LICENSING LAW IN CANADA
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sin,—Miss G. Delap Stevenson's description of licensing law in Canada shows what an unrestricted happy hunting ground that Dominion is for the temperance reformer ; in fact the temperance reformer would appear to be the only person who is unrestricted. No doubt the various and varied forms of restriction and control practised in the different provinces are less galling to the Canadians and less conducive to liquor-law breaking and its attendant insobriety than the total prohibition of the War and post-War period. But are they desirable ? State control of liquor is advocated by some for Great Britain and we have had experience of it in Scotland. The Scottish Licensing Commission appear to have put little faith in it, to judge from this extract from its recently published report :
"It can hardly be denied," state the Commission, "that the Act (the Temperance (Scotland) Act, 1913) has failed to come up to the expectations formed of it by its sponsors, and, if considered as a closed case upon proof with respect to the nine years operation hitherto experienced, the evidence placed before us might perhaps be said to justify our seriously suggesting the immediate termination of the experiment."
Surely the time has come for temperance reformers, at tome and in Canada and in other parts of the world, to recognise that restrictions and control of drinking by grown-up and presumably responsible persons are not the way to encourage temperance. Intemperance is lack of self control and can best be avoided by the development of self control, which in its turn cannot be developed in an atmosphere of restriction. There is all the difference in the world between discipline from an outside influence and self discipline. The latter is the only form worth talking about.—! am, Sir, &c.,
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