Ashburton Grardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. MONDAY. OCTOBER 2, 1893. THE NEW LICENSING BLLL.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XIV, Issue 3093, 2 October 1893, Page 2

Ashburton Grardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. MONDAY. OCTOBER 2, 1893. THE NEW LICENSING BLLL.

:N Tow that the new Licensing Bill of the Seddon Government has become law a short condensation of its provisions may not be uninteresting—of the provisions at least that are new. It would have been far better had the new measure made it its first duty to repeal all existing legislation on the subject of the trade in liquor, retaining only such provisions of the old Acts as were found necessary or advisable, and thus making the new measure the only statute bearing on the liquor laws. This has not been done, so that the Act has to be read with the Acts of 1881, 1882, and 1880. The chief novel feature of the measure is that licensing matters will no longer be in the hands of ratepayers only. Hitherto ratepayers only have exercised the right to vote at the election of Licensing Committees, so that these bodies did not by any means represent the people, but only a few of the property owners. The constituencies of the Licensing Committees did not include a tithe of the people who were the patrons of the houses to be licensed, so that by no stretch of compliment could the Licensing Committees be called ((popular" bodies?, Under the new Act the constituencies Oi the Committees will be composed of exactly the same people as make up the constituencies of the members of Parliament, and of course b.cth, male and female voters will have a voice in the election. The parochial character of the electorates of the Committees has been removed by the extension of the areas to the boundaries of the Parliamentary electorates, and the machinery in operation for these elections will be made use of for licensing elections. The extension of the areas of the licensing electorates is one of the features of the measure objectionable to the more pronounced and enthusiastic prohibitionists, as a large number of people are called upon to vote on a question in whjch they tire not personally interested to any great extent. We meao that a class of people who may have very strong objections to licensed houses being placed near their own doors will have the power of planting them or retaining them at other people's. The Ash-; burton electorate is an illustration in Doint. Fr£>m the mouth of tho Rakaia to the mouth of tli* Ashburton river and up to the railway line virtually,; there are no public houses. The whole ft{ • vatere ia lwt ** fcricfc wil! j ° c - : *■'»« question, &ud should ammcein. * that voice say "license, n-_ will be renewed, even though every voice within the belts of the borough may say "no license." But then the country people have a right to be consulted in a question like this, as they are the real travellers in our midst, and have the greater necessity for the accommodation which a licensed house affords. The larger electorate will

certainly take a broader view of the i whole question than will the electorate limited by the belts of the borough and confined to the property owners. Then the qualifications of the members of the Committees have been -widened, and any elector may obtain a seat upon the Committee, There are exceptions, however, for those who are directly interested in the liquor trade, who receive Government pay, or pay from a local body. Then of the nine members who form the Committee, only eight are elected, the ninth being the Resident Magistrate of the district, and in our case poor Captain Wray will have his work cut out for him, as his circuit ranges from the Rakaia to Thnaru. The presidency of some half dozen Licensing Committees, meeting quarterly, added to his ordinary Court duties, is no small amount of added work, and while these meetings are being held it stands to reason that Court business will not progress with leaps and bounds. The R.M. will nq doubt bring the benefit of experience to bear on the deliberations of the Committee, —in which he will have both a deliberative and a casting vote-—but it would have been better, we fancy, had the Committee been wholly elective and the nominated element excluded. Polling costs are to be defrayed by the local bodies, and should the result of the poll be that licenses cease, the local bodies have no power to recoup the loss of the license fees by additional rates. This last provision was the work of the nominated Legislative Council. No woman can hold a license, except she be a widow, or has obtained a protection order from her husband, but women who hold licenses under the present Act may retain them. Under the old Act an applicant for a license went through the farce of running along the principal, or in fact any, street, and getting the signatures of ten residents as to his character for fitness. Under the new Act it is necessary for him to obtain a certificate from a resident magistrate, Ten o'clock licenses may be extended to eleven by the committee, for an additional fee of £5, but twelve o'clock licenses are among the things that were, and the hours during which a house may be kept cpen are defined. When a license has been granted after the taking of a poll, the licensee has the right of renewal for two years^ contingent on his good behaviour. "No liquor can be consumed on the premises by 'children under sixteen," but a thir-teen-year-old child may purchase liquor to take away. A very useful provision is that which renders a " prohibit " HaAile to a tine of £10 or three mouths' imprisonment for procuring liquor, This seems to us a wise and a fair provision, as many men become " prohibited" whom the publicans and their servants do not know from Adam, and ib was not the fairest thing in the world to hold liquor sellers responsible in every rase for the misdeeds of prohibited men. Prohibits will now have to exercise any power of self control that may be left in them, or failing, s;o to gaol for three months to cultivate it.