THE LICENSING BILL.
(To THE EDITOR OF THE "SrEcrAvos."1 SIR,—I read with great interest your most excellent article on the Licensing Bill in last week's Spectator, and agree heartily with. it, except that I think you are hard on the brewers for refusing to subscribe any longer to charities. Most of my money is in brewery preference shares, and if the Bill passed I should lose my money; so at once I wrote to many charities to which I subscribe largely, such as the Church Army, Clergy Orphans, &c., telling the secretaries that in consequence of the Licensing Bill I must save what I could, and in most instances they wrote back saying they had had countless letters to the same effect. Again, you did not mention "clubs" and "grocers' licenses." They seem to me to be the crux of the Bill. How Nonconformists can agree to variety entertain- ments and free drinks on Good Friday and Easter Day is a mystery; and the Bishops will put themselves in an awkward position, as Mr. Balfour said last Saturday, if they do not insist on the Government making stringent provisions on those points, But now Mr. Asquith has promised to let the clubs go on and I think it shows plainly how little the Bill has to
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