The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY, MARCH 11, 1893. THE LIQUOR LAWS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XIV, Issue 2920, 11 March 1893, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY, MARCH 11, 1893. THE LIQUOR LAWS.

That there is much dissatisfaction [ with the liquor laws of this colony there can be no doubt, for complaints are constantly being heard from all sorts'of people of their failure to effect the object for which they were passed, and the police, in open Court, hesitate not to say that it is impossible to administer them in their present state. So great is the dissatisfaction with these laws that the advocates for direct veto have become a political power in the land, and if they are only as united at the poll as they are emphatic in their denunciation of the traffic they seek to suppress they will certainly make theuiselres felt to a very appreciable extent in the general election. In Great Britain the dissatisfaction withtthe licensing laws is equally strong—so strong that Government have had to consider a measure of local option, and now we learn that the Bishop of Chester has laid before the House of Peers a Bill to adopt in Great Britain a measure embodying a system akin to that known as the Gothenburg. The chief features of his Lordship's Bill are local option with power to purchase public house*, and retain them with the corporations as owners. So great is the dissatisfaction already referred to that it would not be surprising to see this measure, if it should be introduced in the House of Commons, finding its way to the statute book. For, while the majority of people do not favor the very extreme measure of absolute prohibition—the sweeping away at one swoop of the whole traffic-—a majority might be found to favor making the people themselves the owners of the publichouses, and so give them the power to regulate the sale of liquor in a manner that would effectually control it, or to suppress it altogether if such were the popular desire. We cannot say that we have any idea that the passage of his Lordship's Bill is likely to become an accomplished fact within this decade, but in these days public opinion forms moi*e rapidly than it did in the long ago, and even in conservative England reforms are brought about with greater celerity than they used to be* Certainly it is a sign of the times when we nud a Spiritual Lord introducing such a measure in the Upper House. There are people who laugh to scorn the idea of any desire existing among the majority of the people to see the people themselves the. owners of the houses; yet, even in this colony, the immense success of Clubs in which liquor can be obtained, and of which the membefs are themselves the controlling power, is a proof that the desire is not altogether an imaginary thing. With such a Bill in the House of Lords, and introduced by a church dignitary of the standing of the Bishop of Chester, Mr Earnshaw, M.H.R., who has initiated a movement in a similar direction in New Zealand must feel that if he has aimed at a piece of socialistic legislation far in advance of the times, he has done so in very good company indeed, for surely one can hardly charge the British House of Lords with being a legislative body in which socialistic measures are likely to take their rise.