The force of Mr. Caine's speech consisted chiefly in his
pro- found conviction that if any licence-holder ever got com- pensation for the extinction of his licence, the whole body of licence-holders would possess a much more valuable property than before, and that Magistrates would hesitate far more generally than they do now to extinguish licences without compensation. Indeed, he was so vehement on this head, that he declared he should not scruple at all, Unionist as he is, to turn out the Government rather than that they should pass the Bill. Mr. T. W. Russell, as a great Temperance reformer, made a manly and vigorous speech for the Bill; and Mr. Haldane, who professed to speak against it, really admitted that a great many licence-holders ought to receive, and would on the principles followed by the Bench of Magistrates receive, favourable consideration, though as they had no legal, only an equitable claim, he denied the applicability of the word "compensation." Mr. Haldane's speech reads to us like a speech for the Bill under the mask of a declamation against it.
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