THE LICENSING BILL.
tTo THU EDITOR OP THII "SPECTATOR.']
Sin,—In your interesting article of March 7th on the Licensing Bill you speak of the Bill's "many faults," of the "radical vice " of its compensation proposals, and of the " injustice " which it "promises to work if its present form is maintained"; and you urge that its time-limit should be extended, and its new method of ascertaining the value of a license abandoned and the present method retained. But you add that it has one important merit,—that of "carrying out in the course of the next fourteen years a sound financial reform." I venture to submit that this one merit vanishes altogether on examination. The "financial reform" of which you speak—that is, the abandonment of the practice of granting valuable licenses for nothing—so far as it is " sound," was accomplished by Mr. Balfour's Act of 1904. Since the passing of that Act, no new license can be granted without full payment being made for the privilege. The addition to this proposed by the present Bill is, I venture to urge, the very reverse of " sound " finance, because it produces a universal sense of insecurity by suddenly depriving people of property which in some cases they have inherited from their ancestors for many generations, and in others have bought unquestioned in the open market.
I am amazed to find the Spectator, of all newspapers, supporting predatory finance of this kind. You say that "the public, has a right to resume the privileges it has long left to others." What right? A legal right, no doubt. Parliament can legally do anything. But an equitable right, a moral right, any kind of right which honest men are not ashamed to exercise ? I think not. Many of these licenses have been renewed as a matter of course for two or three hundred years, and the houses have passed from hand to hand without the shadow of a doubt of the permanence of the license. How much property in the country has an older title than this ? And the permanence, though not, it is true, an absolute legal right, has been so assumed by the Law Courts that, as is well known, a tenant for life has been restrained by them from abandoning a license on the ground of the injury to the future owner of the property. Is it easy to find a stronger equitable title than this, confirmed as it is by the fact that licenses have always been taxed at their full value, and paid for at their full value when compulsorily acquired by public bodies ?
The thing, however, Sir, that surprises me most in your article is that you appear to feel the force of such considera- tions as these, but yet refuse to draw the necessary conclusions. You speak with a just severity, which I desire gratefully to acknowledge, of the perverted conscience of those who have convinced themselves that brewers and publicans have no right to what you call " ordinary fair dealing," and you admit that "in an ideal community" the "fair value" of the rights taken from the license-holder ought to be paid to him, and that this value is "a matter of actuarial calculation." But you add : "Any Bill containing these clauses would ruin the Government which introduced it." Would it ? I think it is much more likely that the next few weeks will show that a Bill not containing them will ruin the Government which introduces it. Anyhow, it is a new and very startling departure in our public life for an unjust measure to be sup- ported, not by arguments endeavouring to prove its justice, but simply by considerations made up at worst of party necessities, at best of mere raison cretat.
For that is what it ultimately comes to, though not, I fully admit, in your hands. " We regret that you were ever given this property, and though you have enjoyed it, undoubting and undisturbed, for generations or for centuries, we mean to take it, and we do not mean to pay you for it." Could Napoleonic State brigandage go much further? Let the owners of lay tithes and Abbey lands, or indeed:of property of any kind, ask
themselves the question.—I am, Sir, &c., J. C. B.
[Our correspondent does not seem to have quite realised the conclusions of our article. We expressly declared that fourteen years is not a sufficient period, and that we would make the period whatever competent calculators declare would be fair to the trade, and would not place an unbearable burden on them. We realise that the folly of the State in giving away its property does not make the State free to take back its gift. Therefore we would give just compensation. All we contend is that because we have once granted a license we need not go on granting it for ever and ever. Surely that is not unreasonable. There must be some limit of time, and this we desire to find,—the essential condition of the search being justice. We have this week printed letters on each side, but we cannot pledge ourselves to continue the correspondence. Let us say once more that we are partisans neither of the teetotalers nor the trade. All we want is fairness and an impartial settlement of a very difficult question.—En. Spectator.]
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