DUNEDIN LICENSING MATTERS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 694, 25 June 1903, Page 23

DUNEDIN LICENSING MATTERS.

The “ Dunedin Star ” thus comments on the proceedings of the annual meeting of the Committee

" The City Licensing Committee completed their somewhat arduous labours yesterday, and probably they appreciate the relief almoslt as keenly as those hotelkeepers who, after a period of suspense, have received their licenses. It has been a thahkless sort of task, carrying no reward save the testimony of a good conscience, and perhaps the approval of the majority of the public. The integrity and good intentions of the Committee must be assumed to be beyond question : any imputations on this score can only proceed from malice or personal resentment; and though there is more difference of opinion regarding the degree of practical intelligence displayed, we .do not • think that there is any ground for severe criticism. If every elector had made out a quite independent list of thirteen houses, it is likely enough that no two lists would have contained just the same names ; so that a certain amount of surprise anh discontent is inevitable. We feel that criticism on our part, would only be justifiable if the Committee had- made obvious and inexplicable blunders, and that it would be neither fair nor conducive to any useful purpose to cavil at the decisions, merely because we should probably have decided differently. The Committee have closed two or three \ houses possessing ample accommodation and largely used by the travelling public, but even in these cases it is reasonable to suppose that there' were special circumstances which were honestly held to warrant the sentence of doom.

“ There, are indications that the counsels of the Stipendiary Magistrate, as chairman of the Committee, had a paramount and valuable influence upon his elective colleagues. The informal and somewhat sensational pronouncement of the first morning soon dropped out of sight. Not only was the foreshadowed method of * clearing? particular districts abandoned in favour of the ‘ weeding out ’ process', but the elective members tacitly acquiesced in the relinquishment. of what

may be termed their ‘ conditional ’ policy. Mr Carew, presumably, assured them that the law gave committees no authority to make bargains with applicants j and public opinion would hardly have approved the closing of such a hotel as Wain’s merely because the Committee disliked, an arrangement which the law does not forbid. Nevertheless, even as a matter of mere expediency, licensees will be well advised to fall in with the views of the Committee; and we trust that there is no truth in the rumour that all the second bars are to continued or re-opened. The elective members of licensing committees, as well as the electors, have long memories. # The Committee appear to have been satisfied that the matter of fire escape provision was' being properly attended to ; but we have not yet heard of any similar activity on the part of the municipal authorities in regard to boardinghouses. We shall, however, keep ‘ pegging away ’ until the present perilous state of affairs has been rectified.

Ope Dunedin hotelkeeper has been the victim of the reduction vote in a marked degree. We refer to Mr A- Owen. When a Reduction Committee was in office in 1897 he lost the license for the Ship Inn Hotel, and the Committee this month took away that of the Club Hotel, of which he is licensee.

It is said that the drinking of kerosene is such a growing evil in France that measures against it are proposed. The vice has long been prevalent among the natives of the Southern Pacific. To such an extent has it been carried that the importation of kerosene for drinking is an important trade in Peru and Kaiva. This is the sort of thing that would follow prohibition ip this colony.