NATIVES AND DRINKSHOPS.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 468, 17 June 1890, Page 2

NATIVES AND DRINKSHOPS.

Because a Native Assessor had the courage of his convictions and refused to allow an hotel to be opened near his pah in the Maowhanga district, the Napier Daily Telegraph expends nearly a half column of its wrath upon him, and says that the Assessor’s reason would have been good and sufficient "if it could be shown that the people of the pah never got drunk and had never procured spirits from a sly grog shop!" The same paper advocates that a public house should be opened as a remedy for sly grog selling. We should have thought that to increase the police force in the district would—unless the police are really useless —be a less expensive and more satisfactory method than that of fighting one evil with another. We think that Native Assessor is deserving of the thanks and congratulation of every European in the colony who is not blinded by self-interest. It is one of the most scandalous suggestions that could be imagined to advise that a drinkshop be opened in a native district as a preventative to sly-grog selling, and the most charitable assumption we can make is the evil of it was not fully considered before it was allowed to go into print. There have during recent months been enough sad illustrations of the effects of drinkshops in the Hawke’s Bay district to bring a blush of shame even to the cheeks of hardened topers. This Native Asses*

sor, who has raised such a storm in a Hawke's Bay puddle, has set a noble example to his white brethren, and if they took time to think over the wholesome lesson conveyed they might be induced to honestly recognise the Maori’s good purpose and not convert themselves into a contemptible spectacle that must bring forth the pity of every well-meaning man in New Zealand. The Napier journal alluded to makes the threat that it will send a report of the case to the Native Minister—the thought of which makes us unable to retain a serious countenance. We hope the temperance societies—if they have got any life in them at all—will not fail to mark their recognition of this Native Assessor’s upright action.