English Licensing Bill.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13490, 11 January 1908, Page 1 (Supplement)

English Licensing Bill.

BETWEEN THREE FIRES. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Home Secretary, with whom Mr. Herbeit Samuel and Air Runciman, received the other day deputations on. the subject of the Licensing Bill which is promised for next session. first deputation represented the National Council of Evangelical Free Church c-s. The Rev. J. Scott Lidgett (Wesleyan Methodist) asked that the time limit to be be set to the ill-starred legislation of 1904 should be seven years; that the licensing benches should be .directly representative _ of the people; that either Sunday closing or shorter hours for Sunday should be_ enacted; that there should bs some effective protection for children; that the monopoly value of the public houses should come into llie Treasury, i adn that bogus clubs should be suppressed. The Rev. C. Silvester Horne stated that barmaids should be excluded from employment altogether, and in regard to clubs it would be an excellent tiling if such clubs as the Carlton Club and the National Liberal Club were prevented from selling say after ten o'clock in the evening. Mr. Asauith said the deputation might be sure that the Government would, to the best of their abilitv, redress the reactionary sten taken by the Act of 1904, and .in particular would try and' put upon the Statute-book a scheme for the reduction of the facilities for drinking, wliicli -upon every superficial observer knew to be enormously in excess of national wants and tastes. The drinking facilities, in what' were ; miscalled clubs, were a great and p-rowinjr evil. It was extremely unfair that _ the publican should be exposed to the illegitimate competition cif an unlicensed rival. Too many of the "clubs" were nothing better than disguised drinking shops which carried on the business of retailing intoxicating liquor to persons only ostensibly qualified under the, title of memljersliip, who could get it on merely nominal terms, and were therefore, the general public. The time had come when it was imperatively necessary to deal with this evil. The deputation would not ex-t pecfc h:m to go into greater detail. He did not think there had been a word said by them which did not find a response in the intentions or sympathies of his right lion, friend and himself.

The second deputation represented five organisations—the Working Men's Club and Institute Union (1,200 club.', with 400,000 members), the Association of Conservative Clubs (1.300 clubs with 510.000 members), the Federation of Yorkshire Liberal Clubs (180 clubs, with 26,000 members), the Kent Association of Workmen's Clubs (39 clubs, with 6.200 members), and the Federation, of' Lancashire Liberal Clubs (151 clubs and 22,000 members). a

Mr. B. T. Hall claimed that working men's clubs added to the happiness and elevated the standard of character and conduct of the democracy. It came to them with pain and astonishment. . that such institutions should be considered as calling for" legal restrictions. There was ample power under the Act of 1902 requiring the registration of clubs for dealing- with any which are ill-conducted. ilr. Aisquith said that no one proposed that any police supervision that there was should "not apply to the clubs in Pall-mall as well as to the clubs of working men. Such excellently conducted clubs as the deputation described to him had nothing to fear from any law. Hie Government had not- the least intention to- harry out of existence or in any way to hamper the operations of bona-fide working-men's clubs.

: The third deputation, which represented the Gene-.tal Committee, formed to prot-ect the interests of the holders of the debentures secured upon breweries and licensed properties, included Ford Faber, Lord Avebury, and Lord Claud' Hamilton .

Lord Faber who introduced the deputation, declared that suchdepreciation had been going on for the last few years, that leaving out Guinnffss's and Bass's, and taking fourteen other leading breweries, their ordinary and preference stock had fallen, sinco 1903, from £11,500,000 to £5.000,000. , - . .

Mr. Asquitli said that in any k'gisation. tli Er Government might propose they would keep in view the legitimate interest of all persons who had invested their money in this trade, the investors in. which ought to be secure—like the. investors in every other commercial or financial undertaking in this country —against unreasonable or confiscatory legislation. He said that without prejudice to the question—as to which no doubt a great difference of opinion would exist—as to the precise point at which legitimate interference ended and confiscatory action began. '