New Zealand is a country of to-day, and knows but little of the social difficulties that are taxing all the energies of politicians in lands with a longer history. The rougher and poorer emigrants have mostly chosen the other Australian colonies in preference to it, and it is peopled to-day by a picked body of prosperous Englishmen and Scotchmen. As regards the consumption of liquor, it takes almost the lowest place among those lands that fly the Union Jack. The average expenditure per head comes to only a little over three pounds a year, and the amount of proof spirits consumed per head in the same time is a little over two gallons, or only about half of the quantity drunk in England. The prohibitionist party is very strong in the colony, and is led by Sir Robert Stout, the Liberal ex-Premier. The prohibitionists do not attempt just now to secure a measure forbidding the sale of liquor throughout the colony, for they regard that as at present impracticable. Their demands for the time are local option of prohibition by a simple majority, and no compensation. This latter point they have secured; and the question of pecuniary compensation to dispossessed publicans is no longer within the range of practical politics in New Zealand. In 1892 a Licensed Victuallers' Compensation Bill was brought before the House of Representatives; but it aroused such general opposition that its proposers did not venture to ask for a division on it. The tendency of legislation has been for some years steadily in the direction of giving increased direct power of control to the people. For some time the supervision of the drink trade was left in the hands of the various Provincial Councils, but in 1873 Sir William Fox, then Premier, carried a measure through Parliament which granted to two-thirds of the adult residents in any neighbourhood the right of preventing the issue of new licences there, on notifying their desire in that respect by signing a petition. Eight years later, a new Act repealed this veto law, and provided a more complicated machinery for dealing with the question. According to this, a Licensing Board was chosen annually by the electors in each district, and once in every three years the ratepayers voted on the question whether any licences should be issued in their neighbourhood. If they decided in the negative, the Board had to abide by their decision; but should they wish for an increase, the matter was then brought before the Board, though this body was by no means obliged to grant new licences, even when the popular vote had given it power to do so.