the prohibition selling of honors he rigidly enforced. So far na the Wairarapa district is concerned, it would he well that the closing hour he 10 nm t is, however, mnch easier to talk about nreventin? the ■>’> o f ' liners on Sundays than to accomplish the thine in practice. “For many years past the danse forbidding the sale of Honors on Sunday has been in force, with the result that it has become a dead letter, alike in the dties and in the conntry districts. The faet is that peonle who are in the habit of using beer or spirits recnlarlv. demand tohesnpnlied on Sunday as well as any ether day in the w°ok. Tlach hotelkeener has his rfimtelJe of week day customers, and he is practically obliged to snnnly them on Sundays as well, or they will transfer their pa’mnage to some other house. Then the convenient ‘‘ lodger ” and lom fide “ traveller ” dodge is frequently resorted to. and the law evaded. The so-called “lodcrev ”or “ bona fide traveller ” calls for the liqnor. nays for it. and treats bis friends who are with him. In tfoglnnd the sale of liquor on Sundays is pc-mitted during an hour, between 12 30 and 1.30 in the afternoon, and a similar short period at n’ght In "Now Zealand, Sunday selling is prohibited, with the result ♦hat the law is set at defiance, and hat in nrosecnh'on by the police for the offence, conviction of hotelkeepers is very unfreqnent.