THE REFORMED PUBLIC-HOUSE.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR-1 Sue—Lord Grey tells you (Spectator, June 29th), to appease my fear that his Trust will increase the number. of public- houses, that whenever a licensing authority may decide that it is desirable to grant a new license, an association of public- spirited gentlemen who stand high in the esteem of their neighbourhood will be ready to do the business; but it is not the custom for licensing authorities to announce that they will grant a license. They have hitherto always waited for application to be made, and it is exactly on this point that I continue to fear the action of the public-spirited gentlemen. Lord Grey, in fact, informs you that they will at once apply for a license at Benwell, which he gives as an example of the cases in which his Trust will step into the breach, i.e., cases where—as at Benwell—the ratio of licensed premises is as low as 1 to 11,000 inhabitants. This would certainly be a considerable limitation to the sphere of the Trust's opera- tions, for, as a matter of fact, out of all the licensing areas in England and Wales there is but one borough in Lancashire and one other borough in Wales where the ratio of licenses to population is as low as 1 to 1,000 inhabitants; in more than 80 per cent. of the licensing areas the proportion of licensed premises to population is over 1 to 300 inhabitants. Even on the unique district of Benwell Lord Grey's informa- tion appears to be one-sided, for in reality the "large number of so-called working-men's clubs" which he deplores amount to two. These, I have no doubt, would be improved by the regulations which the majority and minority Reports of the Licensing Commission agree in recommending; but if they are in reality used as gambling saloons and places where men "fuddle and booze" after licensed houses are shut, I hardly see how they will be affected by the Trust house, which will not provide these attractions. It still seems to me to be regrettable that Lord Grey should have organised an attack on the very few "prohibition districts" that are to be found in our towns and country districts ; and in such districts as in the well-known Toxteth Park in Liverpool there is gener- ally the strongest desire on the part of the working class to keep these few areas free from the influence of the drink
shop. I am ready to welcome the more decent manage- ment of the houses kept by these public-spirited gentle- men, but I must point out that their claims to be tem- perance reformers are based on rather doubtful grounds. Their main point is that as their managers will have no direct interest in the sale of intoxicants, they will therefore not sell them to persons who would be better without them ; but their managers will have a direct interest in the increased custom of the house, and this may often lead to the same result. I will give an instance. I understand that in Northumberland it is customary for large parties of ladies from Tyneside to drive out in vans, provided with hampers con- taining liquor for their refreshment on the way; they arrive at inns in the neighbourhood where they dine and consume more liquor, with results which are regrettable. Supposing that one of these holiday parties arrived at a Reformed Trust house, is it reasonable to expect that the manager would turn away several van-loads of hungry diners from a too critical inquiry as to whether the cheerfulness of the party was due to the fresh air of the country or to the refreshment which they had already had? We are told that the managers will have no interest to cajole or persuade their customers to drink ; but I should think that the reputation of the "purer and better liquor" which we are told will be provided would in practice prove a greater attraction to the drinking public than the allurements of the "brewers' decoy birds," who have only an inferior article to provide. The good intentions of the public-spirited gentlemen are the one other guarantee that the Trust houses will forward temperance, but the dreary history of licensing legislation is paved with good intentions. The beerhouses were founded in 1830 by persons who thought that by popularising the con- sumption of beer the evils of spirit drinking and of the tied. house system would be diminished. "The result was that while the consumption of beer grew by leaps and bounds, the consumption of spirits was only stimulated, nor did the tied. house system cease to flourish." Legislation founded on the Reports of successive Committees of Lords and Commons has since been occupied in trying to undo the mischief caused by this well-intentioned measure with considerable unsuccess. The next attempt to remedy the evils of the trade by counter- attractions was made by Mr. Gladstone, who established the so-called grocers' licenses, which, by facilitating the sale of light wines, were to coax the customer from the spirit bar. The result has been that drunkenness among women has been Largely increased. The last effort to diminish the evils of drink by a fresh provision of drinking facilities was made by well-intentioned persons who started working-men's clubs, which were to act as counter-attractions to the public-house, with the result that Lord Grey finds it necessary to establish counter-attractions to the clubs. Surely these examples of the futility of trusting to the good inten- tions of the projectors of schemes for "making the trade innocuous" should make us look to the possible results of the acts rather than to the virtue of the intentions.—I am, Sir, &c., Ceatelsee.
1 Palace Green, Kensington, W.
[Lord Carlisle's historical instances of the failure of counter-attractions are interesting, but, to our mind, by no means conclusive. In none of the cases he names was there any attempt to make the actual sellers of intoxi- cants incapable of profiting by their sale, yet capable of profiting by the sale on the same premises of non-intoxi- cants. That is the root principle of all the schemes of the kind favoured by Lord Grey. Between those schemes and the plans described by Lord Carlisle there is, in our opinion, no analogy.—En. Spectator.]
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