THE ENGLISH ROYAL COMMISSION ON LICENSING.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume VII, Issue 319, 3 September 1896, Page 10

THE ENGLISH ROYAL COMMISSION ON LICENSING.

[From English Licensed Victuallers’ Gbazette.~\ Sir Henry Bodkin Poland, continuing his evidence, reminded the Commission that the publichouse is for the poor man; it is in a sense the poor man’s club. It is not for those who have cellars of their own. As to tied houses and the effect of agreements, he said : If a man owns the business and puls in a tenant or manager to carry it on, he will be careful to see that he has a man who will not jeopardise the license. Many justices only inquire whether the house is respectable ; if so, they think it matters little whether the house is tied or not. He adhered to an opinion given with the present Lord Chief Justice, that the holder of a license ought to be the person by and for whom the liquor is sold. But then we were there dealing with a point of law as to who was the seller. If the man who is licensed is a manager, he is not selling his own liquor ; and it is not he who really sells In the case of a limited company, it is not strictly the manager who sells, but the body corporate. , A tied house is where you let a house at a rent, on the condition that your tenant shall buy all his malt liquor from you. But there is another plan. The tenant may have only a part of the money to go into the house, and the brewers advance the rest on mortgage. If he does not deal

with them they call it in. It is a case of “ there is no compulsion, only you must.” That is what is more commonly done in London. It is not ■strictly a tied-house agreement, but no doubt it has the same effect. As to the recent case of “ The Queen v. Justices of Kent,” in which it was decided that the objector to a renewal was liable to the costs of an appeal, even though he did not appear on the appeal, he thought if people chose to litigate the loser should pay. If the objection is vexatious, ill-sounded, or frivolous, why should not the objector pay ? With regard to new licenses, it is not mainly the public who oppose. Rival publicans generally oppose, and those who object to all licenses. We have influential people bringing up petitions. He did not think much of petitions. i Questioned as to his approval of the manner in which the justices have administered the law, he was asked if he approved of a case at Portsea, where in one street there are twenty-seven houses, thirteen of which are licensed, and where in one acre there are forty-five licensed houses ? He did not know anything about the facts or circumstances, but presumed the justices exercised their discretion. In the City you will often find many houses close together to meet the demand for refreshment between twelve and three o’clock.

The judicial statistics contain a table of the licensed houses stated by the police to be of bad character, and frequented by thieves. He thought it creditable to the justices that all these houses remain licensed. A thief must be allowed to eat and drink. If he uses the house as a thief that is a different matter —he must not be allowed to hatch burglaries there. But the whole question is very difficult. There has been an attempt to solve it with regard to prostitutes (who are not outlaws) by the 14th section of the Act of 1872, though the judicial statistics say these houses are of bad character. The police might say that, though there were no facts to justify a conviction. Mr Whittaker quoted from the j udgment of Mr Justice Lush in “ The Queen v. Justices of Lancashire” that justices should consider “the nature of the locality, the population, the number of houses already licensed, and all other circumstances bearing on the question whether it is fit and proper in the interests of the public, for whose benefit these Acts are' passed, that additional license should be granted,” and Sir H. Poland said that he did not see any objection to that language, which .was approved by all the judges and law lords in the case of “ Sharp v, Wakefield.” “ But,” he said, “ they have nothing whatever to do with the propriety of refusing the license, but only with the legal power to refuse it.”

Mr Whittaker : You remember that Mr Justice Field in the Over Darwen case (“ The Queen v. Kay,” 10 Q.8.D., 213) says there is no vested interest recognised by the law ? —I think that must be taken subject to reservation. He was dealing with the law, not with the facts. And Mr Justice Stephen in the same case says the justices can refuse a license on any ground they like ?—That is not quite so. They could not, las Lord Justice Smith has pointed out, refuse it [because they did not like the look of the applicant, or the colour of his hair or of his hat. I Mr Charles Walker : Although, as you told ■is, conditions imposed by the justices on license polders are not legal, the fear of the loss of the license compels compliance with them ?—Yes, Certainly. ■ The existence of protected districts, such as lhe Shaftesbury Estate, where there cun be no licensed houses, greatly enhanced the value of lhe licensed houses on the fringe of them. I The endorsement of a conviction on a license Iras not an instruction to the justice not to renew lhe license.

The record shows it is a bad case. BuL it by io means follows that is a justification for refusng to renew the license. The justices inquire nto it, and it is sometimes difficult to induce hem to renew. Sometimes they will not; and hen there is an appeal to quarter sessions, when e may be thought that it is not a case in which he owner ought to suffer damage. | A licence may be endorsed for a trifling offence rhich may be, and is, met by a trifling fine, but tie endorsement must be taken as part of the lunishment. I think in some cases the justices Le bound to endorso the conviction. But genekllv they have a discretion. It is possible to hdorse a conviction for an offence which the Lence-holder himself could not have prevented.

He did not think that unjust. Of course you ust not inflict the severest penalty where there no moral turpitude. The magistrate has power • inflict a very severe punishment for a very Ifiing offence, but the stipendiaay magistrates I London command general confidence, and if ey are mistaken there is the right of appeal, have known cases where they have hesitated [endorse the licenses because the penalty is so |vere, and I have known the endorsement to be knoved on appeal for the same reason. |Sir Harry Bodkin Poland, Q.C., said, in answer IMr Charles Walker, if a man has proclaimed kt he intends to vote against every licence, natever happens, he cannot be said to act as a frige in any particular case. As to w’hether a Llaration ot that kind should disqualify a justice |m sitting, he would rather not give any ■nion. ■The Metropolitan Board of Works acquired |d for public improvements on which there Ire five licensed houses. They extinguished lr but kept one, and obtained a provisional Inse, and the site and provisional license was light for a very large price. The purchaser ■nt £7,000 or £B,OOO on building the house. Itake away the license would have been worse In confiscation. But the temperance societies losed making the order final, and the justices ■ised because the house was not built in acKance with the plans. That was the Three Krse Shoes, in Fitzjohn’s Avenue, Hampstead. Ent the High Court said that as the house was Etantiallv in accordance with the plans, the K order must be made. The owners were Evers and got justice from the High Court.

Justices ought to be able to annex conditions to their licenses, and that in this manner you would give them a free hand, leaving it to their absolute discretion. They must not impose conditions inconsistent with the law. If the conditions are legal, they become part of the license. The confirming committee would exercise supervision over the forms of licences.

In answer to Sir Algernon West, the witness said he agreed that the fewer the houses the greater the profits to those there are. Suppose forty well-conducted houses ; if twenty were taken away, the trade of the remaining twenty would be greatly enhanced ? All clubs must be treated alike ? The West End clubs and the working men’s clubs. And he objected to police inspection. It would be a most offensive thing, equally offensive to the working men’s clubs and to the AVest End clubs. In fact, the working man would probably object to it more than he should. The number of licenses has not increased in proportion to the population ? Partly through the buying up of licenses for the purposes of surrender; but the real cause is that the justices are influenced by the spirit of the times. They know that many people think that no addition should be made to the number of licenses, and they are influenced by that. It used to be generally supposed that the announcement, “ So-and-so’s entire,” meant that the house dealt entirely with one firm. That is a pure delusion. “ Entire” means that there used to be drink palatable to customers, which was a mixture of different kinds of beer. The brewer, to save the proprietor the trouble of making the mixture, supplied him with the different beers already mixed in one cask. This was the “ entire”—the mixture of the entire number of beers.

He thought that a complete codification of the law would be in the present temper of Parliament impossible; but if a Bill were prepared and had the imprimatur of this commission, it would soon come to be regarded almost as an authoritative digest, which, although not having the force of law, might be safely referred to. The criminal code was prepared by a commission in an analogous way, but has never been passed into law. If this commission, with the assistance of the experts on it, were to draw up such a code it would be of very great assistance, and infinitely more useful to justices and their clerks than the ordinary text books. Every Act of recent times has strengthened the monopoly of the old license holders. The Act of 1869 stopped free trade in the on-beer houses. The Acts of ’73 and ’74 made it more difficult to get new licenses, and the Acts of ’BO and ’B2 had the same effect on off-beer licenses as the Act of ’69 had on the on-beer.

The conditions imposed by justices-on those to whom they granted licenses were “ illegal ” in the lawyer’s sen-e,as meaning that they were not legally enforceable. He did not mean to suggest that the justices were acting illegally in an improper sense. Take the “ bottle ” condition. That arises from the fact that a man can get licenses to sell spirits and wine in bottles, but the Acts do not recognise any difference between draught beer and bottledbeer. He thoughtwhen a man who holds licenses to sell spirits and wine in bottles, asks to be allowed to sell beer in bottles as well, that they ought to be able to grant the license without the risk of the place becoming a beer-ehop. But the better plan, would be to have the limiting condition in the body of the license.

(To be continued.)