On Thursday the remaining licensing clauses were agreed to, the
most notable being that which deals with club License- duties, and, as amended by the Government, imposes a tax of sixpence in the pound on the purchase of alcoholic liquors. Mr. Balfour charged the Government with discriminating unfairly between clubs and public-houses, but Mr. Asquith maintained that there were essential differences. We may note that Mr. Lloyd George, in reply to questions, failed to solve the mystery of the abandonment of the grocers' small- bottle amendment, while accepting full responsibility for an inadvertence which resulted in the tabling of an amendment in his name without his seeing it. The explanation is regarded as unsatisfactory in view of the impression, shared by Liberals as well as Unionists, that the amendment embodied a com- promise which a conference—suggested by Mr. Lloyd George— between grocers' representatives and a Treasury official had arrived at.
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