COMPENSATION TO LIQUOR-DEALERS.
TH!Session seems not likely to pass without the ppearance of the usual cloud in the clear sky. Till lately, Ministers had, to all appearance, a good chance of carrying their measures in reasonable time, and of dis- missing the House into the country with a speed that might almost satisfy Sir George Trevelyan. To-day, this pleasant and novel prospect exists no longer. No one can venture to say when the "Local Taxation [Customs and Excise] Duties Bill" will pass ; few people would be bold enough to prophesy that it will pass at all. There is a threat with which the House of Commons was once more familiar than it is now, because it once had a significance of which recent changes in the rules of procedure have deprived it. Yet even now the announcement that Sir Wilfrid Lawson will use every available form to delay the passing of the Bill is not with- out its terrors. No doubt all that Sir Wilfrid Lawson can do may be defeated by repeated applications of the Closure. But there is a kind of understanding, which we should be sorry to see disturbed, that the Closure should only be applied on a great scale when the needs of public safety or of public business imperatively demand it. In the present case, it cannot properly be said that either of these conditions is satisfied. After all, the world can go on without any change in the practice of licensing public-houses. There are evils connected with that practice which the Government are very properly anxious to remove. But if the Temperance party insist that these evils shall remain unchecked, it is on their heads that the responsi- bility will lie. A Ministry is not bound to do good against the will of a turbulent minority, unless the mind of the nation is shown so unmistakably that this turbulent minority is reduced to silence, or, if this be past hoping for, to impotence. Nor is it bound to punish the House of Commons for the sins of one of its sections. If Sir Wilfrid Lawson chooses to keep Parliament sitting till September rather than allow a County Council to ex- tinguish the licence of a single public-house, and if the Temperance party are inconsistent enough to support him, we fear that he will have his way.
The New Radicals seem to have come to the conclusion that money is the supreme good, the one thing which must never be parted with for any conceivable benefit. Why must not Ireland be made contented by the institution of peasant-proprietorship ? Because it may involve some risk to the taxpayer. Why must not the number of public- houses, and the consequent facilities for intoxication, be lessened ? Because the Bill which is to do this in- cludes a proposal for buying out the men who have hitherto lived by keeping public-houses. We have no disposition to make little of the virtue of economy, but in both these instances it wears a singularly graceless garb. The very people who dwell with most indignation on the wrongs which England has in- flicted on Ireland, are the people who are most steadfast in refusing to spend one penny in undoing these wrongs. The very people who declaim most loudly against the mischief caused by the multiplication of public-houses, will allow that multiplication to go on without let or hindrance, rather than bear the cost of closing a single one of them. There is nothing so unsettling as blind rage, and in both these examples blind rage has been allowed to work its will unopposed. The only way of dealing with Ireland or with the liquor question that approves itself to Radicals, is a way that shall ruin the landlords or the publicans. Rather than that these should go unpunished, they will put up with all the evils that the existing systems bring with them. It is a temper of mind which it is difficult to understand and impossible to sympathise with. We wonder whether, if Sir Wilfrid Lawson had a friend captured by brigands, he would refuse to ransom him. If he were consistent, he would be bound to refuse it ; for why should a brigand be compensated for surrendering a prisoner whom he ought never to have captured ? No; the poor friend would certainly die before one penny of Sir Wilfrid Lawson's money would go to buy his) off. Substitute the publicans for the brigands, and the drunkards of England for the friend, and we have a fairly precise analogy to the attitude of the Temperance party towards the Government measure.
Yet nothing could well be more moderate than the pro- visions of Mr. Ritchie's Bill. As he told the House of Commons on Monday, the idea of compensation does not properly come into it. If a County Council is moved to buy a public-house, and the publican is moved to sell it, they are allowed to strike a bargain. But the Council is not bound to buy, nor is the publican bound to sell. It is a private and voluntary transac- tion throughout. The County Council is simply enabled to buy a public-house for the purpose of extinguish- ing the licence. As Mr. Ritchie pointed out to the deputation from the Church of England Temperance Society on Wednesday, it is not at all likely that any very large sums will be spent in this way. The funds at the disposal of the County Councils will be small, and they will naturally be used in the purchase of public-houses which command a low price. The Government, Mr. Ritchie says, "are persuaded that there is an enormous amount of harm done by the smaller fry of public-houses of com- paratively little or no market value.' Small as their value may be, however, the present owners are not likely to part with them for nothing, and the proposed intervention of the County Council just gets over the difficulty. With- out that, the public-house would pass from hand to hand', but always as a public-house. With that, its travels will be ended, and the licence which makes it mischievous will cease to exist. If the Bill does not do much, it does some- thing, and what it does is all in the right direction. It leaves the large and, for the most part, well-managed houses alone, and provides a machinery which makes the suppression of the lower class of houses easy. At present, the keeper of a public-house can do nothing with it, except pass it on to another publican. For any other purpose it is worth nothing ; for this, it is worth something, if not much. By the Government Bill, the County Councils wilt be enabled to give the publican, for the purpose of extin- guishing the licence, as much as he could hope to get from a man in the same trade for keeping it on. The purchase- money will not be large, but it will be large enough to dispose the owner of the house to sell. In this way, what is now a difficulty there is no getting over, is removed, and a small but, so far as it goes, effectual inroad is made, on the great liquor monopoly.
This, then, is how the question stands. The Govern- ment are making a real though modest effort to lessen the number of public-houses. This effort, like every other reasonable effort of the kind, is hotly opposed by the. Temperance fanatics. Their hatred of the publican is far in excess of their love of sobriety, or their compassion for the drunkard ; and they hope, by getting rid of this Bill, to have opportunities of gratifying this hatred in the future.. We may be quite sure, therefore, that they will spare no.
pains to get the Bill withdrawn, and unless the Government receives an unexpected kind and amount of support, they will succeed in their endeavour. It is not the sort of measure on which a Ministry can ask for a vote of confidence, or even keep Parliament sitting for months in order to carry it. If the Bill is to be passed this Session, it must be by the efforts of the reasonable Temperance party. They are more in number than the fanatics, but, unfortunately, they have far less enthusiasm. If they are in earnest, if they really wish to see a beginning made in the work of apportioning public-houses to population, if they care for the substance of sobriety before the shadow of Prohibition, now is the time for them to exert themselves. The strength of the Temperance fanatics lies in the delusion they so in- dustriously circulate that the country is with them. It rests with the moderate Temperance party to show that this is a delusion, and by showing it, to take to themselves: the conduct of the campaign against drunkenness. If they intend to move, however, they must move quickly ;. and perhaps their best way will be to urge Members to support Mr. Goschen's small tax on spirits, and its appro- priation. The key of the question lies there ; for without the money there can be no such Bill for purchasing pot- houses as the one the teetotalers resist.
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