The other view of Mr. Lowe is a very different
one. He has actually received a deputation from the Licensed Victuallers' Association, and sent it away so delighted that its chairman, in reporting the interview to the Times and the world, quite rises into poetry. He says the deputation went to the Home Office as boys go to school, but returned "as juveniles dismissed by an indulgent and parental superior." The "great scholar and debater cheered the meeting with many sunny glimpses of his own anti- Puritan character," and was clearly so unlike the Lowe known to man, that M. Pellegrini's caricature stands a chance of remain- ing unsold. The cause of all this glee is, however, as just as the expression of it is absurd. Mr. Lowe is opposed to the hours' clause of the Licensing Bill, and desired a uniform hour for closing in town and country, which he was sure Parliament would grant,—an opinion in which, from the oppressive way in which the Act has been worked, we are inclined to coincide. He parti- eularly condemned the power of exemption which is entrusted to Colonel Henderson, and -which might be abused for political purposes, a remark in which the Chief Commissioner, who was , present, heartily coincided. There can be no doubt that it is' abused, and that a general hour of closing for town and country, say twelve, without exemptions, would be a much preferable plan The argument that the last hour is the one that produces crime may be sound, but something must be allowed for the dislike of average Englishmen for the re-establishment of the Curfew.
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