During the past week Parliament has been chiefly occupied with
the second reading of the Licensing Bill. On Monday night the leading speech of the debate was that by Mr. Alfred Lyttelton, who defended the withdrawal from Petty Sessions of the right to refuse licenses on the ground that the local Justices would be inclined to be too friendly to the publicans, " The hon. Member for Stretford said that the aggregate of Quarter Sessions was a far better tribunal to decide these questions of refusal and compensation. Why ? Because they were all human, and when one met the village publican out shooting, at a cricket match, at a harvest home, or among other incidents of village life it was a disagreeable thing for those who sat in Petty Sessions and knew the man to take away his license and seriously to damage him in his business. Nothing could be more disagreeable, and Justices constantly shrank from the duty." And all the time the world had been thinking that Mr. Balfour's speech of last year indicated that he did not consider that the local Magistrates were fair to the trade ! If we are to believe Mr. Lyttelton, however, what the Government were really concerned a out was the leniency likely to be shown by Petty Sessions to he publican.
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