Upon receiving this reply, the extreme Temperance party held a
meeting under the presidency of Sir Wilfrid Lawson, and came to the conclusion that this suggestion placed them in a worse rather than in a better position for the resistance they wished to give to the policy of the Government. With large sums ear-marked and accumulating for the extinction of licences, the action of the Licensing Magistrates would be paralysed so far as they had been disposed to extinguish licences in the public interest without compensation, and the consequence was that the measure ought to receive a resistance as uncompromising as ever. And on Tuesday night the Speaker himself intimated that there would be a considerable constitutional difficulty in ear-marking for a given purpose sums of money which were not at present to be appropriated; so that this middle course also had to be abandoned.
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