POLITICS AND DRINK.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—I am unwilling to trespass further on your valuable space, but I wish to take a final exception to one of the six advantages which Lady Astor sets forth in your issue of the 19th inst. as an inducement to the Conservative Party to support the Bishop of Oxford's Bill. She claims " Recog- nition of the rights of property and a fair basis for compensa- tion." The Hon. Secretary to the Temperance Legislation League, Mr. Arthur Sherwell, in comment on this same Bill, has recently stated : " State purchase may be unpopular, but at least it does not propose to make the Trade pay for its own extinction."
In the Schedule attached to this Bill is set out a scale of charges for compensation on a percentage basis, a new departure from that in the existing Compensation Act, and one which leads to such astounding results that Mr. Sherwell justly remarks thereon : " This matter is one which plainly calls for attention. If the percentage basis is to stand, the scale is one to which no Parliament would or could agree.'!
If the higher education of the Conservative Party should lead it at any time to attempt the passing of such a measure, it will probably learn to its cost that a little knowledge is a very dangerous thing.—I am, Sir, &c.,
F. P. WHITBREAD.
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