A HOLE IN THE LICENSING BILL.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] Sae,—Section 5c of the Licensing Bill, which has just been put to the House of Lords, contains a provision which in all probability will neutralize for all practical purposes the other provisions of the Bill restricting the hours for the supply of intoxicating liquors on licensed premises, inasmuch as it declares that these provisions are not to apply to cases where intoxicating liquors are supplied during prohibited hours " to any private friends of the holder of the licence bona fide enter- tained by him at his own expense." Experience has continually shown in the past that a provision of this kind will make it practically impossible for the police to enforce any proposed limitation of hours for the sale of drink, especially when it is coupled with the provision in Section 5a, under which a person " residing " in a licensed house can be supplied with drink at any hour of the night. One of these defences will inevitably be set up in future in almost every case where a publican is charged with selling during prohibited hours. It is obvious that it will be impossible for the police to prove that the liquor was paid for and not given unless they had some spy present when it was supplied, and if a customer chooses to book a bed at the house—or if the landlord says he invited him to stay as a guest—this would render a conviction almost im- possible. Unless these subsections are struck out or materially, modified the difficulties in the way of the police will be insuperable, as it will always be possible for " any private friends of the holder of the licence "—(i.e., for all his regular customers)—to oontinue their drinking to whatever hours of the night they please, so long as they have a proper under- standing with the landlord to the effect that they are to be either his guests or his lodgers if the police intervene. The bona-fide traveller has now been abolished as a " bona-fide humbug," but the bona-fide guest under this new section will prove a greater humbug.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Msoisvasres' Cutts.
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