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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 23

Local Option

Local Option.

With regard to this principle of Local Option, gentlemen, I tell you frankly and at once, that I am a staunch teetotaller, though I claim not to be a bigoted teetataller, and I am also a thorough believer in the Local Option principle. I maintain that we have here in cur own district, a strong, distinct feeling on this subject. There is a great deal more in this district sentiment or district feeling, or call it what you may, than some people imagine. Districts become gregarious as districts. We have not only a national feeling and an inter provincial feeling, but also a kind of district feeling. Take our Eden district, tor instance. There is not a single public house in it, and I most earneastly hope that there never will be. (Applause.) I, for one, although l am not formally connected with the temperance organisation, shall use every effort that I can, so that no public house shall ever come into Eden, and I say that it would be an intolerable thing if the people of this district, with that strong local feeling amongst them, should not have full page 13 power to say whether a public-house should be established in their midst or not. We ought also to have the power of shutting up houses already established. Some people say that under these circumstances it is only fair that the publican should have compensation. Well, I have considered the question carefully and fully. At first, before I had fully studied the matter, I was inclined to think that there must be compensation, but on more mature reflection I have come to the conclusion that the publicans are not entitled to a copper of compensation. (Applause.) If a publican comes into a district he does so in order to make money out of us, and he goes to the Licensing bench and asks, "Will you permit me to open this house and sell liquor in it for a year?" They say, "We will do so," and they issue to him a license, giving him the right to sell liquor in that house for a year. Some people say this gives him a vested right to a renewal; but I contend that the annual application for the renewal of the license shows this to be ridiculous. He must just take his chance. If he chooses to embark his capital in a hazardous undertaking, he must be content, to abide the consequences, and take the risks inseparable from his enterprise. If he is a sensible business man, and most of these publicans know what they are doing, he simply claps on the prices proportionately. To say that if you grant permission to sell liquor for a year, and then shut up the house, you will be obliged to give .£400 or £500 to the publican is, in my opinion, simply ridiculous. If there was anything in the nature of an obligation on our part, I am the last man to deny it to the publican, but there is no obligation.