TRADE TOPICS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume VI, Issue 299, 16 April 1896, Page 12

TRADE TOPICS.

One Coolgardie brewery is making £12,000 a year on £4,500 capital. After all, mining isn’t in it with beer.

Mr James Stevenson, formerly manager of the Club Hotel, Masterton, has been appointed manager of the Empire Hotel, Wellington. The record takings for one bar—for one day—was recently established in Johannesberg : A bar in Market Street having (in sixpenny drinks) taken £B3.

At Napier on Wednesday last the local Licensing Bench met for the purpose of obeying a mandamus of the Supreme Court, ordering them te re-hear Lake Falconer’s application to be allowed to remove a license for premises at Greenmeadows to premises to be erected on the Marine Parade, Napier. After lengthy legal argument, the committee, after an flour’s consideration, intimated that they had decided that no license should be granted.

The Transvaal and South African Licensed Victuallers' Gazette remarks : —“ The Kensington Bar, Commissioner Street, we note, has changed hands, and is now under the able management of Mr D. G. Kirkwood, late of Australia and New Zealand. Here’s success to him.” This will probably be Mr Kirkwood, formerly of Wanganui and Stratford. If he could get hold of that Bar where they land £B3 per day, that would be good biz for the ex-Maorilander.

At the Prohibition Convention at Dunedin, resolutions were carried in favour of the formation of a Juvenile Temperauce Union, and the introduction of a temperance reading-book in the schools. It was decided to join in the guarantee asked by the Rev. Isitt for the visit of the Bev. J. H. Hector, of Canada. It was resolved that it was of the utmost importance that the temperance forces in each electorate should at once organise in combination to carry on an active campaign in view of the approaching elections and polls, and that the convention urge the immediate calling of a Convention at some suitable and central place in each electorate, two delegates to be invited to attend from every centre of population for that purpose.

The demand made by the prohibitionists of Feilding that all those who are in any way connected with the drink traffic shall be deprived of the Commission of the Peace is a tfiing that will cut both ways. If the prohibitionists are willing that every teetotaller good templar, or member of the prohibition party shall in like manner be debarred from sitting on the Bench, well and good, forthen the administration of justice would be conducted by, say, moderate drinkers, and, at any rate, moderate thinkers. But if we understand the motion passed at Feilding, it is not intended that it shall apply to teetotallers and prohibitionists. Such a demand, made in such a manner, deserves only the contempt of the reasonable men and women of the colony.— Napier News.

The National Temperance League Annual gives some particulars which should gratify all but the most extreme of the teetotal party, and cover with shame the falsehood-mongers who scream themselves hoarse about the drunkenness of our people. In 1894, New South Wales spent £4,061,924 in intoxicating liquor; Victoria, £3,759,181; and New Zealand, £2,081,740. The annual expenditure on drink per head in Great Britain and the colonies is as follows :—Queensland, £4 17s 6d per head ; United Kingdom, £3 12s 3d per head ; New South Wales, £3 5s 8d per head ; Victoria, £3 4s per head ; New r Zealand, £2 17s 2d per head. New Zealand is not only more sober now than at any other period, but is also one of the most sober countries in the world. —Napier Neivs.

In the District Court at Masterton last week, District Judge Kettle reversed the decision of Mr T. Hutchinson, S.M., in which Henry Phillips and John Tucker were convicted of Sunday trading. Mr Kettle said the case was one in which no Magistrate would convict on the evidence. The prosecution was that of a private individual, and was apart from the poliee. He refused, he said, to believe the witnesses for the prosecution, and said they were paid informers, whom he w’ould not believe. Costs -were allowed the publicans. It is pleasing to note we have one gentleman in the Justice Department who is impartial and unbiased in his judicial decisions. District Judge Kettle has long been recognised as an able judge, but we want to know whether the Justice Department are taking any notice of the number of appeals from Mr Hutchinson’s “ prohibition ” decisions, nearly all of which have practically been ruled bad law by Judge Kettle. It is about time the Government enquired whether Mr Hutchinson is qualified, as a strong prohibitionist, to sit on the Bench and decide cases upon which we claim he could not give an impartial decision.