SIR W. HARCOURT'S LIQUOR BILL. R ATTIER to our surprise, we
find it easy to discuss Sir W. Harcourt's Liquor Bill. As a rule, in previous discussions, we have been hampered by an entire disbelief in the grand premiss. We do not believe alcohol to be a bad thing, but a good thing, capable of abuse like every- thing else—food, for example—but supplying, when taken in moderation, a distinct alleviation to human misery. The comfort, for instance, which the millions of wine-drinkers and beer-drinkers in Europe have obtained from their draughts, is probably tenfold the misery suffered by those who have used the comforts in excess. As to the waste of money, the teetotalers' case is better ; but then it is just as good against the waste of money on delicate food, on meat every day, on tea and on clothing not essential to health or decency. And lastly, as to the national injury effected, the historical evidence is directly contrary to the teetotalers' assertions. The races which practise total absti- nence stand first in the lists of criminality. Not only have the races which drink, conquered the world, beating back in open combat the abstaining Arabs, but they have given the world all its highest thoughts, and all the morality which rises above the utilitarian level. Without the Greek, the Roman, the Jew, the Teuton in all branches, the world might never have raised itself above the Chinese level, but the race which created Art and politics, the race which established Law, the race which carried through the ages the torch of monotheism, and the race which made possible the union of freedom with order, have alike drunk alcohol,—two of them, the Roman and the Teuton, very deeply. To say that alcohol is evil, seems therefore as absurd to us as to the Members of the House of Commons, who, with a few exceptions, would not give it up, even if Mr. Gladstone and Lord Salisbury both commanded them, and as that is the root-idea of teetotalism, the discussion of teetotal projects has been for us a little difficult.
There is no such difficulty in the way of discussing Sir W. Harcourt's present proposal, for it is as bad a Bill from Sir Wilfrid Lawson's point of view as from that of any publican whatever. To begin with, it utterly denies and scorns the first principle of his teaching,—viz., that alcohol- selling is an evil trade, one of the evil trades which disentitle traders, when restricted by law, to claim any compensation. You might as well, we believe he. has said—and certainly he has thought--compensate a burglar or a brothel-keeper for restrictive legislation, as compensate a publican. That is logical ; and for those who hold that opinion, and whom we may call the Mahommedans of the liquor-trade, we have some respect as persons who, though ignorant of history and in practice oppressive, are thoroughly sincere in their faith and ready to make sacrifices on its behalf. But what does the Bill do for their principles ? It distinctly authorises the rate-payers of any parish in the Kingdom to approve the sale of alcohol, to refuse to restrict the extent of the temptation to take it offered to the people, and implicitly, at least, to legalise any number of drink-shops. Nobody can deny that the Bill does this, and clearly, in"doing it, it is, on teetotal principles, an extraordinarily bad Bill. The teetotal assumption, of course, is, as it always has been, that the people wish to be protected against them- selves, and that there will be an eager rush of parishioners to close the drinking-shops ; but there is not a particle of evidence for that assumption. The general majority of the nation is in favour of the liquor-trade, or it would h. aye been suppressed long ago ; and the local majority in each parish, a few places excepted, where the squire hates alcohol, or the vicar thinks it should be restricted to the Communion, will probably be of the same opinion as the nation. Most of the parishes consulted. will Ptobably vote against restriction, and then where will Sir Wilfrid Lawson be 'Where he is,' will probably be his reply ; but it will not be true for the harmlessness of the liquor-trade will have been reaffirmed all over England by the voice which to modern Radicals is more sacred than either thevoice from Sinai or the he voice of the People,—viz., vocteofthe locality through a mass vote. We say nothing of voice immense mmense temptation which will be offered to publicans to make themselves popular, and to conciliate customers and to offer credit while the question is under village debate, and confine ourselves to the single point that, under the Bill, the tee- totalers are offering to "unhappy victims" thep ower to commit what they themselves constantly denounce as a crime,—that is, to give a fresh and popular sanction to the trade in liquor, a new endorsement to the pub- lican's claim to compensation. The teetotaler says he has no claim, because his licence is only for one year ; but under this Bill, if he gets the vote, it will be for three years. It is explicitly provided that he should not be attacked of ; and though that will not affect the power of the Magistrates, it will affect those teetotalers who are Radicals, for they are always pleading that the Magis- trates, as educated persons, may be morally wrong, but that the populace of a vicinity, being ignorant, must be morally right. The latter, in their eyes, is the higher power, and its vote a moral extinction to the right. of Magistrates.
Again, as to the expediency of the Bill from the teetotal point of view. It is surely a most half-hearted and weak performance. Under the plea of avoiding fanaticism, the Chancellor of the Exchequer puts in a whole list of " exemptions " under which the unhallowed thing may be consumed to almost any extent. Any one is at liberty' to burbr take alcohol in his own house, or in any place' where he resides or takes his meals. No inn is to be shut up under the Parish Referendum, nor, we presume, any proprietary club, nor any restaurant, nor any railway..- station or place for the accommodation of travellers.. The blow "is levelled exclusively at the gin-palace, the, tap-room, and the beer-house," and not at liquor-drinking at all. So far as it appears, any beer-dealer may send beer in pails to the labourers in the field ; any club may sell poison to its members, however casual; and any baker or restaurant-keeper, or other seller of food, may take out a licence, and induce all his customers to drink with their food,—a practice so dangerous that in the City the regular thing to say of a drunken man of business is, "Ho has been having a biscuit!" To all these traders, the Bill will offer unlimited opportunities of liquor-selling, and the practical working of it will deprive the villager of nothing except his opportunity of social intercourse, and will compel him only to get drunk, if he wishes to be drunk., in a house without a sign, and calling itself a supper-house instead of a public-house. No good will be done to Tem-- pera,nce or to the cottager's pocket, or to anything else ; buti custom will be transferred from one tradesman to another, the- new one being probably a trifle more respectable outwardly, and therefore less to be avoided by decent folk. They shrink from entering the beer-house, but they will not shrink from the bakery. We say nothing of the discomfort the Bill will introduce, because the villagers can remedy that by always voting "No" to the prayer for restriction ; and nothing of the stimulus to be given to illicit distillation which regular publicans seldom favour ; and only ask whether teetotalers really believe that the evil of drink is intensified by the place it is drunk in, whether that is not rather a bit of social fastidiousness than of honest fanaticism, the respectable classes disliking, not drink, but the noisy conviviality of inferior persons ? The Bill certainly looks very like it, and would look entirely like it, but that, so far as we see, the club started for drinking, and, drinking alone, where every man is a toper, and no one keeps order lest he should lose his licence, is in no way interfered with.
From the Temperance point of view, we repeat, the Bill is a bad Bill ; and from no other point of view is it a good one. It is worst from the point of view of local govern- ment. We have never denied that a nation, as represented in Parliament, must have a claim to decide what it will, or will not, treat as a poisonous drug, and has just as much right, if it is convinced of the wisdom of that course, to inhibit alcohol, as to inhibit opium, or prussic acid. It might show itself sillier by so doing, but it would be clearly within its right. If all Members and all Peers agreed to prohibit the sale of tea as injurious to. the nerves, we might think them a parcel of fools, and style them a parcel of faddists ; but we should no more- dream of questioning their constitutional right than of questioning their power to enforce it. But we do question. the right of Parliament to abdicate .its own supreme legislative power in favour of the majority of labourers in. a village, even if that majority is to be two-thirds. No majority has a natural right in such a matter ; and I, John Hodge, who want beer, though I stand alone, have not given it a right as a representative body. Suppose the majority in a parish isVegetarian, as might happen any day, is it to prohibit the sale of butcher's meat?' The teetotalers say " No," because meat is not harmful and does not excite the passions, but Vegetarians say it does, and is harmful; and who is to disprove their assertion ? Certainly not the doctors, who meet cases of over-eating every day ; and certainly not the clergymen, who are bound to consider gluttony, which is the excessive eating of meat, as deadly a sin as drunkenness. Sir W. Harcourt says that no one can have so good a right to legislate a man into sobriety as his neighbours; but the neighbours are, necessarily, the very worst authority. They are never impartial, they are never constant in opinion, and if we may judge by their usual conduct on the drainage question, they never display the broad com- mon-sense which enables men to put up with one kind of annoyance in order not to beget another and more dangerous kind. Parochial legislation means the con- tinuance of cesspools to avoid main-drainage ; and this delegation of authority over the beer-house to the village, will mean the stoppage of all broad and reasonable plans for regulating the drink traffic. It is fatal to the Gothenburg system, to the High Licence system to any system which aims at making public-houses thoroughly respectable houses of entertainment for the poor. If Parliament thinks alcohol poison, let it forbid its sale everywhere ; in the Westminster Palace first of all. If it thinks a restriction on the number of houses necessary, let it restrict them according to some recognised and reason- able demand ; but let it not license a thousand public- houses in Marylebone and none in Paddington, or leave its own work to be done by the most ignorant of the community. We have said nothing of the Sunday-closing power also bestowed upon villages, because we see nothing special in it. If it is right to rob a licensed tradesman of all his business without compensation, it is right, a fortiori, to rob him of a seventh of it ; and if it is just for the repre- sentative body to abdicate its functions as regards week- days, so also it is just to abdicate them as regards the Sunday. The notion that swallowing beer is more criminal on one day than another, is nonsense simply ; nor do we believe that flinging all habitual drunkards into the streets on Sunday, will tend to the more decent observance of the day of rest. We have, however, no special antipathy to the clause, which has, at least, one argument to produce for itself, —viz., the opinion of all doctors that nothing is so useful to arrest what is called alcoholisation as total abstinence for twenty-four hours once a week. Our contention is not against Sunday-closing, but against Parliament delegating its power to close to a non-representative body, and against the decision that a licensed trader has, when a seventh of his business is taken away by statute, no claim to com- pensation. He has as good a claim as a butcher or a baker. He, too, sells an article of diet ; and if alcohol is a bad article of diet, the dealer sells it under a licence which implies that it is a good one. Sir W. Harcourt may think otherwise, but, if so, what are we to think of his conduct in deliberately reaffirming that inns, clubs, and restaurants may sell alcohol, and still remain blameless ?
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