HC Deb 27 June 1862 vol 167 cc1181-9
MR. LAWSON

said, he rose to call attention to the general dissatisfaction existing throughout the country regarding the Laws for licensing Houses for the sale of spirituous and fermented Liquors, and to the necessity for the immediate revision thereof; also to the expediency and justice of permitting the Inhabitants of any parish or place to decide whether the common sale of such liquors shall be carried on within the locality. The question on which he wished to address the House was one of considerable importance. It was generally felt that the existing licensing system required considerable alteration, and during the present Session an immense number of people had petitioned the House, stating the grievance under which they lay, and suggesting the remedies which they desired to see adopted. What he desired to do was to explain that grievance, and to point out the remedies referred to. The licensing system, in its present state, could hardly be defended by any one. Almost all the hon. Gentlemen who might be considered authorities in the House had spoken strongly against it, and their opinions would carry more weight than anything he could say. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer said, two years ago, that his opinion was very unfavourable to the present system under which the drinking-houses were licensed and managed in this country, and he went on to say that the present system imposed upon magistrates duties which it was impossible for them to discharge. The Secretary of State said, alluding to the evidence given before the Committee in 1834, that a more efficient control ought to be given over the licences of both classes of houses, meaning public-houses and beer-houses. The Chairman of the Poor Law Board (Mr. Villiers), who was the Chairman of that Committee, said that the magistrates themselves admitted that they had no proper evidence to guide their opinion as to whether they should grant licences. Mr. W. Brown, who was at the time Member for South Lancashire, said that magistrates, magistrates' clerks, licensed victuallers, and brewers, wereall demoralized by the licensing system. Thirty years ago, when the Beer Act was introduced, it was said that that measure would give working men good beer, and that it would take them from dens of infamy to places where they would enjoy themselves. Well, he did not suppose that the history of legislation contained a more lamentable failure than the Beer Act. The Committee of 1834 described the evils of intoxication in the strongest language; they described drunkenness as the cause of the immense majority of the crimes committed in this country and one of the great causes of the misery of the poor, and they recommended the introduction by the Government of some general and comprehensive law for the suppression of the existing facilities for intemperance. That was in fact a recommendation of the Maine law in all its integrity. Still stronger evidence was given before a Committee of the House of Lords in 1850, but nothing was done. Then there was the Committee of 1853, presided over by the President of the Poor Law Board; but still no legislation took place. In 1860 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, not satisfied with the trial of free trade in beer established in 1830, suggested that an additional supply of wine would make people sober; the wine duties were reduced, and refreshment houses with wine licences were established; but he had not heard that the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman had done anything towards checking drunkenness. In fact, in the following year the quarter sessions in Lancashire presided over by the noble Lord the Member for Lynn (Lord Stanley), agreed to a petition stating that the greater portion of the offences punished at petty sessions were attributable to intoxication, and that the facility of obtaining licences to sell intoxicating liquors increased the immorality of the people. That position was carried by forty-six votes to one. In spite, however, of all the recommendations and petitions on the subject, nothing had been done to apply a remedy to this terrrible disease. Seeing that the Legislature did not take any steps to prevent this great evil, a plan had been suggested which had taken a great hold on the public mind. It was to have a permissive law enabling any town or district, by a majority of two-thirds, to prevent the sale of intoxicating liquors. Now, he held two things, first, that the plan he had suggested of entirely prohibiting the sale of liquors in any district would be effectual; and, secondly, that it was just. With regard to the first point, they found that crime and pauperism and lunacy existed in any district almost in proportion to the facility of obtaining intoxicating liquors. But they had illustrations of the opposite state of things. Mr. James Gray, chairman of the Edinburgh parochial board, said at the Town Council, on the 23rd of October, 1849— There are thirty-four parishes in Scotland without a public-house, and the effect upon the parishioners is that they have not a penny of poor rates in one of them. He said that he once lived eight years in a parish where there was no public-house, and during all that period he never saw a person the worse for drink. There were no poor rates in the parish then; but now there were five public-houses and a poor rate of 1s. 8d. in the pound. Then the report the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland by their committee for the suppression of intemperance, dated 31st May, 1849, stated that— The returns made to your Committee's inquiries clearly prove that the intemperance of any neighbourhood is clearly proportioned to the number of its spirit licences, so that where there are no public-houses nor any shops for selling spirits there ceases to be any intoxication. He thought it was just because he could see no injustice in permitting the inhabitants of a parish to decide whether the common sale of liquors should be carried on within their several localities. A hundred years ago, he might add, great distress prevailed, and a law had been passed imposing a check upon distillation, the result being that, notwithstanding the dear-ness of provisions, the people were absolutely better off than in more prosperous periods. These facts clearly showed the advantages of a prohibitory policy. It might be said that such a law would be an inconvenience to many people. Why, of course, if it were not so, they would not want a law; but the inconvenience of a few ought not to be allowed to weigh against the wishes of the many. All the people asked, and all he asked for them, was the power to protect themselves from evils of the sale of intoxicating liquors. It might be said that this was a crotchet, but it was a crochet shared in by 200,000 people. From Glasgow there had been a petition signed by 27,000 persons in its favour, and from Lancashire one signed by 20,000. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Home Department had, he believed, as good as promised that he would not allow another Session to pass away without taking some steps to alter the licensing system. He did not wish to suggest to the right hon. Gentleman what shape a measure for that purpose should assume, but he thought it ought, at all events, to embody the principle for which he contended, which was supported by 200,000 people. He entreated the Home Secretary to consider during the recess whether he could not embody this principle in a Bill, to be introduced next Session, and he was convinced that by so doing the right hon. Baronet would promote the peace and prosperity and ensure the gratitude of thousands of his poorer fellow-countrymen.

MR. KER SEYMER

said, he should be prepared to discuss the question more fully when the hon. Gentleman moved the second reading of the Permissive Bill. It had long been prepared. It had been accepted at public meetings; and if the feeling in favour of the measure was as strong as the hon. Gentleman represented, the House of Commons, unreformed though it was, would not be deaf to the voice of public opinion. The gentlemen out of doors who advocated the Maine Law were not satisfied with the position which they held. The organ of the Alliance attempted last week to mislead its readers. He observed a paragraph in it, headed "Mr. Lawson's Motion," in which Members of Parliament were urged to be in their places to support the Motion, and ladies, it said, would do noble service, too, by writing to M.P.'s. The gentleman were well versed in the arts of agitation, but, unfortunately, there was no Motion before the House. The hon. Member on Friday night—the omnium gatherum night —called attention to the licensing system. The words of the Motion were ingenious and mixed up very distinct things. It referred to the general dissatisfaction at the laws which regulated the sale of spirituous liquors. The dissatisfaction arose from the facts that the views of the Public-house Committee, of which he was a member, had not been adopted. Those views were very distinct from the views of the hon. Member. He still adhered to the opinion of that Committee. He was for free trade, as he understood it. He was for abolishing the present magisterial discretion, which the magistrates could not satisfactorily exercise. Under the present law, the beershop-keepers were kept in an inferior position, and that was the reason that the beershop system was a complete failure. The licensed victuallers, quite unconsciously, had often played the game of the Maine Law men. When a new man applied for a licence, they got up a memo- rial, and employed a solicitor to show the magistrates, that although 100 licensed houses were good for a district, 101 or 102 would be very injurious to the morals of the community. The advocates for the Maine Law might well say, if 101 are injurious, why not 100, or why not 99, and so on until it ended in complete prohibition. That was not his view. He did not care how many public-houses there were, provided they were well regulated and conducted by persons of good character. There had, no doubt, been many petitions in favour of a Permissive Bill; but an organized body, with funds at command, could get up petitions with ease, and once a petition signed by hundreds of thousands had been presented in favour of the Charter, but it did no good, and they heard very little about the Charter now. It was said that the meetings were unanimous. Persons did not care about opposing views advocated by worthy people from religious and laudable motives, and they did not like to put their heads into a hornets' nest; for if teetotallers abstained from strong liquors, they certainly made up for it by indulging in very strong language. He was glad to see that the hon. Gentleman was an exception. The speech of the hon. Gentleman on a recent occasion, at a public meeting over which he presided, was marked with great good taste, and he gave him credit for it, knowing how difficult it was in addressing a one-sided audience, who cheered everything that was said, to speak with moderation. They ought not to overlook the lessons of experience. Some years ago there was a strong agitation for closing the Post-office on Sundays. Meetings and petitions were unanimous; the Government of the day acceded to the proposal; but the inconvenience was found to be intolerable, and the regulation was at once rescinded. He was inclined to believe, that if people thought there was the slightest chance of the Maine Law passing, the meetings would not be so unanimous as they were at present. The hon. Gentleman said there was no injustice or tyranny in the majority acting for the minority. Unlikely as it was that in any district there would be a majority for the Maine Law, he contended that the majority had no right to dictate to the minority. The only country in which it had been tried upon a large scale was the Northern States of America, and they must draw a distinction between a demo- cratic country and a free country. In a democratic country the majority ruled the minority with a rod of iron. In a free country the majority determined the general policy, but respected the rights of the minority; and nothing more excited the admiration of foreigners than the manner in which we avoided pushing matters to extremes. We might not be strict logicians, but we were excellent politicians. We tolerated anomalies, but we escaped revolutions. How absurd it would be to see a cosy town councillor, with his bins full of crusted port, voting that the poor labouring man should not go and buy a glass of beer. The poor man could not lay in a store; be must depend upon getting his beer as he wanted it: and to prohibit him from getting it in the only way open to him would be an act of tyranny and the grossest class legislation. Supposing there was any chance of such an enactment, the most formidable agitation would be the result. The publicans had shown themselves strong enough already to maintain an exceptional position, for they were the only protected trade in the country. The beershop-keepers would, for the first time, unite with them; the apple growers, the barley growers, the maltsters, the brewers; and not only the drunkards, who were few, but the great mass of the temperate men, would be against such a Bill. The case was not so extreme as to justify such legislation. The Maine Law men thought that a person who drank a glass of beer was on the high road to drunkenness. Alcohol in every shape they called poison, although it must be very slow poison. The great majority of men who drank beer, wine, or spirits, were temperate. The teetotallers were possessed with a kind of odium theologicum. He believed that they hated temperate men more than drunkards, because they knew a drunkard might take the pledge, and be very wise in doing so, but temperate men never would. The hon. Member in his notice had used the word "inhabitants," whereas the Maine Liquor Bill said "ratepayers." But this was more than a ratepayers' question, and therefore he liked the word in the notice much bettor than that in the Bill. Nothing less than universal suffrage would do upon such a question. Manhood suffrage would not be enough, because you had no right to say to a young man of twenty, "You shall not drink a glass of beer." To show the tyrannical spirit of the Bill, he would read the mar- ginal note of the clause—"Drunkard compellable to declare the place where the liquor was obtained." The result was, that if a man were found drunk in the street, he might be taken charge of by the police, and when sober might be called upon to swear where he got drunk; and if he declined, he was to be confined during the pleasure of the magistrates. It was said that there was a precedent for such legislation in the Gaming-house Act. How this might be he did not know; but if so, it showed how careful Parliament should be not to adopt exceptional legislation even to accomplish a good object. Instead of agitating for an Act of Parliament, the advocates of the new law should confine themselves to the legitimate means which were at their disposal. They had the pulpit, the platform, and the press. Let them use these to inculcate temperance. In such a work he wished them God speed, for he was a sincere opponent of drunkenness; but let them not attempt by legislation to deprive the labouring man of the power to buy a glass of beer.

MR. WHALLEY

said, the proposal advocated by the hon. Member for Carlisle (Mr. Lawson) was to modify the system of licensing the sale of liquors, which had been in existence for a long period, and the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Ker Seymer) himself admitted that it might be improved. But the hon. Gentleman, with his great influence and ability, had been trifling with the subject. There could be no doubt that one of the greatest evils of the day was the facility afforded for obtaining intoxicating drinks by the humbler classes of society. It was the cause of nearly all the misery which existed in this country. He was willing that the decision of the question should be left to the drunkards themselves, being assured that in their sober moments they would vote in favour of any measure which would prevent them from doing that which destroyed their character, and deprived their families of comfort, and who, he believed, would earnestly desire to be relieved from the temptations of the beer and liquor shops.

SIR GEORGE GREY

Sir, as there is no Motion before the House, I should hardly have thought it necessary to trouble the House at all upon this question, if it were not that I might be supposed to be wanting in respect to my hon. Friend and to those of whose opinions he is the exponent. To a certain degree I entirely sympathize with them in the premisses which they lay down, and upon which they found the remedy they propose, but which I believe to be a mistaken one. I agree with them that the abuse of intoxicating liquors is productive of infinite mischief; that it is the parent of many other crimes; and that to diminish these crimes would be to confer the greatest benefit upon the country, and especially upon the working classes. I agree also in thinking that there are great defects in the licensing system, and I very much concur in the recommendations of the Committee which was presided over by my right hon. Friend (Mr. Villiers), and which suggested very material changes in that system. There are great difficulties in dealing with that question, owing to the extensive interests engaged in the trade; but I am quite willing to admit that it is a subject which deserves consideration, and I shall be glad if at some future time, I am able to bring forward a measure for improving the licensing system. I cannot, however, hold out to my hon. Friend any hope that such a measure would embody the opinions entertained by those who are anxious to see the Maine Liquor Law established in this country. It would be entirely useless to make such an attempt. You cannot legislate effectually in opposition to the feelings and habits of a great majority of the people, and unless the law harmonizes with the settled opinions and habits of the people you cannot enforce it. It is said that the majority ought to control the minority. In many cases that is perfectly true. For instance, some years ago, as the House is aware, an Act was passed which left it optional with the parishes to establish public baths and washhouses; and where this is done, however strenuous may be the opposition of the minority, they are bound to contribute by the payment of rates towards the maintenance of those places. That is all the hardship; but the proposal of my hon. Friend is a totally different one. He would not merely impose upon the minority the payment of a rate, but would force them to change their habits of life, and to abstain from doing what no one can say is an unlawful act—from using beverages which are no doubt injurious when taken to excess, but which, taken in moderation, are wholesome and invigorating. For the majority to use such compulsion as this would be an act of tyranny, and far exceeds any fair application of the principle that the minority should yield to the will of the majority. I have not had the advantage of seeing in print the Bill which is supposed to embody the principles of the law advocated by my hon. Friend, but I have not been able to satisfy myself that those principles should be sanctioned in this country; and if they were embodied in an Act of Parliament, I do not believe they could be practically enforced. Even in America I believe that drunkenness exists to a great degree, and that by prohibiting legitimate means of purchasing drink you only drive people to illicit means of obtaining it, and perhaps, thereby lead them to indulge in it to a greater extent than they would have done if the sale of these liquors had been placed under proper and reasonable restrictions.