SUNDAY CLOSING AND SHORTENED HOURS.
Whether the Archbishop of Canterbury's Bill was one of these reforms is another question. There is a good deal of force in Lord Belper's objection that to leave the hours of closing public-houses to be fixed by the Licensing Justices instead of, as now, by statute would involve a change of principle as to the effect of which Parliament is not sufficiently informed. It is a step in the direction of local option, and local option may easily degenerate into local tyranny. It may be a proper, or even a necessary, thing to interfere with individual liberty in the matter of drinking, but the interference ought to be governed by some higher consideration than the fancy of the neigh- bourhood. Parliament, we think, should always be ready to consider fresh evidence in favour of further curtailing the hours during which public-houses may be kept open. But that is not at all the same thing as delegating the duty to an authority which may easily be influenced by local enthusiasm or local prejudice. The Archbishop of Canterbury's Bill proposed to give power to the Licensing Justices to close public-houses at 8 p.m. on Saturdays and at 9 p.m. on other weekdays. That these hours are in themselves better than those at present in force is quite possible, and if the Bill had merely made the necessary change of figures in the present Licensing Acts, we should have been quite willing to see its provisions subjected to examination in Com- mittee. It would then have been fairly certain that the reasons for and against the change would be properly put forward, and there would also have been some hope that the decision of Parliament would be in accordance with the weight of argument. Even if that decision had in the end proved mistaken, it might have been amended by the same process. On the other hand, if the change is left to the discretion of the local Magistrates, there is no security that it will be made after proper inquiry; and even if it is, two neighbouring Benches may come to opposite conclusions on identical evidence. Moreover, as a wrong decision will only affect a small district, there will be no means of getting it reversed so long as the authors of the mistake, or others like-minded with them, are in office. The influence of public opinion on a nominated local authority is somewhat indirect. These considerations apply with still greater force to the provision which authorised the Licensing Magistrates to close public-houses on Sundays, except for an hour at mid- day and an hour in the evening, and to forbid drinking on the premises even during these periods.
The debates which so often arise out of proposals for Sunday closing show that temperance reformers have a strange habit of forgetting whypublic-houses are kept open. That these houses are often a source of annoyance to their immediate neighbours cannot be denied. That they make drinking to excess easier than it would be if they did not exist cannot be denied. Consequently, as they exist only by the leave of the State, there must be some advantage connected with them that is held to outweigh these draw- backs. "Of course there is," replies the temperance reformer. "There is the advantage that a, great number of people want them. We are sorry that it should be so ; but we have to take facts as we find them, and we think the system of licensing the best way of minimising an evil which we cannot get rid of altogether." But having given this answer, they at once propose to legislate on lines which imply a directly opposite principle. If public-houses are kept open because the working classes find them useful, where IS the sense of closing them on the one day in the week on which they are free to use them ? Men do not frequent public-houses during working hours any more than a Member of Parliament is found in his club during a great debate, or a barrister when he is wanted in Court. The public-house, like the club, is a place which is resorted to in times of leisure, and the working-man's chief time of leisure is Sunday. We may wish that the working classes had other ways of spending Sunday. But when we legislate for public-houses we are legislating for their customers, and if the tastes of these customers are of sufficient importance to be made the subject of a long series of special statutes, it is a mistake to leave them out of sight when a Sunday Closing Bill is under discussion.
If Parliament were to be guilty of this error, one of two consequences would almost certainly follow. Secretly or openly, the Act would be disregarded. The public-house would be closed, but the ingenuity of the working man, and of those who cater for the working man, would be taxed to the utmost to find some way of getting the liquor he wanted. Until late years this must have been done, if done at all, under the rose. There would have been no open defiance of the statute. No one would have sat at an opposite window and flourished a full glass in sight of the policeman standing at the door of the closed public-house. But under the proposed law this open defiance of the statute would be quite practicable. The banished frequenters of the public-house would only have to form themselves into a club, and the work would be done. The men whom the temperance reformer supposed himself to have rescued from the public-house would still be free to spend the day in drinking,—the only difference being that they would do so unhampered by the restrictions to which they are necessarily subject when the place of meeting is a licensed tavern. The truth is that all public-house legislation has been revolutionised by the growth of clubs. No one has yet suggested any effectual means of controlling them, and in the absence of such means anything that leads to their multiplication leads to the defeat of the main purpose for which the Licensing Laws are framed. Of all conceivable incentives to the multiplication of clubs, a Sunday closing law would be the most effective. The one completely free day of the working man would then be a day on which his sole way of getting liquor, and, what is almost equally important to him, of having a place in which to drink it, would be to join a club. Hitherto many working men, and they probably of the best sort, have had no inducement to join a club. The public-house has supplied them with what they want. Close the public-house and the in- ducement is at once created.
The objections to Sunday closing do not in the least apply to the regulation of the time of closing. That is largely a question of police. The later a public-house remains open, the more probable it becomes that some of its inmates, when turned out, will be a cause of annoyance to their peaceably disposed neighbours. Against this risk the community is bound to protect sober citizens, and there is additional reason for its doing so in the fact that it is also protecting less sober citizens against themselves. Working men have to rise early, and for them, at all events, there can be no need to keep public-houses open after 10 p.m. There are many exceptional cases, no doubt ; but the needs arising in connection with them can for the most part be accurately ascertained. Places of entertainment and industries which are carried on at night are not usually set up in obscure corners. While, however, we have little doubt that the ordinary hours are too long, we have not much hope of seeing them shortened. Temperance reformers have not yet learnt sufficient moderation, or, if you will, sufficient worldly wisdom, to make them capable of understanding what is and what not possible in the way of regulating the traffic in intoxicants.
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