Licensing Practice. By 0. F. Christie. (Grant Richards. 6s. 6d.
net.)—Mr. Christie gives a useful summary of the laws which regu- late the licensing of ale-houses and beer-houses,—an "ale-house," it will be understood, being the legal term for a tavern in which all kinds of alcoholic liquors are sold. The Magistrate's decision, Mr. Christie tells us, is absolute and without appeal. It is difficult, indeed, to devise any better tribunal. But it surely does not pass the wit of man to imagine some kind of revising tribunal. The personal interest of Magistrates, indirectly exercised through social influence or in other ways, is an element which ought at least to be counterbalanced. Meanwhile, there is a huge mass of legal enactments which has to be studied by the licensers. Mr. Christie's volume extends to two hundred and seventy-three pages, and there are, he tells us, many questions still unsettled.
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