For reasonable persons who do not want to drink to
excess all these restrictions are, of course, annoying, but they are the price to be paid for the reduction of the amount of drunkenness which can undoubtedly be traced to legal restriction. The annoyance of the rational, or let us say natural, man was fully expressed by the Lord Chancellor in an outburst in the House of Lords on Tuesday, when the Bishop of Oxford's Liquor Control Bill was refused a second reading. We wish very much that the whole problem had been solved long ago, when there was an excellent opportunity, by State purchase. The element of private profit, which is the chief cause of drunkenness, would then have been removed, and if the State failed to make money out of the business (as it probably would) this failure would not be regrettable in the interests of sobriety.
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