NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13727, 18 April 1908, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE STATE AS A SPOLIATOR. Mr. AsQrrrM'B Licensing Bill, or rather Bill to destroy licenses, is condemned by the more moderate section of the English press as the most confiscatory measure ever 'introduced in the House of Commons. It, asserts the right of the State to seize private interests 1 to the capital value of at least £120,000,000. by the simple process of giving 14 years' noli** to the preset! owner?. Assuming that the 30,000 licenses which it is proposed to extinguish at the md of that '.time give employment to five persona each, it means the loss of work to 150.000 persons. This is the proposition as it stands. "The thing," says the London Daily Telegraph, "is a nightmare. It is what Americans call 'the limit.' It the majority of Englishmen are prepared for this, we can only advise them to he prepared for anything. And what is the net result to the trade? Its total value, is at once and forcibly and disastrously diminished—how disastrously is shown by the fact that within 24 hours of Ml. Asquith's speech the Stock Exchange recorded a fall'-of £32.000,000 in brewery shares—and at the same time it is to be forced ti pay for the razor which is to cut its own 'throat. It at present yields £38,000,000 a year in taxes to the State. It. pays large sums over and above, and will henceforth have to find more millions still for the licenses to be eliminated. Finally, something like an insurance fund worth £120,000,000 must be accumulated within 14 years, so that >*tt«r ruin and dostitxi.ion may not. fall on thousands upon thousands when the State steps in and seizes the bulk of the remaining assets of the licensed trade. In a word, the trade, within the period of the time limit, is to pay to the State, and to amass for compulsory insurance purposes, a sum equal to the total amount of the National Debt. This is not only robbery. It is the most tremendous scheme of plunder - and confiscation ever 'contemplated in the records of public legislation. Nothing like it has been proposed in, the political history of the world."