The Observer AND FREE LANCE.

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 345, 18 July 1885, Page 12

The Observer AND FREE LANCE.

'•' Let there be Light."

Saturday, Jult 18, 1885

An attempt is being made in the Assembly to amend the Licensing Act. It was not a day too soon. The Act, as it now stands, is conclusively proved to possess nearly every defect which a law can possess. It is arbitrary, it is capable of being made use of for ends quite apart from the public interests, it is oppressive to the publicans, and it disfranchises a brge part of the public. The secret history of the drafting and passing of our present Licensing Act has, no doubt, yet to be written, but from the first it was manifest that it was specially adapted to become the weapon of the teetotal propaganda. That this was so has been proved by its operation. A.t first the class of the public who are really representative took it in hand and endeavoured to work it. Merchants, professional men, men of the world who had considerable experience and no strong prejudices, formed our earliest Licensing Committees, and the work they did was sensible and good. But each year it has. grown worse. The best class of men have drawn back or have been out-voted, and the Licensing Benches have become mere cliques of teetotal agitation — men whose standing is generally secondrate, whose prudence is more than questionable, whose prejudices are rampant, and whose experience is, or ought to be, absolutely nothing in the matter which they assume to manage. It was, of course, said that this is the fault of the people who place them in power, and to a certain extent this is true. It is, however, only partly true. The Licensing Act of 1882 provided for the exclusion of the greater part of the people from all share in the election of these committees. Under the absurd pretext that the licensing question is one which mainly affects property, only ratepayers were allowed to vote on the matter. The man who paid the rates of property in a district was theoretically supposed to be the best or the only judge o! the public-house question in that district. It mattered nothing that ratepayers were often absentees from the district while nonratepayers lived in it. It mattered nothing that the men who get their meals, their beer, very often their lodgings, at the licensed houses, are hardly ever ratepayers. The plan was to give power to a small class, and to one, for the most part, careless to exercise its privileges. The result has been what we have mentioned. A handful of men have systematically canvassed and worked up the matter, and to this handful the whole has been left. The position was eminently unfair to the public using the hotels, and also to the persons interested in them financially. The proposals now before Parliament are calculated to cure many of the evils complained of. They are simply proposals to allow the people at large to have the control j of licensed houses, and to render the administration of the Act uniform and reasonable. They take away the monopoly of I power from the ratepayers, who know and care, as a rule, little about the matter, and confer the franchise on the general mass of the people of full age in each district. They enlarge the tenure of office by Licensing Committees, so as, if possible, to provide that the men who exercise judicial functions shall generally have some experience in the work they propose to undertake. They take from the elected committees the arbitrary power which they have been declared to possess of closing hotels at will without offence on the part of owner or

occupier; and "without appeal from their ow 11 infallible judgment. The first and last are improvements in the principle of the Act ; the second is a practical improvement in its administration. The people, it is understood, were intended to be constituted the judges of all matters relating to the extension or curtailment of the licensing system. The Act now in force gave that power to a small sectiou of the people ; this proposed amendment extends it to the whole community. The present law enables committees, once elected, arbitrarily to dispose of property, and at will to close hotels often of the greatest convenience to the public ; the proposed Act will let the people at large decide the question. Under it, if a committee wish to close an hotel, they must submit the matter to the people, and must give their reasons for the course they propose. That the new Bill will meet with no favour from the cliques who have worked, and are still working, the present Act we can well believe. It provides for a real reference to that will" of the people which they profess to rely upon, but which they are really afraid of. It takes the power from a clique to vest it in the people at large — a course which is nearly always fatal to scheming of every kind. That this amendment of the law will be opposed strongly we feel convinced, and the real grounds of the opposition are manifest. Those who oppose it will find it no easy matter to oppose it openly, however. The people at large are- entitled to the control, if any part of the people lias a claim to it. The public has a right to say in every case whether an hotel is required for its convenience, and ought not to bo obliged to leave such a question to be disposed of by the prejudices of men sworn to practical ignorance of the subject. This session the Bill, we believe, will pass. Its objects are so simple, and its reasonableness is so apparent, that in the main it can hardly fail to obtain the support of the members. When it does become law, it will do something for the hotel-keepers ; but it should do far more for the teetotallers. There has been, and is, a danger that they will lose sight of the need of converting the public in the excitement of scheming for possession of the Licensing Bench. Of late we have heard less and less of all the paraphernalia of Rechabite tents and Good Templar lodges, open and shut, and we fear the occupants of these temples of temperance have been learning to look to the law rather than to their own exertions to reform the people. If the new Bill does nothing else, it will do something to recall these people to a sense of their true sphere of usefulness. Let them don their badges and shoulderbelts once more, and set to work to reform the chunkards and to convert the public to their way of thinking, not by force of law, but of reason. This is legitimate even if it is not always sensibly done ; and it does not interfere with the rights of the public at large. There is ample room for individual, and even for organised, effort in this career of reform, and the temperance party may take this comfort — that by reclaiming one drunkard they have done more real tangible good than if 'they had shut up a score- of hotels upon the pretence tliat, in. their opinion, they were not needed for the public convenience.