We have described elsewhere the smiling misery of Sir Stafford
Northcote under a shower of deputations, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer is not the only Minister to com- plain. The Licensed Victuallers have been at Mr. Cross already, wanted more than was expected,and got out of him a great deal less. They propose that the hours. of closing should be uniform all through the country—namely, from midnight till five in the morning—that publicans should be allowed to entertain their own guests at any hour, and that the magistrates should have dis- cretionary power as to endorsing or not endorsing offences on the licence. They also wish the Excise, and not the police, to enter their houses, and take samples, and apparently—the point is not clear in the Times' report—wish the police to have a warrant before they enter their houses at all. Mr. Cross gave no answer, and they will not get all that, and probably do not expect it, but they of course will get something,—an alteration of hours; a power in the magistrates, if unanimous, or nearly so, to decline to enderse a-complaint on any license ; and certainly their own right to entertain their own guests, the onus of proof that persons found otnthe premises are :their own- guests being left with them. There will be as much trouble about that word "guest"' as about the word "traveller," but still a publican is a human being, with a right to use his own bin as well as any- body else. The right -of entry, on the other hand, will certainly not be modified, the country gentlemen knowing only too well that there is-slways one house in a neighbourhood tolerated because it is • not advisable to scatter local criminals over a dozen shops.
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