H.-35

SESS. 11.—1897. NEW ZEALAND.

"PROHIBITION" IN CLUTHA LICENSING DISTRICT (REPORT BY MR. R.S. HAWKINS, S.M., BALCLUTHA, WITH REFERENCE TO THE OPERATION OF).

Laid upon the Table of the House of Representatives by Leave.

The Hon. the Minister op Justice, Wellington. gIE _ Magistrate's Office, Balclutha, Bth December, 1897. It having been my duty to administer in my capacity of Stipendiary Magistrate the penal provisions of "The Licensing Act, 1881," for the last four years within my circuit, and having therefore a singular experience in this capacity of the operations of what may be termed _ the prohibition provisions" of the Alcoholic Liquors Sale Control Act within the Electoral District of Clutha I think it right to lay before the Government the judgment which I have formed as the result of that experience. Before doing so I desire to offer certain considerations which I think are necessary to explain the attitude of the population towards prohibition ~ - It is hardly to be questioned that the Alcoholic Liquors Sale Control Acts were the direct issue of a persistent pressure upon Parliament by an organization of very active and zealous persons who considered that persuasion had totally failed to persuade the people to abandon the abuse of 'alcoholic drink, and that the Executive had totally failed to regulate the sale and prevent the acknowledged abuses of the trade. This organization persuaded Parliament to put it m the power of any constituency to have recourse to the violent means of shutting up all publichouses, and of totally prohibiting all sale of alcoholic liquors within any electoral district where they obtain a certain majority in favour of tat |°jl»Jv th . nk that there can be any doubt that p ar ii am ent, in consenting to pass legislation of so drastic a nature in relation to an article of common consumption, was influenced by the belief that it would be accepted and its prohibitive provisions acted upon in a not inconsiderable number of and in not unimportant electoral districts and centres of population. ,__„-„,. ~ . It seems incredible that if Parliament had been able to foresee that in 1897 there would be only one remote electoral district, with widely separated small townships, in a scattered agricultural and pastoral population, in which those provisions were to be in force, it would ever have been induced to pass the law. , . Yet this is the fact: twice, at an interval of three years, the question of the adoption or nonadoption of these prohibitive provisions has been referred to the whole constituencies of the colony on a special ballot, the issues being defined in the clearest manner, and twice have the entire constituencies of the colony (with the single exception of the Clutha District) refused to adopt. And in the Clutha District there has only been a vote to close the publichouses : the No-hcense vote has never been carried. . . . , . I think it important to put these facts prominently forward, because they do unquestionably influence the wide public feeling of antagonism to the law which exists here There is a sense of injustice and of irritation arising out of the fact that what is lawful and expedient elsewhere throughout the entire colony should be declared unlawful and inexpedient m this district. The fact that a majority of the people may have desired, and may still desire, the application of the law does not appeal to the common-sense of the minority as a justification for the restraint.