The licensing laws and proposals for their amendment : (from "Meliora," April, 1869).

Date:
[1869]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The licensing laws and proposals for their amendment : (from "Meliora," April, 1869). Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    investigations, and tlie skill only equalled by tke energy lie lias manifested in bringing the inquiries of tlie committee to a successful issue. We trust lie may be equally strengthened by the Holy Spirit in carrying the adoption of the report by convocation as be has been in the preparatory stages. Although we have spent considerable time in discussing schemes of licensing amendment,* we have not exhausted the list which lies before us as we write, and if we refrain from enumerating further plans, it is because in their main features they have been adopted in one or other of the schemes already named. We cannot, however, close our remarks upon this important subject without referring to one branch of it, which we deem most important. All the schemes that we have noticed proceed more or less upon the supposition that licensed houses for the sale of intoxicating drinks are needful, and most of them try by all possible means to limit the number of such houses, and their hours of opening, while placing the power to license in the hands of only one authority. But there are very many persons who regard the public-house licensed by any authority to sell drink of any kind, at any hours or under any circumstances, as productive of evil to the general well-being of society. Proceeding on the theory that in proportion to the facilities for obtaining drink will be the amount of drunkenness, they are unable to hope for sobriety so long as any places are open for the sale of intoxicating beverages, and they are therefore advocates of total prohibition. Experience having taught that laws which are not supported by public opinion are generally ineffective, the supporters of the suppression of the liquor traffic in the kingdom do not urge upon the Legislature to pass a measure like the Maine law, which should by imperial enactment stop the sale of drink, but have concentrated their efforts upon the agitation for what is generally known as f The Permissive Prohibitory Liquor Bill/ which if passed into a law (and it is now before the House of Commons awaiting a second reading) would enable the inhabitants of any district to prohibit the sale within the limits of that district, whenever a majority of two-thirds should so determine. We do not mention this measure as an amendment of the licensing system, or as an alternative to be adopted instead of any of the schemes we have already been discussing. If any of them were adopted, it would still be applicable, for it does not in any way provide for licensing the sale; on the contrary, it only provides for its suppression. If the Legislature should think fit to give all power into the hands of the magistrates, as the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science proposes, or