LICENSING BILL.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 158, 28 March 1908, Page 5

LICENSING BILL.

A GREAT MEETING IN LONDON. UPROARIOUS PROCEEDINGS. GOVERNMENT'S EXISTENCE AT STAKE. SPEECH .By MR. LLOYD-GEORGE. BY TELEGRAPH—PRESS ASSOCIATION— COPYRIGHT. (Rec. March 27, 10.43 p.m.) *, London, March 27. Tho United Kingdom Alliance held a great meeting at the Queen's Hall in connection with tho Licensing Bill. The gathering was marked by uproarious proceedings, and numerous opponents of tho Licensing Bill and a number of' Suffragists wcro ejected. Mr. Lloyd-George urged his hearers to examine tho situation in tho lurid light of tho spirit lamp of the Peckham election, and went on to say:— Tho Government Is not in the least daunted, but is ready to stake its ex-i istence on tho stand it has taken between the liquor traffic and the homes | It had desolated. The result at Peckham was' more than a political defeat. It was' a social portent, showing the demoralisation the liquor traffic had wrought. Unless Britain's virility was. sufficiently strong to throw off this hypocrisy, the nation was fated to the squalid, doom of the drunkard. If the , Government knew they"would be ex-.' pelieri from power a fortnight hence, when the division Ml came, they would rather fall, and on.that fall stand up and begin; the fight again—for. thsy were. only beginning, and must see it through. Mr. Lloyd-Georgo also said; he recognised the Archbishop of Canterbury's noble attitude. The, Church ought to unite on this question, and. if the'great Church, which was) the official guardian of tho people's moral interests, took tho lead, every Nonconformist would follow.. A cablegram published last week stated that the Central Council of. the Church, of England Temperance Society, presided over by the Archbishop of' Canterbury, and, attonded by many.' bishops, endorsed' the Government's Licensing' Bill, but undertook ; to support : th® extension of tho tiipc-limit within which compensation is payable for non-renewal of lieen-' sea. It 'was considered' that'. U years '.(tho period now in the Bill) is insufficient to prevent, an unreasonable strain on the trade.