The temperance party is seriously dissatisfied with this measure. "This Bill, I believe," said Sir Robert Stout in the House of Representatives, "is a Bill more in favour of the liquor traffic than if I had met the Licensed Victuallers' Association, and asked them to come to some compromise. I believe the association would have given a more reasonable Bill to the temperance party than this measure. That is my opinion, and I believe I am speaking what is correct, from what I have heard." The chief objections of the local optionists are to the clauses that provide for a three-fifths majority for prohibition, and for a 50 per cent. poll before an election is valid; they also say that the licensing areas are too large, and that the Act practically gives the publicans three years' licences. At the parliamentary elections that took place since the measure was passed, the question of a bare majority sufficing to carry the proposal for no licences has been made a test one everywhere; and the teetotalers, aided by the women's vote, have carried their point in so many places that there seems every prospect of the law being altered in this respect almost immediately. The first licensing election under the new Act took place at the end of March, 1894. A fresh and somewhat disturbing factor was introduced in it by the voting power of the newly enfranchised women. The women were (as they had been in the parliamentary elections) by an overwhelming majority in favour of either no licences or reduction, usually the former. Sometimes they allowed their zeal to slightly outrun the bounds of womanliness. Thus, at one meeting at Christchurch, called by the leading clergy for the consideration of the question, they took possession of the hall, voted down the proposals for reduction, and refused to listen to the speakers. The chairman would not allow them to put their amendment for no licence, so they would not let the meeting continue. They were as rowdy (if reports in various local papers can be trusted) as an excited meeting at a fiercely contested election in England. Finally they determined to there and then convert one of their leading opponents. "Pastor Birch," reports the _Christchurch Weekly Press_, "says that when he came out of a meeting the ladies were hatching a conspiracy against him. They intended, when he left the meeting, to surround him in the middle of the road. A compact ring of female enthusiasts was to be formed round him, and, when they had him fairly wedged in, they intended to kneel down and pray for him. The worthy pastor, it appears, declined this delicate attention, but was at a loss how to escape. Ultimately, I believe, he hit on the device of leaving the hall supported on one side by his lordship the bishop, and on the other by Father Bell. This saved him, the women found it impossible to surround Pastor Birch without including his companions, and so let him escape."