TEMPERANCE LEGISLATION. T HE Temperance Legislation League, whose president is Lord
Peel and the hon. secretary Mr. Arthur Sherwell (Parliament Mansions, Victoria Street, West- minster, S.W.), has justified its creation by the issue of a carefully considered series of proposals. All of them are not quite on the same level of importance, nor have they all established quite the same claim on the acceptance of the public. But they all deserve careful consideration, and supply a basis for legislative effort. It is only, indeed, as regards one of the seven that any hesitation need be felt. The remaining six seem to us to supply a basis for further legislation about public-houses which will recommend itself to every one who holds that the traffic in intoxicating drinks is in need of additional control. There are some, no doubt, who are content with the results which the last Parliatnent achieved in this direction. To them it is useless to address any further arguments. If they are satisfied with the Licensing Act of 1904, they ought, to be consistent, to hold that there was no real need even for this, and that the liquor trade might safely have been let alone. The only change of importance which that Act effected was the provision of a compensation fund out of what, properly regarded, was a rent paid to the State for a very valuable concession. We were assured that the creation of this fund would make a very great reduction in the number of public-houses, and under the fascination of this prospect Parliament consented to protect their owners against any possible loss. The reduction in question is still to come, aud the whole effect of the statute has been the establishment of public-houses on a more permanent footing than here- tofore. They are now protected as they were not pro- tected before—at least, not since the decision in" Sharp v. Wakefield "—against the interference of the Licensing Justices. The object of the Temperance Legislation League is to deprive them of this exceptional privilege.
The first of the League's proposals relates to a time- limit. At present compensation may be claimed whenever the Justices refuse to renew a license granted before the passing of the Act of 1904, and the length of time which may have elapsed since that date goes for nothing. In this way, a provision which is perfectly defensible as a passing protection against sudden and unforeseen change in the policy of the Legislature becomes permanent. No amount of notice makes any difference in the claims of the favoured trader. He may have enjoyed his privileges for an ieterval long enough to enable him to guard against any legislative contingency, but he will still have his original lien on the compensation fund. The proposal of the League is that after a certain time the man who asks to have his license renewed, and the man who asks to have a new license granted him, shall stand on precisely the same fOoting. Each will pay the full monopoly value for what is given him. A letter which we print to-day is a good illustration of the way in which the present law works. 4. Licensing Committee wished to suppress the licenses of twelve public-houses. The value of these houses, including the cost of adapting them to the requirements of the liquor traffic, was £4,420. The brewers had been receiving 71 per cent..in the shape of rent, and something like 40 per cent. on the beer supplied. When the renewals were refused, compentation amounting to £19,494 was awarded to their former holders. As the Licensing Act of 1904 is not yet two years old, we have nothing from the purely legal pint of view to say against these figures. The brewers had had only a year's notice of what was coming upon them, and had a legal claim to be compensated for future as well as actual losses. (This, of course, leaves out of sight the fact that, as they probably were the owners of other similar property in the same neighbourhood, the custom, and therefore, the value, of the remaining houses was increased by the closing of these twelve.) But under the present law there is nothing to prevent the payment of similar compensation twenty years hence, after an interval, that is, which has given the holders of the licenses ample time to xec,oup themselves for the original outlay many times over. This is the anomaly which the creation of a time-limit will remedy. The example given in the letter to _which we have alluded illustrates in addition the immense value of the monopoly which we now hand over to the brewers practically without any consideration. A second proposal is that the compensation fund at the disposal of the licensing authority shall be increased. At present there may be many unnecessary public-houses in a given area, but the Justices, owing to the insufficiency of the money available for compensation, can only refuse renewal in a few cases. Considering that the whole of this money goes back to the trade which supplies it, and is really in the nature of an insurance fund, this is not an unreasonable provision. There will be many cases, however, in which the licensing authority may not wish to close a public- house, but only to make new conditions as to its manage- ment. But as the law stands they have not the same power when renewing an old license that they have when granting a new one. Thus the wisdom that comes of experience is useless to them, and they are compelled to leave the existing public-house without the safeguards which the law allows them to create when licensing a new one. The Temperance Legislation League proposes to arm them with identical powers in the two cases.
Two other proposals of great importance are those for the better regulation of clubs, and for the extension of dis- interested management. Without the former all temperance legislation is useless. For every public-house you close a worse kind of liquor-shop springs up, and defies the whole armoury of the law. It is difficult, no doubt, to interfere with the freedom of working men to form associations of this kind, but they themselves must know that in an immense number of cases they are not clubs at all.. There are no proper conditions of membership, and no restraint, moral or legal, on the consumption of liquor. If institutions of this transparent kind are to be protected, we may as well give up interfering with public-houses, since all we do in that way may at once be evaded by calling the scene of the traffic a club. The promotion of disinterested management is of hardly less moment. At present houses of the Trust type find' it difficult to hold their own against the competition of houses in which the manager derives a direct advantage from the sale of intoxicants. To meet this by giving a similar interest to the local authority might prove too great a temptation to the ratepayers. They might come to view the extension of the drink traffic with the same feelings with which a Chancellor of the Exchequer contemplates the growth of the duties on beer and spirits. If, on the other hand, all the public-houses in a certain area can be placed in the hands of a Trust, there will be no unfair competition between them. No manager will have any interest in selling more intoxicating liquor than the rest, and in this way the temptation to the customers will be reduced to the lowest level, not in one house only, but in several.
Of the remaining proposals we shall not speak at length at present. As we began by saying, they involve a class of questions upon which agreement is less complete than it is upon those with which we have been dealing. We have personally no wish to prohibit local authorities from trying experiments which go beyond what has now been describe", but we cannot but recognise that they bring us face to face with a different class of considerations. There is a danger that a particular set of looal authorities might think fit to introduce a degree of local option which would hardly be distinguishable from local veto ; and apart from the question of principle, it is not at all improbable that the result of this would be to make temperance legislation very much more difficult in the future. If Parliament were once to repent Of legislation which had unduly interfered with individual freedom, 'the process of repeal might go dangerously far. It is unnecessary, however, to consider this question at present, since the provisions we have enumerated and praised might very well be enacted first, and an interval then be allowed to see how far they had gone towards suppressing intemperance. To have permanently settled the licensing question would be no small achievement for one Parliament. • In any case, the programme of the Temperance ,Legisla- tion League is infinitely the best, the sanest, and the moat' statesmanlike yet put forward, and we welcome it as a real advance in the direction of political as well as moral sobriety. Had such a programme been produced twenty years ago by the advocates of temperance, instead of a series of extreme and arbitrary proposals, how greatly would their cause have been advanced by now.
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