The Morning Post in a leading article in Wednesday's issue
makes so just and so sound a comment upon the Council's resolutions that we feel we cannot do better than quote a portion of it :—
" Opposition to a time-limit, regardless of its length, implies a claim to perpetual renewal of annual licenses for which there is not even the shadow of justification. To say that no time-limit is admissible is to say that the license-holders have a freehold. Yet this is exactly what no responsible person can claim for them. It was what Mr. Balfour time after time in 1904 repudiated. It was once again repudiated by him on the introduction of the present Bill in words which expressly admitted the principle of a time-limit. It is, of course, only natural that those directly interested in licenses should oppose a time-limit. Whether or not any particular time-limit proposed would take from them anything that they have now, it is certain that the final defeat of all such proposals would give them something that they have not now, something worth fighting for,—a freehold in property which, as Mr. Balfour said, they now hold upon a security of tenure definitely and admittedly less than freehold. The attempt to defeat the very principle of a time-limit is therefore only natural. At the same time, it clearly puts those who make it outside the pale of argument. From any impartial point of view the principle must be admitted. The real controversy must turn upon the actual number of years proposed and the accompanying treatment of the trade in other respects during the currency of the period."
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