LICENSED HOUSES AT OTAKI.

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, Issue 55, 11 March 1881, Page 2

LICENSED HOUSES AT OTAKI.

« The followiug ia the text of the petition which was presented to the Ofcaki Licensing Bench iv favor of Mr Carmont's application for a license : — To R. Ward, Esq., R.M., and the gentlemen comprising the Licensing Bench of Otaki, in the district of Manawatu : We, your petitioners, as householders, rat-payers, aud settlers, humbly beg yon will, after reading these our few remarks, grant; U3 our request by granting a license for a second hotel in Ofcaki township. In the first place there is nofc in the present hotel one single private room in which auy settler or settlers can go into to transact any business or drink his glass, without being interrupted by natives and a certain class of Europeans, which is very annoying. You must submit to that or go in front of the bar, where you must drink your glass at one gulp, or ten to one if you turn your back it is gone. Secondly, we are subjected without any alternative to the caprice of one man in regard to the quality as well as to the price of the article he chooses to sell, be ifc good or bad ; an instance of that has twice occurred at the same hotel, which has never occurred in any other house from Wellington to Wanganui, for a landlord to alter the price of draught beer from sixpence to niuepence a pint, to suit his own self, which is, without doubt, a gross imposition, the standing price being sixpence a pint all over the colony ; from which imposition we in the meantime have no alternative but to submit. It has been argued by some that having a second house would create more drunkenness. The idea is preposterous. For instance, if a man, native or European, has five or ten shillings (it may be as many pound?) in his pocket, he can get supplied to the full amount of his means at the present hotel. He could get no more if there were two or more hotels. Last, but not least, we, your petitioners, believe it would be tha means of removing in part from the eyes of the rising generation of the youths who daily visit our National School a great many scenes of immorality practised by Europeans and natives at times, the present corner abreaßt of the hotel being quite a cesspool for vice as well as immorality, and we, your petitioners, believe by having two hotels tbe evil would be partially veiled from the eyes of the travelling public, and also the respectable settlers of Otaki. We have competition in every other grade of trade, from which we derive a great benefit. From the present monopoly at the hotel we have te submit to a great inconvenience, without any re* medy. By granting this our request, your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c. mmw _ a _ m _ m^_ mmmm _ mm <""'