THE COMPENSATION QUESTION IN ENGLAND.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XII, Issue 721, 31 December 1903, Page 26

THE COMPENSATION QUESTION IN ENGLAND.

(“L.V. Gazette,” November 13.)

Sir William Hart-Dyke was not speaking -without the book when he declared that His Majesty’s Government are settled in their determination to provide, without delay, a measure of licensing reform which shall bring this great question to a just and proper conclusion, and his confidence in their ability to fight the matter through may be regarded as an index of the mind of the Cabinet on the subject. The consideration of the “dear” details, as Mr . W. D. Howells delights, to call them, is a task for the future. Mr C. A. Cripps, in his speech at the Country Brewers’ Society banquet last week, went further than was necessary at the moment in his endeavour to locate the sources from which the funds for compensation purposes shall be raised. We look, naturally, to our enemies to suggest that the Trade shall be burdened, with the neces'sity for compensating itself for the loss that it is summoned to suffer at the will of the magisterial reformers, and we shall be prepared to traverse their specious arguments on the subject when the right time arrives'. The Trade has already expressed its willingness to bear a considerable proportion of the cost —indeed, at Birmingham it has already done so —but we have little doubt but that the Government will receive from the country a cor<lial assent to the proposal to apportion the responsibility upon a more just basis. But the consideration of these particulars, important as they undoubtedly are, may for the present be left in abeyance. Very little purpose is served by attempting to prematurely propound a scheme of any description in this connection, and the suggestion that the Trade should be saddled with the entire liability for the money required for compensation purposes may be allowed to emanate from a less sympathetic quarter. . It is sufficient for us to note with gratification that even in the enemies’ camps th® sense of the injustice of the present system is gaining ground. We are satisfied with the recogriition by the public that the payment of compensation is justified on two distinct counts —sample justice, and the fact that it has yet to (be proved that the reduction in the number

of public-houses means a diminution of drunkenness in the neighbourhoods treated. Mr James Samuelson, in his recently published pamphlet on “ Drink and Compensation,” favour’s the reduction of pub-lic-houses, in order to remove as far as possible the temptation to excess and make the procuring of intoxicating drink more difficult. Now, it is a well-known fact that it is impossible to reduce the facilities for the purchase of drink to the extent at which the drunkard abandons the quest in despair. You may multiply the difficulties almost indefinitely ; . you may inflict the severest inconvenience upon entire villages of eminently sober and respectable people who have never abused their daily beer in their lives, but you will never reform one habitual toper by so doing. This perverted idea of restricting the inebriate minority into sobriety must of necessity be carried out at the dir com fort of the moderate-drinking majority, but it must not be done at the sole expense of inoffensive and law-abid-ing tradesmen. The House of Commons realises the injustice of the proposition ; the country is averse to the perpetration of so gross an outrage ; yet the revision of a system which countenances such a perversion of fair play is opposed tooth and nail by a beggarly minority of fanatical teetotalers.

As the law now stands., holders of licensed property have their vested interests recognised one day to the extend of eighteen years’ purchase for purposes of renewal aud the next may see their property swept away by the withdrawal of the license. This is the system that Sir Hart Dyke so vigorously condemns. He does not concern himself with the gross anomalies in the conduct and procedure of the magistrates, but goes behind the dispensers of the law to the law itself. But the law, as we have had occasion to point out before in these columns, has been distorted by judicial decisions into its present arbitrary condition, and one object in appealing for Parliamentary reform is to have the original spirit of the act restored. There are harassing and rmreasonable acts enough upon the Statute Book in all conscience—acts that owe their existence to the indifference and weakspiritedness of the Trade in bygone days—but here we are fighting a measure that was well intended, and which operated fairlv until its whole tenor was viti-

ated by judicial misinterpretation. And the enemies of the liquor traffic, as they are pleased to term it, are so ruthless and arrogant in their zeal that the more rabid of them would resist the privilege of the Trade, to compensate the people who are despoiled of their livelihood by the rigorous enforcement of a mutilated law.

Mr Whittaker, in his Minority Report, when challenging the claim of the publican to compensation, on their legal, or equitable, or moral claim to it, compensation on either legal, or equitable, or moral grounds, said that, while they had no possible claim to it, compensation might ba given to them —out of their, own pockets—as a matter of grace. Since that report was published, even Mr Whittaker has come to see the insolent absurdity of his contention. Mr Samuelson is no lover of the Trade ; he is convinced in his own mind that the suppression oi a large number of public-houses is imperative, but he cannot fail to see that “by whomsoever the compensation is paid, tha State, which has licensed them, must see that no unnecessary hardships are inflicted on the holders of forfeited licenses.” He realises that the whole of these licenses were granted by magistrates who knew as much about the requirements of the community as the people who now desire to cancel them ; he argues, rightly, that the wants of the various districts have grown rather than diminished since the licenses were given, and although all his sympathies are with the temperance movement, he refuses to subscribe to the Reduction Shibboleth : “ The Bench giveth, the Bench hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Bench.” *

Jewels to the value of £BOO are said to have been stolen in Jury’s Hotel, Dublin, from a commercial traveller representing a Birmingham firm. When going to College Green post-office he left a case of diamond rings open in his bedroom, and locked the bedroom door. He returned half an hour later. The door was still locked, but the contents of the jewel case had disappeared.

The fifty-eighth annual banquet of the Birmingham Beer, Spirit and Wine Association, was in every way a success. Of course it was regretted that the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, the

Lord Mayor of Birmingham, the Mayor of Aston and Mr John Gretton, M.P., were unable to be present, but there was an attendance of over 400, the company being a most representative one. Mr Edward Johnson, the chairman of the Central Board, who presided, had a great reception, and he made a notable speech in proposing ,the toast of the evening. Dealing with the local surrender scheme, he said he felt that the Birmingham Brewers’ Association had allowed a good intention to seriously interfere with a fixed principle. They should have had t|he courage to say, “No, the principle of surrender is wrong.” Amid cheering he went, on to explain that he, with most of the leading brewers of London, had attended be-, fore the justices, and had refused to entertain any scheme which would mean closiing licensed houses without full compensation. In dealing with the -thorny question of compensation, Mr Johnson was careful to point out where the money should not come from. It would never do, as he rightly said, to entertain the idea of it being obtained from the rates. If they did, they could not consistently object to local veto. lam not aware that any serious suggestion of this kind has been put forward, but it is perfectly clear that if the money were to be raised by local taxation, the Borough and Municipal Councils would be practically masters •of the situation. There can be no doubt that the best suggestion that has yet been put forward in regard, to this matter is that Lord G-oschen’s “whisky money,” which was voted some ten years ago, and which has been used for technical education, should be given back to the Trade. This is the view that! largely prevails, and the Government will be urged to apply this money to its original nurpose.

Mr J. M. Balfour, M.L.C., Victoria, is very severe on persons who take a little too mit»:h more than they can carry home without being stopped by the police. Mr Balfour wants to have a law enacted that after a person has been fined twice for drunkenness, he or she shall be considered “an habitual drunkard,” and shall be liable to „twelve months’ imprisonmeatu At present three convictions are required to finally degrade a person who becomes ill after taking drink. What ' a lot of hypocrisy there is about some of our laws (adds the “ A.B. Journal.”)