SECOND READING.

HC Deb 17 April 1888 vol 324 cc1499-552

[ADJOURNED DEBATE.] [FOURTH NIGHT.]

Order road, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Question 12th April "That the Bill be now read a second time."

Question again proposed.

Debate resumed.

MR. CAINE (Barrow-in-Furness)

Sir, viewing this Bill as a whole I can only add my voice to the chorus of general approval which has been given to it by almost every speaker who has taken part in the debate. I also desire to follow their example, and not to discuss at any length the principles of the Bill, but rather those provisions of it under which I take exception. There are three main provisions of the measure of which I disapprove. I do not think I can vote for the provision in favour of selecting members of the County Council as aldermen are selected now in the Town Councils, because I think the time has gone by when any Board such as it is proposed to establish should be otherwise than directly elected, and not selected by any system whatever. Therefore, I object to the provisions which relate to selected members. I also object to the provisions which deal with the police, and I shall be prepared to support any well-devised Amendment to get rid of the proposal which gives a jurisdiction over the police, in order to place the management of that body under the sole control of the County Council. My great objection, however, is to the licensing provisions and the Licensing Clauses of the Bill. My first two objections have already undergone considerable discussion, and I propose, therefore, to deal at once with the Licensing Question, in which for a great number of years I have taken a special and a particular interest. These provisions seem to be threefold. First, they transfer the licensing authority from the magistrates, as at present constituted, to the new County Council to be elected by the ratepayers. Now, it seems to me, that that transfer is a natural sequence of the Bill, because if the entire administration of the country is to be handed over to the new County Council, the administration of the Licensing Laws and the power to deal with finances under the Licensing Laws should also be transferred to the new body. If the proposals end there, I should have great pleasure in supporting them. The change of the Local Authority is, I think, an improvement rather than otherwise, in as much as it hands over a question of such vital importance to the people of this country to the ratepayers in touch with their Representatives, instead of leaving it in the hands of an irresponsible body of men, of whom, however, I wish it to be understood that I have nothing disrespectful to say. But the Bill goes further—one of the clauses proposes to give to the County Council power to refuse to renew public—house licences. This proviso appears to me to be entirely unnecessary, because such a power exists in the present licensing authority, and would, of course, exist in the licensing authority that is set up in its place. I therefore think it would be wise to omit that clause altogether, as it is absolutely unnecessary. Then the Bill goes on to give to the new Councils power to close public-houses on Sunday. This is carrying out the idea which has been expressed from both of the Front Benches of this House. I have no great objection to urge against it, except that this House has more than once affirmed, by large majorities, the principle of Sunday Closing over the whole of the United Kingdom; and temperance reformers prefer to watch until they can get what they have been aiming at for many years—namely, the entire closing of public-houses on Sunday. There is, however, a fourth proposal which is a most serious one—I refer to the Compensation Clauses of the Bill. Whatever boon is given to temperance reformers is entirely cancelled by the monstrous proposal to create and compensate an entirely new vested interest which is to be entitled to compensation. I shall be glad if the House will examine this proposal a little more closely. In the first place, there is one attempt on the part of the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill (Mr. Ritchie) to meet the injustice which un- doubtedly prevails to the people who suffer from the existence of public-houses, and who have no power to resist the creation of new public-houses. The right hon. Gentleman proposes in the Bill to bring such questions within touch of the people; but his proposals are limited in two ways—first, by the Compensation Clause, and, secondly, by certain transfers of revenue to the County Council. I fully recognize the serious character of the opposition which has been brought against another view of the Compensation Clause by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain), with whom on most points I act heartily in concert. In the speech delivered by my right hon. Friend yesterday, he referred to the proposal to transfer the revenue derived from public-house licences to the County Council. The right hon. Gentleman said— It has been objected, in the first place, that the transfer of the licences from the Imperial to the Local Authority would give the latter an interest in a traffic which is injurious and objectionable. I certainly hold that opinion. The right hon. Gentleman then goes on to say— I cannot help thinking that the right hon. Baronet (Sir Wilfrid Lawson), and those who think with him, have not really the courage of their opinions and sufficient faith in their cause when they put forward such an argument. If this traffic is, as they say, an evil traffic, if to get rid of it is an advantage to the district concerned, if they are satisfied that they at once convince the majority in many districts of these facts, and probably, in the long run, the majority in all districts, why should they be afraid of these clauses? I should like to tell my right hon. Friend and the House why we are afraid of these clauses. These clauses give an interest in the retention of public-houses, in consequence of the transfer of the revenue derived from licences. I think it is quite enough for us to have to deal with the interest of the ratepayers in this House; but if we are to add to the difficulty, our work will be greatly increased, and, in my opinion, there is no necessity whatever for this transfer of the licence revenue. The same amount might easily be given from other sources without creating this embarrassment and establishing a palpable injustice. In those particular sober communities, where they have already limited the number of public-houses and the proportion of public-houses to the population is much smaller than any other districts, they are, by the Bill, fined for their sobriety, and a premium is given for districts which have been most lax in granting licences, and where, consequently, there are more paupers. In one town which I know very well there has been a large increase of pauperism, owing to this laxity, and additional burdens have been laid upon the rates. In districts where the people have been most sober, where great moral and Christian sentiments are strongest, in districts that are most anxious to reduce the facilities for the sale of intoxicating liquors, in endeavouring to give effect to their wishes the people find themselves face to face with a heavy money loss. It is proposed by the Bill to hand over the revenue derived from public-house licences to the County Councils; and, secondly, to pay compensation. We have heard a good deal of the £300,000 which it is said would be forthcoming for the County Councils from this revenue being made over to them and rendered available for the payment of compensation. I understood, from the gesture of assent which the President of the Local Government Board gave to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, that he consented to devote this revenue to the compensation of publicans whose licences may not be renewed. But how far is that sum likely to go, and is it for the publicans and the ratepayers to find the necessary sum to compensate the owners of public-houses which the County Councils, in touch with the people, refuse a renewal of the licence? I will venture to give a few instances which have come under my notice in regard to this question of compensation to publicans. About seven years ago, in a mining district, a small six-roomed house with a quarter of an acre of land was put up to auction. A firm with which I am connected bid up to £390, and then stopped; the property was sold for £400. In the following year it required a licence, and when four years later minerals were discovered under the house, it was purchased by my firm, who let down the soil upon which it stood. The manner in which the compensation was awarded is precisely the same as that which it is proposed to award com- pensation under this Bill. The question was referred to arbitration, and the result was that the value was assessed at £2,200 for the six-roomed house, owing to the fact that the owner had secured a licence. The house was not in a village itself, but half-a-mile from a village, so that £1,800 appears to be the value attached to a country public-house. Let me give another case, an instance of a suburban public-house outside the metropolis. In 1884, a house at Woodford was sold for £800. It is now carried on as a public-house under the name of the Railway Bell; the occupier of the house, who was also the owner, died in 1886, and in 1887 the house was sold by auction as a licensed public-house and fetched £8,800, and therefore the value of a suburban public-house licence not in London, for Woodford is in Essex, some miles from London, is £8,000. Let me give another case of a public-house situated in London itself, which it was found necessary to pull down. The case went for arbitration and the owner of the public-house was fortunate enough to secure the services of my hon. and learned Friend opposite the Solicitor General (Sir Edward Clarke), so that no one can be surprised that he got the fullest amount the jury could possibly award. In that case the difference between the value of the house as a dwelling-house and as a licensed house was no less than £38,000.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL (Sir EDWARD CLARKE) (Plymouth)

There was no case of that kind in which I was concerned. There was, I believe, a transaction in which £38,000 was paid, not as the difference between the value of a licensed house and a dwelling-house, but as the value of the whole property.

MR. CAINE

Then I will lot the case go; but I will give another instance -which occurred last year in which the difference between the value of an ordinary house and a licensed house was assessed at £32,000. Therefore if the House will accept these figures, it will be seen that £1,800 is the value of a country public-house licence, £8,000 of a suburban, and £32,000 for a gin palace. I suppose for the sake of argument we exclude the London gin palace, and take the probable value of public-houses throughout the country in the same way as the value of a licensed village public-house and suburban public-house. It will be found that the average compensation to be given under the arbitration clauses of this Bill throughout the country will be nearer £5,000 than any other sum. Let me take the case of my own constituency, Barrow-in-Furness. Suppose that it is proposed to reduce the number of public-houses there by 30. There are there 53 public. houses, 16 beer-houses, and 50 licenced shops, or 119 in all. What I want to emphasize is, that whatever compensation is going to be given for the suppression of the licensed public-houses will come almost entirely out of the pockets of the ratepayers, and that this ear-mark revenue of which we hear so much will be ridiculously insufficient. Taking the average licensed public houses in Barrow, and placing the compensation at £2,000 for each, as the difference between the value of a licensed house and an ordinary house, if 30 are suppressed there will be a loss to the revenue derived from licence duties of about £600 per annum. That alone would be a distinct consideration to the ratepayers, and here is where my objection to the Licensing Clauses of the Bill comes in. We should have to persuade the ratepayers, before they get rid of the evil of establishing public-houses, to a loss of revenue amounting to £600 a-year. The average payment per house in the county is £17 18s., and the beer-houses £3 10s. But the question of compensation also comes in, and if 30 houses are to be bought on the basis of a village public-house in the neighbourhood of Barrow, the total amount paid in the shape of compensation will be something like £60,000. To provide compensation for the abolition of a single public-house in Barrow-in-Furness, the licensing authority would have to save £240 a year for nine or ten years, for that is just the amount which the earmarked increase of 20 per cent would produce annually. It is therefore abundantly clear that the publicans must be compensated out of the pockets of the ratepayers, and the question, as it is called, of compensation from the publicans themselves may be entirely dismissed from consideration. And now let me refer for a moment to some of the arguments brought forward by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Birming- ham. The Government have endeavoured to create a vested interest, the burden of which must fall on the public. My right hon. Friend made a remarkable statement upon the existence of a vested interest. He said that the highest Local Authorities had been consulted by more than one Government, and that their opinion was that there was an undoubted vested interest in a licence. He also told us that he had drafted a Bill of his own when he was President of the Local Government Board. I am sorry that my right hon. Friend is not in his place, because I should like to ask him if he consulted his own Law Officers at the time, and what their opinion was. One of those Law Officers—the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Bury (Sir Henry James)—is in the House now, and I hope he will give an answer to the question as to what his opinion was in regard to this vested interest. There is another distinguished Law Officer sitting in another part of the House, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hackney (Sir Charles Russell). I wish to know if the right hon. Member for West Birmingham put into his Bill any clauses which provided compensation for the publicans; and, if so, what they were? I think the answer to that question will be a valuable contribution to the discussion. I should also like to know whether the present Law Officers of the Crown are prepared to declare that there is an undoubted vested interest in a licence? If they are prepared so to declare, why is a clause introduced into the Bill to create that which already exists? I have always understood that the great, if not the sole, object of legislation is to make provisions which do not already exist. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham also told the Temperance Reformers that the principle of Local Option will be accepted and practically applied under this Bill, and he said that under the Bill the majority of the inhabitants of any licensing district will elect representatives to the County Council, which has the power to do away with every licence in the district if it thought fit. What would it cost the ratepayers of Barrow-in-Furness to get rid of the whole of their licensed public-houses? The cost would make that an impossibility; but let us consider how the principle of Local Option, if it be accepted, is to be applied under this Bill. I always warned my hon. Friend the Member for the Cockermouth Division of Cumberland (Sir Wilfrid Lawson), when he has brought forward from time to time his general Resolution in regard to Local Option, that when he came within real touch of the House, he would find that a great many Members had voted with him who did not intend what he himself intended by Local Option. Those of us, however, who have studied the question, know what we mean by it. What we want is that the ratepayers of any given district should have placed in their hands the power to protect themselves efficiently against having public-houses thrust upon them against their will by the licensing authority. That is my definition of Local Option. How is Local Option going to be applied under this Bill? In the first place, let me take the example of my own constituency. I am afraid that, as the Bill stands, Barrow-in-Furness may be deprived of the separate right of licensing; because, under the Bill, it will become a portion of a licensing district only. Suppose the people of Barrow declared their wish to reduce the number of public-houses by one-half, or wish to elect a Prohibitionist candidate to advocate the suppression of public-houses altogether, that would be an expression of opinion on the part of the ratepayers that, as far as their opinion goes, it is in favour of the principle of Local Option. But the member whom they send to the County Council will be associated with six representatives from other districts, so that he will have to face six other representatives, all of whom, from anything we know, may be elected in the publican's interest. For instance, if his borough is in Lancashire, one of the representatives may be a Liverpool man in favour of that heresy which has brought about so much drunkenness in Liverpool-the heresy of free licensing. Under these circumstances, we should not know where we are. The right hon. Member for West Birmingham says that the Bill practically gives Local Option; but, as a matter of fact, it only gives a particular district a ninth voice in deciding what shall be done in regard to its own district. I have already referred to Sunday Closing. We believe that the House of Commons is absolutely prepared to close public-houses on Sunday. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham contended that no fresh vested interest can arise under the Bill. That is perfectly true; but there is nothing in that, for there are already as many licences in existence as the trade can carry, as they can be removed from one on to the other, so as to last for all time. My right hon. Friend also says that compensation is fixed on a fair and moderate basis, to be paid out of the pockets of the publicans themselves. I am certainly astonished that my right hon. Friend should make such a statement as that, in the face of what he would have discovered if he had gone through a single sum of division and subtraction. I have already shown how insufficient the ear-mark revenue will be to provide compensation. My right hon. Friend says the publicans are conducting a legal traffic, over which the Legislature has, to a certain extent, thrown its shield and protection. I absolutely deny that legislation has thrown its shield and protection over the public-house. The express intention of all the Bills which have been passed by this House in regard to the sale of intoxicating liquors has been to throw the shield and protection of the Legislature over the people, and not over the public-house. What is the public-house? It is created for the benefit of the public, and the contention of the law is that he is the servant of the public, and for that purpose he gets his public-house licence for one year and no longer. That is the vested interest of which they say so much. Why has he to come up every year to get the licence renewed? It is because the State knows it is a dangerous trade, and it has retained in every Statute which has been passed the right to revise that trade, to restrict it, and, in my judgment, the right to prohibit it. The publican is required to come up at the end of 12 months to show that he is as respectable a man as he was when he began. It is a great delusion to suppose that any man may be a publican. I know an instance where money was subscribed to start a man in a public-house, but it was found that he had been convicted of felony, and therefore could not hold a licence. He could start a grocer's shop, and was good enough to have a seat in this House, but he was not good enough to be entrusted with a licence that would enable him to carry on a dangerous trade. The whole licensing legislation of this country has been to interpose a shield and protection between the people and those who are engaged in a dangerous trade. What is the reason why a policeman can walk into a public-house at any time and see what is going on? He cannot walk into any other business place, and the reason why he can enter a public-house is because it is recognized as a trade which creates crime; that it is a poverty-creating trade; and, furthermore, it is placed under the supervision of the police because it is a dangerous trade. The object of the Licensing Laws of the country has not been to throw a shield and protection over a legal trade, but over the people; and it is because the proposals of the Government and the present Bill are reactionary, and contrary to the principle on which all legislation right along the line has hitherto proceeded, that I intend to give them my uncompromising opposition. Let me compare the compensation under this Bill with that which was proposed 16 or 17 years ago by Mr. Bruce, now Lord Aberdare. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham said that the Temperance Reformers were responsible for the defeat of Mr. Bruce's Bill. But that idea is altogether fallacious. I was one of the Temperance Party which he says opposed the Bill, and secured its rejection. He added that in his opinion they had made a great mistake. I should quite agree with my right hon. Friend if that were true, and that they did make a great mistake; but it is altogether incorrect to suppose that the Temperance Reformers secured the rejection of the Bill. I myself at that time called one of the largest meetings ever held in Liverpool, at which a resolution was unanimously passed, calling on this House to give a second reading to the Bill, and a meeting of the United Kingdom Alliance expressed its approval on the second reading. Their opposition to Mr. Bruce's Bill was no more than that which my right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham himself offers to the present Bill. The right hon. Gentleman says that he is in favour of the second reading of the Bill; but he has told the House that he does not intend to support the proposals contained in it in regard to the police. We supported Mr. Bruce's Bill, and were prepared to vote for the second reading; but, at the same time, we declared our objection to the Compensation Clauses. Therefore, the Temperance Reformers were no more opposed to the second reading of Mr. Bruce's Bill than my right hon. Friend is now opposed to the present Bill. Let me look at the effect of the Compensation Clauses in the Bill of 17 years ago. They proposed that every publican's licence of whatever description should be continued annually, subject, of course, to good behaviour, until the General Licensing Sessions held after the expiration of 10 years from the commencement of that Act, and should absolutely determine at the end of such Sessions. Compensation was no more recognized then than now. It was only recognized as a matter of expediency, with a desire to get the Bill through in some way or other. The compensation was put at 10 years' lease of the licence, and after that the vested interest ceased, and there was only to be one licence for every 1,000 inhabitants. The offer made to the Temperance Reformers 17 years, ago as compared with that offered to them to-day, was generous in the extreme. I did my best to get Mr. Bruce's Bill passed, but I had not much influence at the time, and my action was confined to Liverpool. If the Bill had passed, the vested interest of the publican would have disappeared at the end of 10 years. In Mr. Bruce's Bill we saw finality; where is finality under this Bill? The thing is to go on for ever. A 10 years' lease was given in Mr. Bruce's Bill in consequence of the growth of temperance sentiment, and the effect of the measure was to create a competition between public-house proprietors as to which of them should be bought up. Under the present Bill, whenever it is necessary to fix compensation, the authorities will have to go back to 1888 in order to find out what the value of a public licence was in that year. I cannot imagine that my right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board intends to persevere with the Compensation Clauses of the Bill. I understood him to say, in the speech he made yesterday, that the Church of England Temperance Society have passed resolutions in favour of his Compensation Clauses.

THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. RITCHIE) (Tower Hamlets, St. George's)

Allow me to explain. What I said was that my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Manchester (Sir William Houldsworth) was a prominent member of that society, and he had expressed his approval of the general principle of the Bill in reference to licences.

MR. CAINE

I should like to read the resolution which was passed by the Church of England Society, and which was moved by my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Manchester. It is as follows:— That this Committee does not recognize any vested interest in a licence, and, consequently, any right to compensation on its withdrawal. That the only equitable claim to compensation would be for money laid out, loss sustained, and disturbance of a tenant. That in no case could it agree to compensation being made a first charge on the rates as proposed in the Bill. That the above equitable claim would properly be met by an increased percentage on the licence duties as proposed by the Bill, and the application of a certain portion of the licence duties to that purpose, such application being a first charge on these duties. I cannot understand how anybody moving a resolution of that nature can support the clauses in the present Bill, in which 99 per cent of the compensation is to be drawn out of the pockets of the ratepayers, and not out of the pockets of the publicans at all. On the contrary, I regard it as a strong condemnation of the Compensation Clauses of the Bill. There is one other point I should like to refer to before I sit down. Under the Bill boroughs with a population of less than 50,000 will lose their individual licensing powers. I have a list of places here which, according to the Census of 1881, had a population of less than 50,000 people, but all of which now have a population of more than 50,000, and represent a population altogether of nearly 500,000. On behalf of the people of those boroughs who are interested in temperance reformation, I ask the right hon. Gentleman to keep for them their power of licensing, without being complicated with eight other members of the County Council who would have to vote upon it.

MR. RITCHIE

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman; but there seems to be a little misunderstanding upon this point, which I should like to explain. It does not necessarily follow that by the Bill boroughs under 50,000 will not be Licensing Authorities within themselves; because it is possible that they may have six representatives in the County Council, and, therefore, be capable of being licensing divisions.

MR. CAINE

I will not pursue the matter further, except to say that, according to the Bill, boroughs under 50,000 people are not to have a separate licensing jurisdiction. Among the towns which had a population of less than 50,000 in 1881 who have now more than 50,000 are Great Yarmouth, a municipal borough; Tottenham, a local board district; Barrow, a petty sessional division co-equal with the area of the Bill; Wigan, a quarter sessions borough; Hanley, a municipal borough; Merthyr Tydvil, a local board district; Devonport, a municipal borough; and York, also a municipal borough. All these boroughs at the last Census had populations between 45,000 and 50,000. But I have got no figures except in regard to the boroughs of Wigan and Barrow. The population of those boroughs is now much beyond 50,000, and has probably reached 55,000. At the time the Census was taken, the population of Wigan was greatly diminished by a strike among the miners, which caused many hundreds of families to leave the town, and brought down the population by many thousands. This is clearly proved by the fact that there were 1,300 empty houses at the time the Census was taken, representing, at least, a population of 7,000. I think it is unfair to impose upon these boroughs, which have now a population of more than 50,000, disabilities and want of authority simply because, seven years previous to the introduction of this Bill, they contained a less population than 50,000. My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Mr. F. S. Powell) has asked me to press the case of his own constituency upon the President of the Local Government Board. I hope something will be done for the boroughs I have mentioned, in order to secure for them the right of dealing with the question of licensing in their own way. I think the facts I have brought before the House completely demolish the contention of my right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham and the President of the Local Government Board, that there is any appreciable amount of compensation to be got out of the publicans themselves. I shall certainly give my uncompromising opposition to the so-called Compensation Clauses of the Bill. I think the Government would act wisely by withdrawing them altogether, leaving the whole licensing to be dealt with by separate legislation. I must warn the right hon. Gentleman that if he persists in wedging a Licensing Bill into a Local Government Bill, it will be the duty of the Temperance Reformers to move a considerable number of Amendments in an endeavour to improve that Licensing Bill, and he must expect a considerable number of evenings to be devoted to discussing a question which a large number of Members believe to be of paramount importance to the welfare of the country, and to resisting proposals which they believe will build up a solid wall between them and the accomplishment of the object of the Temperance Reformers that they will never be able to break down.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL (Sir EDWARD CLARKE) (Plymouth)

Sir, there is in one respect, at all events, an agreeable contrast between the speech which we have just heard and that delivered last night by the hon. Baronet the Member for Cumberland (Sir Wilfrid Lawson), because the hon. Baronet attacked Her Majesty's Government very bitterly upon the licensing proposals they now make, and said that the shame of those proposals must rest on them, and he wound up by alleging that the policy embodied in the Licensing Clauses was never exceeded in the meanness of its conception, the injustice of its scope, or the cruelty it inflicted on the industrial classes. The hon. Member who has just sat down, who is equally entitled to claim to be an ardent supporter of the temperance cause, has, on the other hand, dealt fairly with the proposals of the Government, and recognized that in the Licensing Clauses of the Bill there is a real attempt to deal with a difficulty that has baffled Parliament for many years past. I do not propose to enter into all the details of the speech which has just been delivered. No doubt some points of detail have been raised by my hon. Friend which could most properly be treated in Committee, and which are matters of fair discussion and argument. The point referred to by the hon. Gentleman as to the numerical limit of population of towns which are to be allowed to remain licensing areas is one that may very well be dealt with in that way; but, taking the Licensing Clauses as a whole, the Government has proposed them deliberately and carefully, with a regard, on the one hand, to that which it believes to be fair and right to the interest of those engaged in that trade; and, on the other hand, to the desire which Parliament has expressed very often that there should in some way be given to the people themselves a power of dealing in their localities with the granting of licences. I wish to show how the Government has tried to deal with the various difficulties that have arisen in connection with this matter. But first I will answer the challenge which has been thrown out by my hon. Friend who has just spoken as to the opinions of those who are responsible for advising the Government on matters of law in regard to any vested interests on the part of the licensed victuallers. When the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Sir William Harcourt) was Home Secretary I expressed the opinion which I now repeat, and which represents the advice on which the Government has acted and is prepared to act. It is that under the Licensing Statutes Justices are not justified in refusing to renew a public-house licence simply upon the ground that there is no need for it, or that there are too many public-houses in the neighbourhood.

MR. R. T. REID (Dumfries, &c.)

Will the hon. and learned Gentleman state under what Act of Parliament that power exists?

SIR EDWARD CLARKE

My hon. and learned Friend does not usually find it necessary to interrupt in the middle of a speech to put such a question. I should not have made such a statement if I had not been prepared to go into the matter. I listened last night with great interest to the speech of the hon. Baronet the Member for Cumberland, who argued against the idea that there was a vested right or interest on the part of those licensed to keep public-houses. The hon. Baronet founded his proposition chiefly on a sentence which he quoted, and which I myself have seen quoted in a number of temperance publications; and he said that Mr. Justice Field, in the Court of Queen's Bench, in the month of November, 1882, stated that the Legislature recognized no vested interest at all in any holder of the licence. I have seen that sentence before in inverted commas, and the hon. Baronet quoted it last night. The case referred to was dealt with by Mr. Justice Field, and decided in the Queen's Bench in November, 1882. In the first place, I have carefully gone through the five different reports of the decision, and the judgment in the case, and in no one of the reports will the sentence which the hon. Baronet quoted to the House last night be found. In the next place, the decision was not a decision on this point at all, but on a different Act of Parliament. Anybody who refers to any of the reports of the case will find that the Judges laid great stress upon the words of the Act which had quite recently been passed, and upon which they were called to put judicial construction. The Act related to beer dealers and retail licences. The words inserted in that Act were these— Notwithstanding anything in Section 8 of the Wine and Beerhouse Act of 1869, or in any other Act now in force, the licensing justices shall be at liberty, in their free and unqualified discretion, either to refuse the certificate for the sale of beer, and so on, or to grant the same. Mr. Justice Field and Mr. Justice Stephen had to deal with the case in question under the Act of 1882, and having before them the words, "in their free and unqualified discretion," said that those words indicated exactly what they stated—namely, that there was to be no suggestion of any kind as to the limit of their unqualified discretion. That is being quoted in every circular sent out by the United Kingdom Alliance and other temperance bodies; but I am afraid that the hon. Baronet has been misled into attributing to Mr. Justice Field an expression which that learned Judge never used. So much for the authority which the hon. Baronet quoted last night. The question now before us arises on the Act of 1828, as dealt with in the Acts of 1872 and 1874. The Act of 1872 established a clear distinction between the granting of a new licence and the renewal of an old licence. The words of the Act were that where a licensed person applied for renewal—(1.) he need not attend at the annual licensing meeting unless required by the Justices. In ordinary cases, licences which are upon the register are to be renewed as a matter of course. Not only need not the licensed person attend unless required, but (2.) the Justices are not to entertain an objection unless written notice of intention to oppose has been served upon the licensed person seven days previous to the meeting; and (3.) the Justices are not to receive evidence except on oath. Those were the provisions in the Act of 1872. The Act of 1874 went still further, and provided that the notice to the licensed person to attend, without the service of which the Justices had no right to entertain an objection at all, could only be given to the licensed person on some ground personal to himself. The state of things stands thus. Suppose the Justices were to make up their minds before the Licensing Sessions were held that they would not grant a renewal of any of the licences, the Court of Queen's Bench would interfere on a mandamus and compel them to deal with the licences separately, and they cannot refuse any licence to a person already licensed unless they call the person before them. The Act of 1874 said— Whereas by Section 12 of the principal Act it is enacted that a licensed person applying for a renewal of his licence need not attend in person at the general annual licensing meeting unless he is required by the Licensing Justices so to attend, be it enacted that such requisition shall not be made save for some special cause personal to the licensed person to whom such requisition is sent.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT (Derby)

asked, whether the hon. and learned Gentleman held that the words "some special cause personal to the licensed person" meant "personal misconduct"—on the part of the licencee?

SIR EDWARD CLARKE

Sir, in my opinion, the words, "some special cause personal to the licensed person," would mean some cause such as personal misconduct, or the permission of conduct in the house which could be made a subject of complaint against himself. It is impossible to contend that if there were 50 licences and the Justices came to the conclusion that 48 were sufficient, notice to the other two to attend would be for a special cause personal to them. I say that, taking these Statutes altogether, it is not competent to the magistrates to refuse the renewal of licences which have been previously granted except on some special cause personal to the holder of the licence. The hon. Baronet last night asked whether any lawyer would venture to contend that there was a vested interest in licensed premises? I answer that there is, and I believe that the Acts, properly read, do give to the licensed victualler a vested interest in the continuous enjoyment of his licence. The condition of the property, moreover, I should think, was a personal cause, as the licensed person had to keep it in good order. At Common Law anybody who chose had a right to keep a public-house. There have been restrictions imposed by Statute, partly for the sake of good order and partly for the benefit of the Revenue; and ever since the time of Henry VII., when the provisions were first introduced with regard to the power of the Justices to license, this trade has always been considered and dealt with by the Legislature as a lawful trade. I submit to the House that it would be impossible for the Legislature, with any fairness and honesty, substantially to confiscate the property of a very large number of persons carrying on a lawful trade without giving compensation. It has never been suggested or maintained by any responsible Leader or Party in the House that that course would be a fair course. But, Sir, this is not a mere question of legal right, upon which lawyers may, and very likely will, differ. It is also a question of what is fair and just. It ought to be borne in mind that, besides publicans' licences, there are beer-houses, which were licensed before the 1st of May, 1869. It is impossible to contend that the owners of these beer-houses have not a vested interest, for the magistrates have no power of refusing a renewal of such licences, except on four specified grounds. When this question is being considered there is also another class of licences that ought to be borne in mind—namely, provisional licences, granted in respect of premises not already erected. By the Act passed in 1872 these most salutary licences were provided for. Before that, speculative persons used to take corner plots and build houses in the hope of getting a licence when the houses were completed, and used to go on applying year after year, till at last, out of sheer pity, a licence was not unfrequently granted. Since the passing of that Act, however, very few houses have been built as a matter of speculation, and in the mere hope of getting a licence. Now, the custom is to apply for a provisional licence, which is granted upon the plans being submitted to the magistrates, and it is confirmed when a certificate is presented to the magistrates signed by the architect and testifying that the building has been completed according to the plans. Can anyone say that it would be fair or honest that when a man had gone to the expense of building a house according to plans approved by the magistrates the licence should, after a year or two, be taken away without compensation? There is a deliberate invitation by Parliament to people before they build public-houses to go and consult the magistrates as to the position of the houses and the arrangements they propose to make, and an implied pledge is given that they will be continued in the enjoyment of these premises. The very illustrations given by the hon. Member for Barrow in regard to the value of licences show how unfair it would be to cancel them without compensation. It would be outrageous that a man who has purchased a licensed house and paid many thousand pounds upon the generally prevailing idea as to the right to a continuance of a licence, and its value based upon that right, should suddenly find himself mulcted in £8,000 or £9,000, by being deprived of the licence which he bought. I do not think that is a policy which would be likely to be accepted by the House, and I do not know of any person occupying a prominent position in any Government who has supported it. It has always been hoped that this question would be, in some way or other, dealt with in a Local Government Bill when brought in. The suggestion of the temperance reformers has always been that, there not being an elected body to grant licences, it was desirable occasionally to have a plébiscite on the subject to enable the ratepayers to say whether they would have any more licences granted in the district. The whole question has always been beset with difficulties, and no one has ever defined the area in which each plébiscite should take place. So long as the Justices were the Licensing Authority there was, perhaps, a scintilla of reason at the back of the appeal that an occasional plébiscite should be taken; but if the House should find itself fortunate enough to be able to deal with the whole question of Local Government, and if it should establish for the purpose County Councils, which will be directly elected by the people to represent them in local matters, it would be sheer absurdity to have an occasional plébiscite of the people to say whether they disagree with the Board they themselves have elected. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Sir William Harcourt) and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle (Mr. John Morley) are both, I am glad to say, of opinion that this question ought to be dealt with by the Local Government Authority. The hon. Member for Barrow said he hoped the Government would abandon the proposals in regard to licensing, except those transferring the licensing authority from the Justices to the County Council. But the mere transfer of authority, without safeguards, from the Justices to the local Governing Body would do a great injustice, against which I have been and am now protesting. The Justices are bound by the law to which I have referred, and they have to deal with persons to whom they or their predecessors had given a privilege, and over the exercise of which privilege it is their duty to watch. But if the power were transferred from the Justices, who are governed by these Acts of Parliament, and have to exercise judicial functions, and who would be compelled by a mandamus to deal with each separate case, and not make a rule to govern a set of cases—if these Justices are to be replaced by an elected Body without judicial functions, but with absolute capacity to deal with the matter just as it liked, and if no provision were made for compensation, we should have done the mischief of handing over the interests of those who had embarked in a lawful trade to the tender mercies of a chance majority in any particular district in any particular year. Suppose that absolute authority were handed over to the local Governing Body without any check upon the cancelling of licences, and this power were to be largely used, great agitation and excitement would prevail. We might have all the houses in a particular district shut up at a particular time by a Local Authority, with the smallest amount of real knowledge of the wants of the neighbourhood, or consideration for the wishes of the minority of the people. What would be the result? I venture to say it would be quite intolerable. It would be difficult even to keep public order where the public-houses were shut up in this way, unless the sense of the people was very strongly in favour of such a step, in which case such a drastic measure would be quite unnecessary, as the public-houses would be starved out. In ordinary cases the inevitable result would be that a club would start up in almost every public-house that had been closed, and the wishes of the people would be strong enough to prevent any adequate check being placed upon the multiplication of clubs. I think the question of clubs is, after all, most important. A very poor service, indeed, would be done by the Temperance Party to the cause they had so long and ardently advocated, if, by a despotic act, they succeeded in shutting up the whole of the public-houses in a particular district, unless they had previously prepared themselves to deal with the difficult question of clubs. Then it is necessary, I submit, to make some provision with regard to compensation. The hon. Baronet, no doubt, remembers the year 1880. It was an epoch in the temperance agitation, which had been going on for many years before that. Before 1880 there had been almost from year to year a proposal of a definite character put before the House of Commons. The Permissive Prohibitory Bill provided that a certain majority should have the power of closing public-houses altogether. That Bill was before the House with varying fortunes for a considerable number of years before 1880, but it was killed in 1880, when the senior Member for Birmingham (Mr. John Bright) declared that though the Bill had received large support, he did not know five Members who really believed in its provisions and desired to support it. There was in those days a weakness in regard to the second reading, and many Members voted in its favour who would have voted against it if they thought it was likely to pass. After the Election of 1880 there came a Parliament of temperance proclivities, and the hon. Baronet opposite enjoyed his golden hour. The Resolution which was rejected by 100 votes in March, 1880, was carried by a substantial majority three mouths later; but in the hour of his triumph the hon. Baronet heard the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) complaining that in the Resolution the question of equitable compensation found no place.

SIR WILFRID LAWSON (Cumberland, Cockermouth)

The House passed it, though.

SIR EDWARD CLARKE

Yes, Sir; if the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian voted for the Resolution, he voted for it with that reservation, and it was accepted by other Members of the House, with the knowledge that in the mind of him who would be the chief authority in that Parliament the question of compensation was closely and inextricably connected with the question of putting an end to the liquor traffic. Five years passed and nothing was done, and from 1880 until the present time no one had ventured to bring forward a positive proposal for introducing Local Option in the sense in which the hon. Baronet uses that expression. I appeal to the hon. Baronet to look back upon that history, and say if it is fair for him to attack the Government in the terms he used the previous night for attempting to deal with the matter? It has been complained that licences are dealt with by an authority irresponsible to the people. The Government says—"Let them be dealt with by an authority created by the people, and directly responsible to the people." There has been a very ardent combat over this question of compensation. Reference has been made in the debate to the defeat of the Bill of 1871, and the hon. Member who spoke last repudiated the idea that the temperance advocates in the House had defeated that Bill. The hon. Member is justified in Ins repudiation, because the temperance advocates in this House have never defeated anything except a Liberal Government. All those abstract Resolutions, which may mean anything or nothing, and which half-a-dozen different people interpret in half-a-dozen different ways, are all very well; but as soon as the question of compensation was approached, it was always found that among those who knew most about the circumstances of the case there was a unanimous opinion that some provision with regard to compensation must be made. The Bill of 1871 proposed to give compensation in the shape of a fixed tenure of 10 years.

SIR WILFRID LAWSON

That was withdrawn.

SIR EDWARD CLARKE

I am aware of that; but I do not know how the hon. Baronet and his Friends can reconcile this with a profession of no compensation. Yet it is now put as an alternative suggestion from the other side—as something better than that which the Government now proposes. Surely, Sir, the hon. Baronet and his Friends could not accept that suggestion. Every week of every year they are making speeches in which they declare that it is an intolerable grievance that there should be so many public-houses as now exist, and if they consented that all these public-houses should continue for another 10 years, they would be guilty of something very like an infringement of the great principle which is the basis of their agitation. Well, they may not be able to accept a proposal of that kind; but that is no reason why they should not accept the proposal of the Government. The Government propose that, after the passing of the Bill, no new interest should be created in a licensed house. As to the existing houses, in respect of which, according to all equitable considerations, a vested interest does exist, surely the fairest thing is to say that there shall be an additional tax upon those who are carrying on the business, and that when a public-house is put an end to, compensation shall be paid in respect of it out of that tax or from the general funds of the county. The hon. Member for Barrow seems to have a very feeble faith in the principles which he advocates. He warned the House not to accept the proposals of the Government, on the ground that the tax on licences would constitute an overwhelming temptation for localities, and that these would be prepared to favour the existence of licensed houses, in order not to lose the contributions derived from them for the relief of local burdens. That is a very feeble faith indeed. I have always thought the hon. Baronet and his Friends bad an unlimited belief in their own power to convert the people. I am not going to minimize the evils of excessive drinking. I know too much of the effects of excessive drinking upon the classes low down in the social scale; but, as far as the great majority of the working classes are concerned, I believe if we took an assembly of men, as numerous as that which the House of Commons contains, and these men were met together at a Trade Congress or a Trade Association of any kind, we should find at least as strong a repugnance on the part of them, as a body, to excess in intoxicating drinks as we find among Members of this House. I believe it is in that direction that the true work of the hon. Baronet lies, and if he can but succeed in spreading that feeling still more widely there will soon be no ground at all for hesitating to award compensation to the publicans. If the public-houses ceased to be used by the people they would cease to be valuable property, and it would become possible to deal with the publicans on very easy terms. If the great temperance associations had confined themselves to the propagation of the principle of abstinence, and had not indulged so much in the Christian virtue of finding fault with other people, the attainment of this condition of things would be still nearer than it is. There are some other matters which have been referred to, but which will more properly be dealt with in Committee. I hope I have shown the House, at all events, that the Government have dealt with this question with an honest desire to put an end to a controversy which has affected, and sometimes determined, political struggles for 20 years, without any really satisfactory result in legislation. Stopping with the passing of this Bill the creation of any new interest, making arrangements whereby partly, if not wholly, from the contributions of the trade itself, compensation shall be paid when the property is taken away without any fault on the part of the man who had enjoyed it, I hope it will be found on consideration that the proposals of the Government are fair and reasonable proposals, and that the House may well accept them as the solution and termination of a very difficult controversy.

MR. WHITBREAD (Bedford)

said, it was to be regretted that the debate on such a large measure as this should have a tendency to run largely in the direction of discussion of the Licensing Clauses. He was, however, himself about to err in that direction in following some of the remarks which had been made that day on both sides of the House; and he submitted that it was not altogether unimportant that the House should consider those clauses very carefully, with a view, if possible, of arriving at some definite conclusion which would lead them to a solution of the question. The present supplied golden opportunities which ought not to be lost. Governments were not fond of dealing with this question; it was not once in 20 years that a Government would be found which would undertake the responsibility of dealing with a subject involving such large interests, and which was surrounded by difficulties of no ordinary character. The chief objection which he had heard urged to the Licence Clauses of the Bill coming from the Temperance Party was on the ground of compensation. That had been ably dealt with by the hon. and learned Solicitor General (Sir Edward Clarke), whom he was utterly unable to follow in the clearness and lucidity of his exposition; but there were one or two considerations connected with the question of compensation, and the amount of compensation, whatever it might be, that had not been dealt with in the debate, one or two of which, without labouring them, he should like to indicate to the House. The contention was that there was absolutely no right or title to the renewal of a licence. Now, if there was absolutely no such right, what was the meaning of the appeal to Quarter Sessions? If the Justices had in the first instance an absolutely unfettered power to terminate licences at the end of a year, what was meant by providing an appeal from their decision to Quarter Sessions? Again, how did hon. Members reconcile their contention with the justice of the practice to which the hon. and learned Gentleman had referred, whereby a person applying for a licence was called upon to bring up his plans to the Licensing Authority and make alterations in them at their suggestion? Could it be contended for a moment that the Legislature contemplated that magis trates should insist upon expensive buildings and great improvements to property, intending to terminate the licence at the end of the year, or holding that they had absolute right to do so without any cause?

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT (Derby)

I never said "without any cause."

MR. WHITBREAD

said, he would come to the word "cause" directly. He meant, of course, misbehaviour or misconduct. A provision of a very recent Act referred to by the hon. and learned Gentleman said a licence holder might obtain a renewal unless some complaint was made against him. Surely that meant that unless there was complaint of something personal the licence should be granted. Again, the Legislature provided that certain offences should be endorsed on the licence, but it provided also that after five years of continuous good behaviour those endorsements should be wiped out. Was not that a proof that the person licensed should, after five years, hold a clean licence? It implied that the licence should be under a sort of cloud for five years, after which time the endorsement was to be wiped out. How had all the rest of the world looked upon these licences? They had certainly not looked upon them as likely to terminate at the end of the year. In the case of public-houses large fines had been taken by landowners and even by large public bodies for leases, and contracts had been made for large expenditure on property. Was it dealing fairly between man and man that one party should take a heavy fine and insist upon a large expenditure with the intention of holding that at the end of a year, without misconduct on the part of the licence holder, the money expended on the property should be absolutely lost? Again, in the case of licensed houses being purchased under Act of Parliament by Railway Companies and other bodies, had anyone ever heard that it was seriously contended that the licences should not be renewed except for misconduct? Besides the legal grounds which the Solicitor General had stated, this matter rested upon universal practice. Now, if it were true that licences were terminable at the end of each year, how was it that in all the cases which had occurred in this century one could hardly put his finger upon a single case in which the licence was terminated except on the ground of misconduct? It might be asked whether there were any judicial decisions upon this point? The reason why they were unable to refer to decisions in the English Courts was because the appeals had rarely gone beyond Quarter Sessions; but the case of Clitheroe had been brought before the Judges in Dublin, who held that there was no justification for taking away the licence on the ground that there were too many licensed houses in the district. He would leave the legal aspect of the matter altogether, and say that there was a claim for compensation resting on the sense of what was equitable and just. The licensed victualler had a property, and to take it away without compensation was something very like confiscation. If the House were to give large powers of closing public-houses without compensation, had it been considered how such a power would work? He did not believe it would be possible to work such a provision at all, because it would break down when it came to the question of personal application. In the case put by the hon. Member for Barrow (Mr. Caine), what would the neighbourhood think of the justice of closing 30 public-houses without compensation, ruining the holders, and leaving the other 130 in the full enjoyment of their position and doing a better trade? The upshot of this would be that it would be found impossible to close the houses, because the sense of justice of the community would rebel against it. The hon. Member had referred to the Bill introduced by Mr. Bruce. But Mr. Bruce did not say that licence holders had no interest; he proposed to give them, in the way of compensation, 10 years' grace, at the end of which time the houses might be closed without any claim at all. His hon. Friend had expressed a preference for that plan. But let the House consider what it meant. If they gave seven, 10, or some number of years, after which no claim should be made, there would be an acknowledgment of some claim to compensation. In that case they seemed to be arming the licensed victualler with a tenfold power to claim compensation, because they were estimating it by a term of years. But what sort of agitation would be got up if, 10 years hence, it was certain that the licence holders would be deprived of their property without any fair compensation. He ventured to say, looking at the enormous interest involved, that at the close of that period there would be such an agitation that no other political question would get a hearing, and which would be disastrous to the Temperance Party in its results, and to the Government which attempted to carry out the operation. He desired to call the attention of those who so vehemently opposed this proposal to some of the things which were said by Mr. Bruce and by others against the attempt to deal harshly with this question. He remembered one passage quoted. It was a very instructive quotation. It referred to a town where large works were established, and the owners of those works being in possession of the land, and desiring the benefit of their workmen, wished to prohibit altogether the establishment of any licensed house on their land. They did prohibit it, but with what result? That the state of things was worse than if they had left it alone. If he remembered the figures aright, there was in the district at the time a population of 1,900, and there were 17 houses known to be selling illicit drink of one sort or another. The proprietors of the works being themselves the owners of the land, and having great power over it, made every effort to got rid of this state of things; but they found that as fast as they closed one of the houses another sprung up in another direction. The illustration might be multiplied a hundred fold. It always would be the case. If they went beyond what the feeling of the population was there would be a reaction, and, instead of getting a regulated sale of liquor for houses which the police could inspect and control, they would get houses without any regulation at all, and they would get a state of things in connection with the liquor trade very much worse than what it was at the present time. Surely the House might take a lesson from the successes of the past as well as from its failures. Would anyone in the House say that the state of things in regard to temperance in England was not better now than when Mr. Bruce introduced his Bill in 1871? He did not think anybody would get up and assert that. All of them were conversant with the immense improvement. They could hardly run their eyes over any newspaper without being aware of that. If they looked at the reports on the conduct of the population, say on a Bank Holiday, or on a great festival, they noticed expressions of opinion on all sides that the conduct of the people in this matter was rapidly improving. But the improvement was not the result of any Act of Parliament for the closing of public-houses; but it was the result of a better state of feeling amongst the people themselves. Many causes had contributed to the improved state of things—education, better homes, better means of enjoyment, and he did not doubt the efforts of many good men who had devoted their lives to the cause. But these men did not seem to have any faith in their own success. This improved state of things had been brought about, by influences which were all working for good, and solid good. Surely they had had enough experience of the failure of repressive legislation. The case he had quoted just now might be multiplied many times over. What he submitted was that intentions, however good they might be, could not be pleaded by Parliament in bar of condemnation if, shutting their eyes to the history of the past, and absolutely regardless of the consequences which inevitably followed, they took a false step in going beyond that which could be borne by the habits of the people at the time. He now desired to refer for a few minutes to the Bill of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Ritchie). He desired to acknowledge that the right hon. Gentleman had endeavoured to act in a spirit of justice to the trade with which he (Mr. Whitbread) was connected. He acknowledged that frankly, and if he made any criticisms upon the scheme of the Bill, he really made them with a view of endeavouring to remove some of the friction which he was sure would attend the working of it, and not with a view of really controverting the principles which it laid down. Now, if the object of the Bill, or if the object of those who were called the Temperance Party, was really to reduce the number of licences, let them consider for a minute how that could be done most certainly, and with least opposition. The proposal had been made more than once, and it was re- peated last night by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain), that the 20 per cent increase of the licence duty should be set apart to form a fund for the compensation of licence holders. He approved of that proposal entirely. He thought the increased duty should be set apart, but that it should be set apart so that the Local Authority could not use it for any other purpose; that it should be absolutely used for that purpose, and that purpose alone. He thought that at the same time, as they were making provision for extinguishing licences by compensation, it would be absurd, on the other hand, to be creating new licences, and Local Authorities should not be allowed to touch this fund for any other purposes or to grant a new licence in a district until the licensed houses in that district became less in proportion to the population than it should be according to some reasonable scale which could be agreed upon by the House. That scale, of course, would have to be different in rural and urban districts, and there would have to be a distinct scale for the City of London, owing to the enormous number of people who daily went in and out, and who needed refreshment during the time they were there. He should say that the value of the licence when it was bought should be the present value, and not the value as laid down in the right hon. Gentleman's Bill—namely, the value at the time of the passing of the Bill. He hoped he understood the idea the right hon. Gentleman had in his mind when he made that proposal; it was that the value of the licence would go up. But surely the proposal was a premium upon bad management of houses, because a man might have given £5,000 for a licence just before the passing of the Bill, and might manage it so badly that the value might run down rapidly to £1,000. If the Local Authorities wanted to get rid of that house, they would be compelled to give the pre-existing value of £5,000. It would end, of course, in the Local Authorities never consenting to buy up such a house, although it might be the very one they wanted to get rid of. Local Authorities would, of course, be able to grant occasional licences for fairs and race meetings, and things of that sort. Then it would be said at once there was no provision for the growth of towns. He should propose to provide for that by the existing law—by granting a little greater power than was now possessed by the magistrates. He would suggest that the authorities might be able to transfer a licence from one house to another house within the district if such a transference were on all hands desirable.

MR. RITCHIE

said, he had not exactly caught the hon. Gentleman's suggestion as to what should be regarded as the value of the licence.

MR. WHITBREAD

said, his suggestion was that the value should be the value at the time the compensation was granted. He thought they would have enormous difficulty in arriving, say 20 years hence, at what was the value of the house at the passing of the Bill. Now, his hon. Friend the Member for Barrow (Mr. Caine) said it was absurd to propose to set aside the extra duty for compensation purposes, because the amount of the fund would be so small that it would do nothing. He was obliged to differ very much indeed from his hon. Friend on that subject, and he would here say at once that the estimate his hon. Friend gave of the value of licensed houses was exaggerated beyond all possibility. He could not understand where his hon. Friend got his figures from. All he could say was, that if the figures represented the hon. Gentleman's ideas of the value of licensed houses, licensed victuallers would like to have him on a jury which was called upon to assess the value of their houses. The hon. Gentleman arrived at his figures in a very extraordinary way. First of all he gave them a description of what he called a village house, which was established in the district of a mine with which he was connected, and which rose from the value of £400 as a dwelling house to £2,200 as a licensed house. What gave the House this increased value? The very same thing which gave the value to the mine. It was industry which created that value. It was the large number of persons drawn to the district, and he did not suppose that the value of the house when it was licensed as compared with the value when it was bought as a dwelling house was any greater than the value of the land when mineral was found in it as compared with the agricultural value of the land. His hon. Friend said it was a fair example of the village house. He (Mr. Whitbread) asserted that it was absurdly beyond the fair average value of village houses. Then the hon. Gentleman gave them the value of the suburban licensed house at £8,000. He had no doubt there were many suburban houses of the value of £8,000 and more, but he absolutely denied that that was anything like the average value. The hon Gentleman abandoned the case of the Liverpool Street house; he abandoned that on an explanation from the Solicitor General (Sir Edward Clarke). Then the hon. Member took them to a house at Knightsbridge, and said that the value of the licence there was £30,000. It was possible that that might be the case, but that was not an average case. If £30,000 was the value of the licence, surely that was an argument which could be used against his hon. Friend. Did not that show him that if people were prepared to invest such enormous sums in licensed houses they must believe that they had some claim beyond a mere annual claim? Then his hon. Friend said the average value of licensed houses all over the country was £5,000. Having some knowledge of the subject, he (Mr. Whitbread) was bound to say that that was exaggerated—it was exaggerated beyond all bounds. He did not believe that that was the average value of full licences in the Metropolis, where things were dearer than anywhere else. The hon. Member said that this fund would do little or nothing owing to this enormous value. He would tell the hon. Member why it would do a good deal. It would do a good deal for the very reason that, although the average value of houses might be high, those which would be compensated first would be of very low value. One of the most certain things connected with this trade was this—that bad trade was a poor trade. A man who was doing a good and legitimate trade would not risk his property and licence for the sake of encouraging drunkenness. It was the houses that could not live which were driven to courses which must be condemned, and the tenants of such houses would be only too glad to get out if they could get compensation of any kind. Those were the houses which would be first compensated. Then he submitted to the judgment of the House that what they wanted to aim at was the reduction of the number of licences, and he was not prepared to say that there were not too many licences—he thought that in the country generally there were too many licences. But when Mr. Bruce introduced his Bill he estimated the number of licensed victuallers and beer-house keepers at one in 182 of the whole population. Mr. Bruce then separated London from the Provinces and he showed that there were one in 300 of the population in London and one in 150 of the population in the Provinces. He (Mr. Whitbread) was sorry they had not got a Return which would throw some light on the subject now, because he was convinced if they had they would prove that they had arrived at a very different state of things. But still he agreed that it would be a good thing to further diminish the number of licences if that could be done with justice to the holders. But what he thought they did want was not a sudden and arbitrary and harsh and violent reduction, but a gradual reduction that could be effected without much opposition. There was great danger in going too fast. If they proceeded too fast in the matter of reductions other houses would spring up; some of them thinly disguised as clubs, and some not disguised at all. If more money were wanted than this 20 per cent he had a suggestion to make by which the difficulty might be met. If power were given to raise money on the security of half that fund, he thought they would get a large crop of licences extinguished by that means first, and they would have a fund to go gradually on with afterwards. They might ask, and ask with some justice, that a further portion of the licence duty should be allocated for this purpose. They would have justice on their side in making this claim, for the reason that this scheme of reducing houses by purchase was proposed to Mr. Bruce in 1871. It was proposed then that they should put a tax on the licences in order to form a compensation fund. They had reason to believe that Mr. Bruce lent not an unwilling ear to that proposal; but the opposition to the Bill of that day had reached such a pitch, that the Government felt themselves compelled to withdraw the measure. If that scheme had been adopted, if that op- portunity had not been lost, he asserted, without the slightest fear of contradiction, that the decrease in the number of licences would have been such as to bring it within any scale that would at that time have been laid down by Parliament. They had lost the last 18 years in that respect, and he hoped they would not lose the 18 years which would follow this. These opportunities did not come very often. Then he would only say that if the idea of a purchase fund was not adopted generally by the whole country, he thought that the licence holders in the Metropolis, or in the County of London as defined by the Bill, should be treated differently from those in the Provinces. They thought they had some claim, both owing to the large population of London and also to the interests concerned, to be heard. They thought, also, that the peculiarities under which licences were held in London, differing as they did in the main from the way in which they were held in the country, gave them a claim to separate treatment. It was a fact that in London the bulk of the houses—he should say certainly three-fourths of them—were not held by brewers, but were held by the licence holders themselves. That might make the difference between the applicability of any scheme to London and to the country. At the same time he did not see the difference himself, but it was a fact. There was another consideration. In London, licences changed hands with extraordinary rapidity, and there was always an open market for the purchase of licences. He was confident that he was within the mark in stating that, on the average, licences in the Metropolis changed hands every five years. He thought that he would be right in saying they changed hands every four years; he was convinced they changed hands, certainly, every five years. The result was that there had always been a perfectly open market. A house could not be run up against the Local Authorities. The Local Authorities would only have to employ their broker, just as the Government employed a broker to buy Consols, and no one could tell who he was buying for. No one would have to give one shilling more than the real market value at the time. There would be no need for them to give a fancy price in order to get possession. Now, this scheme did something both for the advocates of temperance and for the trade itself. It, first of all, took away from the Local Authorities any temptation to do nothing. There was a temptation for the Local Authorities, as the clause was drawn in the Bill, to use the money for the purpose of the rates, and not to embark in any system of buying out licensed houses. It also took away the charge that this compensation would be wrung from the rates imposed upon the people, because it would come from the new fund—a fund belonging in no way to the ratepayer. This was a new tax for the purpose of a new fund, coupled in the Bill with the promise of compensation. If they came to compensate licence holders out of the rates, he very much feared the effect of the agitation which would immediately arise. He thought the ratepayer would be told that it was unjust, in the last degree, to ask him to compensate the holder of any one of these houses. He thought the friction would be immense, and that the result would be that nothing would be done towards diminishing the number of licences. He thought the scheme he had sketched did offer a means, not as rapid as sonic wished, of reducing without friction the number of licensed houses in the country. It offered, on the other hand, to the trade this consideration—that it would put the extra tax to be placed on them by the Bill in a position where it could only be used for their own compensation. It would not be allowed to go into the common stock. He thought the scheme would also put the trade in this position—that their compensation would be secured. It would put their compensation in a place where it would stand. He was not too confident that if it was placed directly upon the rates in the way proposed by the Bill there might not be some risk at some future time of legislation overtaking them and leaving them without anything at all. He thanked the House very earnestly for giving him its close attention to the dry details of a plan of this sort. He again said to the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Ritchie) that the suggestions he had made to him were made with a view of carrying out what he believed to be the object the right hon. Gentleman had at heart. He had not made them in any sense of complaining of the amount of compensation, or of the vast powers that were given to the County Councils, or of anything of that sort. His object had been, if he possibly could, to suggest something that might reduce the acrimony with which this question had been fought, so long as no compensation was proposed. If they could do anything to remove that acrimony, it would be a very great benefit to both Parties in the House, because the question had assumed proportions that made it overshadow almost every other political question. He believed that if they could remove one of the chief obstacles to a peaceful and self-working solution of the question—a fair compensation coming, not from the the rates, but from the extra tax on the licensed victuallers themselves—they would do much to facilitate the working of the measure, and to achieve that which both sides of the House desired to see—namely, that there should only be so many licensed houses in the country as were really wanted by the people, and that there should be a living for those who were licensed. There were many other topics in the Bill which he should like to have touched upon, but he was too sensible of the indulgence the House had granted him on this subject to weary them at any further length.

MR. MILVAIN (Durham)

said, the question of the transference of licensing from the magistrates to the new Licensing Authorities had been so fully dealt with by the Solicitor General (Sir Edward Clarke) and by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Bedford (Mr. Whitbread) that it would not be fair in him to occupy the time of the House longer upon that subject, except to say that the principle which had been acted upon for many years was that when a person, whose character was always the subject of inquiry before he obtained a licence, had obtained a licence and invested his money in a public-house, there must be something against his personal character before the renewal of his licence could be refused. He hoped it would not be considered he used a strong term when he said it would be inequitable and unjust were it otherwise; it would certainly be striking a blow at the stability of private property, for which there was no precedent in past legislation. He was glad that the principle of vested interests in licences, other than the licences granted under the Beer House and Retail Wine and Spirit Act of 1869, were about to be recognized in this Bill, which he hoped would become an Act. There was another proposal in the Bill to which not much attention had as yet been paid, and that was the proposal relating to the closing of public-houses upon Good Friday, Christmas Day, and Sunday. He had always been of opinion that the closing of public-houses on Sundays and on holidays would not be attended with the good results the Temperance Party had in view; and he might say at once that in speaking upon this measure he had the same object in view as the Temperance Party themselves—that was to say, the moral welfare of the people. But if public-houses in large boroughs and populous districts were closed on Sundays, did those who advocated the closing of such houses not think, or had they not learnt from experience, that those whom they desired to force by Act of Parliament to be sober would provide themselves on the Saturday night with not only the necessary amount of drink to be consumed on the Sunday, but take care that they procured more than they wanted, and more than they would otherwise drink upon the Sunday? It certainly would not be desirable that there should be private drinking in private houses, if only for the sake of the bad example to wives and children, who might not otherwise be tempted into such evil practices. He thought that, if they might draw or gain any knowledge from experience, that had practically been the result of closing public-houses, where they had been already closed by Act of Parliament, on Sundays. He referred to Wales and to Scotland. He was told that in parts of Scotland there was a notice put up in public-house windows upon the Saturday night to "Remember the Sabbath Day." He was told that in Wales, in order to defeat an unpopular Act, the publicans drove a roaring trade upon the Sunday by not only selling drink at their doors to bonâ fide travellers, but also by keeping traps by which they might exchange traffic with their neighbours, and thus constitute people bonâ fide travellers. That was the kind of thing which took place in Wales and Scotland. But if they referred to statistics, if statistics were to be relied upon at all, they found that in the boroughs of Wales, where, of course, the greatest amount of Sunday drinking took place, there was as much Sunday drunkenness as there was in similar boroughs in England and if they turned to similar boroughs in Scotland, they found that the convictions for Sunday drunkenness in Scotland were largely in excess of the convictions for like offences in either England or Wales. He went further, and asserted that if they took the whole of the population of all the boroughs in England, and compared it with the whole of the population of the boroughs in Wales, they would find that the convictions for Sunday drunkenness were practically identical; but if they added the population of Wales and Scotland together, they would find that the convictions for Sunday drunkenness in Wales and Scotland, where Sunday Closing was in operation, were greatly in excess, per 1,000 of the population, of the convictions for Sunday drunkenness in England. But this was purely incidental, and it was, perhaps, not proper for him to mention it; he only did so in view of the provision of the Bill to delegate to County Councils the closing of public-houses within the county or specified parts of the county. In this measure the Government had great difficulties to deal with. They had this difficulty at any rate—that they had succeeded in pleasing neither the Temperance Party nor the licensed victuallers. Speaking for himself, he certainly congratulated the Government on having delegated to the County Authorities this very grave question. It was a grave question, it was one of great importance, and ought to be approached in the most serious manner, affecting, as it undoubtedly did, the vested interests of those who had put their money into the trade and the personal privileges of the people. What would be the effect if the Sunday Closing Question was left in the hands of Parliament? He could not help thinking that Parliament would in time be obliged to pass a Sunday Closing Act if things went on at the present rate. He did not say so because he believed the majority of the people in the country desired it or believed in its desirability, but because candidates were too flabby; they had not got sufficient stamina and backbone to say to those to whom they applied for election what they really thought, or to state what were the Constitutional aspects of this very important question. There was too much of the endeavour to nullify or cancel the influence of the organization, peculiar in itself, as having for its first motive the moral welfare of the people under the name of temperance, but having as its second string a powerful political agency, and that was the reason that, as time went on, if this matter was not delegated to the Local Councils, they would have candidates seeking the representation of the people, and saying, as he regretted to say he had heard them say—"Why should I refuse to accede to the views of a section of the people; it will not hurt me; if they like it, well, then let them have it." He maintained that was an entirely wrong view to take, for reasons with which he would deal presently. Now, what would be the result of delegating this question to Local Councils? He was told by a Petition which he received the other day from some temperance association that it was inadvisable that the question should be delegated to Local Councils, because the Councillors would not be elected upon the direct issue, but upon a general issue. That was exactly his ground for saying that that was practically what happened now in the case of the election of Members of Parliament. If the question were dealt with by Parliament and public-houses were closed by Act of Parliament, what difficulties would have to be encountered in endeavouring to repeal that Act of Parliament? It could not be done. But if this matter were referred to a Local Council to determine, if the first election of Councillors was not upon this direct issue, and if the Council took upon them to either close public-houses or to refuse to renew licences to licensed houses, it might be depended upon that the next election of Councillors, whether it be after three years, or whether it be in pursuance of the principle that one-third of the Councillors should be elected every year, would be conducted upon that direct issue. That was the reason he advised licensed victuallers to readily accept the proposal to delegate this matter to the Local Councils. There was another subject he should like to have recognized in connection with Sunday closing of public-houses. He noticed that, in connection with the authority which was given to the Local Councils to exercise their discretion in refusing to renew licences, an appeal was given from the part affected and from an adjoining licensing division affected by the refusal. Let him point out what would be the effect of closing public-houses in a specified area of the county. Did the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Ritchie) not think that there ought to be the same facilities of appeal afforded to the area affected by the closing of public-houses and the area adjoining the closed area? It must be perfectly apparent to the House, as well as to the right hon. Gentleman, that if public-houses were closed in a specified area of a county, the outside of that area would be immediately affected by the incursion of those who wished to drink upon Sundays. People would betake themselves from the closed areas to the adjoining areas which were not closed, so he thought the same facilities for appealing to the County Council before public-houses were closed ought to be afforded to the adjoining areas. But there was another question beyond that, and it was a question of compensation. He knew it would be said that if public-houses were closed on Sundays by County Councils, publicans need only take out six-day licences, and thus no compensation would be required. But if that argument was used it was applicable at the present time. Those who wished to act upon Sabbatarian principles could close their public-houses on Sundays and could take out a six-day licence now. The reason why men did not take out six-day licences now was that if they did they would drive their trade away to other public-houses who took out seven-day licences. The recognition in the Bill of the bonâ fide traveller would render the same argument applicable to the state of circumstances created by the Bill. Upon the question of compensation for closing public-houses he might quote a very strong example. In 1886 a Bill was passed through the House of Commons closing public-houses on Sundays in the County of Durham. That Bill went up to the House of Lords, and it passed a first and second reading there. After it had passed the second reading in the Upper House, a public-house on the Northumberland side of the Tyne, which had been put up for auction in the previous year, was again put up, and the auctioneer, while engaged in selling the house, commented upon the great advantage that would accrue to the house in consequence of the Durham Sunday Closing Act. The house went up in value, in consequence of the expectation that the Durham Sunday Closing Bill would come into operation, to the extent of between 30 and 40 per cent. He did not think it required a very great mind to grasp the fact that if a house in a non-closed area went up in value to the extent of 30 or 40 per cent, similar house in a closed area would be depreciated in exactly the same proportion. He thought that while they lived in the luxury of the present day, they entirely forgot the lot of the honest hardworking man. They entirely forgot that he was locked up possibly in his one room, with his wife and his family. They entirely forgot that he possibly might desire occasionally to get away from his house to where he could meet his fellows and converse with them on subjects of mutual interest between them. They entirely forgot that the well-conducted public-house was the club of the working man; and he (Mr. Milvain) thought that if power were given to the County Councils to close public-houses, the same jurisdiction ought to be extended to them to close clubs whether they were bogus clubs or clubs to which hon. Members of the House of Commons resorted. Numbers of clubs were perfectly certain to spring up the moment public-houses were closed, and he thought if there was one thing more than another which made the law respected and obeyed in this country, it was the equality of its application. What he had maintained, and what he should continue to maintain, was that if the County Councils had not the same power to close the clubs as they had to close the public-houses, the law was inequitable in its application, and there would be a new departure in legislation which had never been recognized or sanctioned before, and that was legislation distinguishing the masses from the classes. He knew there had been legislation of an official nature dealing with the masses in their capacity as workmen, but there had been no legislation of a social nature distinguishing them from the classes. What he wanted to see was equality in the law and equality in the application of the law. He did not wish to say any more. He had always taken an interest in this question of Sunday closing, and the more closely he examined it, the more difficult he felt it to be to deal with it; but he was sure of this, that unless it was dealt with in the equitable spirit he had described, it ought not to be dealt with at all.

MR. CHILDERS (Edinburgh, S.)

I believe I have heard almost everything that has been said during the course of this debate, and in rising to speak for a very short time I think I ought to say that I do not propose to repeat, if I can avoid it, any part of the arguments which have been used by hon. Members on whichever side of the House they may sit. I am anxious to give to the House a few remarks, in which I shall, as far as I can, call attention to certain points in connection with this Bill which have not hitherto been dealt with. I hope on that understanding I may receive the attention of some Members of the House who, like myself, have for many years taken a great deal of interest in this question. There is a remark that felt from the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General to which I think I ought to call attention at the beginning. I do not propose to present any argument on the subject of licensing, either as to the powers proposed to be transferred from the Justices to the Councils, or to those subsidiary questions of which we heard so much during the course of the debate. But I think the House should notice what was elicited by my hon. Friend the Member for Derby (Sir William Harcourt), that is to say, the precise ground upon which the Government rest their proposal for compensation for loss of licences. It is a very interesting question, and, as such, I think the House should clearly understand the ground the Government has taken, because, to a certain extent, it is a new one. The legal technical ground laid down by the Solicitor General is, it would appear, the foundation of the view adopted by the President of the Local Government Board. The ground upon which the Government rest their case for compensation for the loss of licences is mainly a clause in the Act of 1874, which provides that the Justices, in giving notice to a licensee that his attendance is required on the occasion of his applying for the renewal of his licence, shall set forth the cause, personal to him, why the question of the loss of his licence is in debate. Now, that clause was moved by Sir Charles Dilke on the occasion of the Bill of 1874 being reported. It was not in the Bill as introduced by the Government at all, and it must have been based upon grounds of which we have no trace in Hansard—where it is only said that Sir Charles Dilke moved to add it to the Bill. I wish merely to point out upon what a very slender foundation the Government, according to the Solicitor General, had been advised to base their compensation proposals. I will now pass away altogether from the question of licensing. There are one or two remarks in connection with what was debated yesterday to which I should here like to refer. The hon. Member the Chairman of Ways and Means, to whose most eloquent and brilliant speech the whole of us attended with the greatest possible interest—though, after all, I do not think, in spite of his eloquence, he persuaded any very large number of the House—rested his objection to the proposed constitution of the Council because they are not to be elected according to a particular machinery which does not prevail in respect to elections to this House. He had urged this plan in the discussion of the last Reform Act, and I do not think from the very small support with which it was received then or has been received since, that it is likely to be popular. Therefore, in dealing with my hon. Friend's present suggestion, I think we may assume that it is outside practical politics. I am very sorry for it. My hon. Friend supported his proposal, as I have said with very great eloquence; but you require to persuade as well as to be eloquent, and I do not think anyone will dispute what I say—namely, that of those who listened to my right hon. Friend only a very small proportion were persuaded by the arguments he laid before us. But there was another speech yesterday to which I feel bound to refer. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain) followed my hon. Friend the Chairman of Ways and Means, and in the course of his speech he brought forward some very cogent arguments against certain of the proposals of the present Bill. But what I could not understand was what gadfly stung my right hon. Friend so that he should have felt it to be his duty to introduce into the discussion what every hon. Member up to this time on either side of the House had been careful to avoid—namely, irritating Party politics having nothing whatever to do with the present Bill. My right hon. Friend may have had his own reasons for introducing that language; but I think the House will agree with me that there is nothing as to which the Government feel more anxious, as to which this Bench has been more anxious, and as to which the whole House has been more anxious, than that this question should be discussed, if possible, altogether outside ordinary Party politics and considerations, and that each clause, each proposal, should stand or fall on its own merits. My right hon. Friend felt it to be his duty—and I am sorry to see he is not hero at this moment—in the course of his remarks to give us a piece of history. He said— Three years ago it was my duty to prepare a Bill upon this subject. It was never completed or submitted to the House, because the Government of the day thought it right to throw aside that measure, with all the other items of the programme upon which they had been elected, in order to take up a new programme upon which the country had not been consulted. Well, my right hon. Friend, I presume, alluded to the Bill which he prepared, or which he found prepared, and which he, to some extent, altered in 1886—the Bill which was practically prepared by Sir Charles Dilke and other Members (myself included) of the Cabinet in 1885, and which my right hon. Friend found in the pigeon holes of the Local Government Board. But what was the position of my right hon. Friend in 1886? He had joined a Government the object of which was in the most formal manner declared to be to seek a solution of the Home Rule Question other than coercion. That was the object for which my right hon. Friend joined the Government of the day, and I cannot conceive why he should have suggested as he did yesterday, that his Bill was to have been the main Bill of the Session, but that it was pushed aside for another on the subject of Ireland. But I will venture to quote a sentence from a very well known speech by a Member whose authority he will not dispute, which exactly shows which was considered the more important measure between English County Government and Irish Home and the one to be brought forward first. The words are these:— The question of the extension of Local Government is another subject which is even of greater importance. It is a National question as well as a parochial question; and the pacification of Ireland depends on the concession to Ireland of the right to govern itself in the matter of its purely domestic business. Now, that I take from a speech on the subject of Local Government, delivered by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain) himself, on, I think, the 17th of June, 1885; so that, if it is necessary to answer the remark of my hon. Friend that his Bill was put aside, I answer him in his own words, whether he adheres to them or not at the present time. But, passing from those two speeches, I think the House will agree with me in this, that there is no measure of greater magnitude that either has been or can be proposed to Parliament at the present time than this Bill of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board. Not very long ago—I think in the year 1884—I ventured to say, on the approaching introduction of the Bills for reducing the County Franchise and for the redistribution of representation, that those two measures, taken in connection with the Bill which must follow for establishing Local Government upon a popular basis, would form together the greatest administrative and representative change which had taken place in England since 1688. I was very much attacked for that language, and I was told that I was representing the policy of the then Government, or those that might succeed them, in introducing these measures, as a revolutionary policy. Well, Sir, have we not heard during the course of the present debate from the Friends of the Bill themselves that this measure is introducing a great revolution? I think we may take it for granted that, however much some parts of this Bill may be approved of here or approved of there, or disapproved of here and disapproved of there, the Bill, as a whole, will enact a greater reform and a more revolutionary change in our local administration than any measure which has been brought forward for years past or which has ever been likely to receive the approval of this House. Under these circumstances, what, to my mind, is of the first importance is that if we are going to make so great a change as this—a change which even its own authors say is revolutionary—we ought to spare no effort to do it thoroughly. It is of no use at all making a great change of this sort if we leave half of the work undone. That never has been the policy of wise legislators when so enormous a transformation of powers and authority has been brought before the Legislature. Sir, what happens if you do not make the thing thorough? There is no doubt of this, that public attention does not remain fixed upon a particular political subject for any great length of time. As it is, it has taken us 25 years to reach the point of the introduction of this Bill since the question of Local Government began to be agitated in Parliament and the country. I think I am right in saying that it was about 1862 or 1863 that the question first became prominent in the public mind; so that we have taken 25 years to get the question up to the point of a Government—a strong Government—making proposals on the subject. I think that if we let the occasion pass now for making the measure as complete as the time of Parliament during this Session will allow, we shall have the further consequential charges also of great magnitude relegated to some uncertain period; and probably we shall have to wait another 25 years before the measure is made perfect. Let me give the House an illustration of what I mean. I remember something like 17 or 18 years ago there was a great agitation in the country in favour of the reform of our military and naval system. That agitation reached its height about the year 1869 or 1870; and very great changes were made in our military and naval system—changes of great importance, changes very much resisted at the time, but which were carried through the influence of a strong Government. They were, however, far from perfect, and much more was required in the same direction. Now, I say that from that time till two years ago it was impossible in this House to obtain any attention to the question of Army and Navy reform. I had the duty for some years of being responsible to this House for the Army; and what are the facts? Why, that except upon questions of vested interests the House would not attend to any proposals for Army reform, and practically the same statement might be made with respect to naval reform. Fortunately, these subjects are now well to the front, and with the assistance of Committees and Royal Commissions now sitting, a great deal of good will, I hope, be done. But it is perfectly clear that, unless you take advantage of public feeling being strongly in the direction of some great change like this, and unless, whilst you are about it, you carry out that change thoroughly, next year or the year after the whole matter will be forgotten, and it will be impossible to get up the steam of imaginative expression, so as to carry further changes. This has been the policy of our great neighbour, France, in connection with this particular subject of Local Government. I do not know whether the House is aware that for some years during the present century, and up to the time of the Franco-German War, the state of affairs as regarded Local Government in France wanted reforming—a great deal has been left undone. After 1870 an opportunity for carrying out great changes, however, occurred, and chiefly under the guidance of M. Waddington, who is now the French Ambassador in this country, the whole question of French Local Government received a most thorough sifting and inquiry, and a great measure was passed reforming it in all its details—a more comprehensive and elaborate measure even than the one now before this House. The whole Local Government of France, whatever this party or that party may say of any particular provision, was put into a thoroughly satisfactory state. I do hope, therefore, that we shall not leave the thing alone now, and that, so far as we can go on the basis of the present Bill, we shall do our best to make the measure complete, and not trust to future Sessions and Acts of Parliament for doing so. May I say a word or two as to the changes which, I think, ought to be introduced now? A good deal has been said about the impossibility of dealing with the parish in this Bill, and, of course, of dealing with the Union, which consists of a number of parishes. I am ready to admit that the difficulties with respect to parishes are very great, and that there are a great number of parishes that would have to be combined or dealt with in some such way if we take in hand a thorough reform of the parish divisions and of the parish functions. And so with respect to Poor Law Union. But I would make a suggestion to the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board, which I think, perhaps, would be of some value. He has got now before him, or will have in a short time, the Report of the Boundary Commissioners; at any rate, he will have all of them before the end of the Session. When he has these Reports he will be possessed of the greater part of the materials for re arranging the Union boundaries, which present, no doubt, one of the great difficulties of this matter. Now, what I would suggest to him is this, that in the present Bill he should insert what would not be a very long or a very difficult clause, a clause not merely enabling but requiring the new Councils within a certain time—probably six or nine months would be sufficient after they have got into working order—to prepare schemes for the re-arrangement of the Poor Law Unions upon the basis of the District Council Divisions which will be created under this Bill. In some cases the Unions would be coterminous with the Council districts, and, in some cases, they would embrace two or more Council districts. There may be cases where the district should be divided, though outside the Metropolis I am not sure that there would be many; but if the right hon. Gentleman would introduce a clause requiring the County Council to deal with this re-division within a limited time, the back of the difficulty would be broken. There should be two additional provisions, one that where Unions overlap county boundaries, the two Councils should be compelled to confer and to act; the other, that if they fail or neglect their duty, it should be the province of the Local Government Board to perform it for them. The result would be that we should have within a reasonable time complete schemes for bringing the Poor Law machinery into harmony with the new county machinery, and upon these complete schemes the Government would be able to act. I hope I have made myself clear to the right hon. Gentleman. Well, that appears to be one of the omissions in the Bill.

MR. RITCHIE

was understood to observe that provision was made for the point referred to in the Bill.

MR. CHILDERS

The right hon. Gentleman says that these powers are to be granted; but they should be obligations as well as powers imposed upon County Councils by Statute, and not left to the option or caprice of each county. Then, with regard to education, I quite agree that it would have been impossible to have brought the school districts in every case within the provisions of this Bill—I mean the school board districts. That was out of the question; but I think it is very much to be regretted that directly and absolutely under this Bill the charge of intermediate education should not be given to the County Councils, and also that the County Councils are not given by the Bill responsibility for supervising the school boards, instead of leaving them, as they were now, directly under the control of the Education Committee of the Privy Council. I know there is a power in the Bill under which certain official duties can be transferred to the County Councils; but I think we ought to have gone further than that, and that the Bill should lay down distinctly what function should be transferred from the Central Departments. The thing, I think, might have been done easily, and by not more than two or three clauses in the Bill. Then there is another fault in the arrangements of the Bill, to which I think the right hon. Gentleman has already had his attention called. The right hon. Gentleman proposed originally that only a limited number of counties of towns should be created by the Bill—towns, most of them, of 200,000 or 300,000 population. I understand, though I do not think he stated it, and therefore I may be wrong, that he is going now to fix the limit at 100,000 inhabitants—that he proposes that all boroughs of 100,000 inhabitants should be counties for the purposes of this Bill.

MR. RITCHIE

A hundred thousand in 1881.

MR. CHILDERS

I would ask the right hon. Gentleman to put the limit lower. One hundred thousand is too high. You will choke the municipal life of a great portion of this country if you leave many flourishing towns of less than 100,000 inhabitants in quasi subservience to the counties. I would, therefore, strongly urge the right hon. Gentleman to see whether he cannot find a line very much lower than 100,000. My own suggestion would be more like 40,000. Thus he should get over that other difficulty as to licensing in boroughs which he explained to the House today, but as to which I am afraid, unless something of the kind is done, there will be still greater complications than he has now, depending on the accident whether in the County Council the borough has six representatives or not. On the subject of the control of the police, I heard with great regret, with many other hon. Members last night, the sentence in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman when, in answer to an appeal to retain over the police the authority of the magistrates, he used these words, which I took down at the time— By giving the appointment of the Chief Constable to the magistrates, we give them practically control over the police. But that is exactly what the House does not want; it does not want the magistrates to have practical control over the police. The magistrates' duties in connection with keeping order directly in connection with the police are understood. They work well in the boroughs, and do not clash with the absolute control over the force exercised by the Watch Committees; and, so far as I know, there is no reason whatever why this difference should be made between the boroughs and the counties. I hope, therefore, that the right hon. Gentleman will withdraw the doctrine he laid down last night. I should have liked to have said a few words on the financial question between the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board and my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. Henry H. Fowler); but I have not time to go into the detailed figures. But I understand the question to be simply this, that while the President of the Local Government Board does not contest my right hon. Friend's general classification of local taxation, what he does is to criticize the figures which my right hon. Friend produced, and he lays special stress on the fact that during the last 10 years a certain number of rural districts have come to be classed as the intermediate districts.

MR. RITCHIE

Not intermediate, but urban districts.

MR. CHILDERS

I understood the right hon. Gentleman last night to say intermediate. However, I will take urban districts. The right hon. Gentleman does not controvert my right hon. Friend's figures.

MR. RITCHIE

I said the statement I made entirely upset the comparison of the right hon. Gentleman.

MR. CHILDERS

Surely he did not dispute the figures themselves.

MR. RITCHIE

I controverted the force of the comparison.

MR. CHILDERS

The right hon. Gentleman's object was to throw doubt upon my right hon. Friend's figures, and he endeavoured to correct them so as to bring them into harmony with his own.

MR. RITCHIE

I never said anything about bringing his figures into harmony with my own. I did not advance figures as against those of the right hon. Gentleman. All I stated was, that when he gave figures to the House showing what the increase of the urban rates had been during the last 10 years, as compared with the increase of the rural rates, he omitted to mention that a largo number of urban districts had been carved out of rural districts.

MR. CHILDERS

That is precisely what I understood, but I did not, perhaps, express it as clearly as the right hon. Gentleman has done. But the amount in dispute is not large, and when we go into Committee we shall have an opportunity, now that we have the right hon. Gentleman's figures and the figures of my right hon. Friend before us, of more fully discussing this important matter. All I would say at the present moment is that it will be a very important matter in Committee to see whether, under the plan of the right hen. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board, in counties which contain a number of small boroughs as well as a large number of rural districts, the distribution of the funds in future at the disposal of the Local Authorities is not too favourable to the county at the expense of urban districts. I will say no more than that it is a question which has to be threshed out in Committee. Before I sit down, I should be glad if the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer could hear what I have to say as to the general financial construction of the Bill. What I understand as the financial plan of which the Bill and the Budget scheme are the expressions, is that in the present financial year, the County Authorities are to receive from the Exchequer £1,150,000—that is to say, four-sixths of one-third of the Probate Duties, and they are to receive from new local licences £826,000, making altogether £1,976,000, the present subventions being left intact.

THE CHANCELLOR OE THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. GOSCHEN) (St. George's, Hanover Square)

Will the right hon. Gentleman allow me to correct him? There is the subvention to the roads to be considered.

MR. CHILDERS

; I am allowing for that. Next year the position will be this. The County Authorities are to receive from the Exchequer one-half of the Probate Duties—£1,800,000—and from the new licences, £826,000. From old licences they will receive £2,970,000, less subsidies £2,582,000, and the total effect of that will be that they will receive more than they do at present by, in round numbers, £3,000,000. The effect on the Exchequer will be a loss this year of something more than £1,150,000, and in future years £2,188,000. Well, Sir, how is it proposed to meet this draft on the Exchequer? There are two things which my right hon. Friend proposes to do; and I am only going to state the facts, not to argue whether his proposals are wise or not. He has to provide for the contribution which goes from the Exchequer to the Local Authorities, and he has also another object, which is to take off 1d. from the Income Tax; and he has bound up these two objects together in this way. He proposes to levy new taxes for the Exchequer to the extent of £585,000, and more local licences amounting to £826,000—altogether to add to the local and Imperial taxation, £1,411,000. But he takes off £1,550,000 through the remission of the Income Tax. I think I have stated that quite accurately. Now, if that is the case, if the proposal in connection with the local Budget and the Imperial Budget is to add further taxes—local and general—to the extent of £1,411,000, and to take 1d. in the pound from the Income Tax, at a cost of £1,550,000, with the prospect next year of a far greater burden on the Exchequer, would it not be far better to leave matters as they stand, abandoning altogether both the now local and Imperial taxes, not disturbing the Income Tax, with precisely the same result? I am not going to argue as to the policy of each individual tax which my right hon. Friend proposes to put on in order to realize the amount which his reduction of the Income Tax renders necessary, but as to the new local licences, I think my right hon. Friend himself is by this time aware that they are extremely unpopular, and will meet with very stout resistance. The Horse Tax, I would remind him, was abandoned by Sir Stafford Northcote because the exemptions were so great that it was impossible satisfactorily to collect the tax, and yet my right hon. Friend is going to impose it with still greater exemption than those which existed when Sir Stafford North-cote abolished it. And with regard to the proposed Cart and Wheel Tax, almost every day produces seine new modification, which the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade promises to a deputation or announces to the House. I am very much afraid that when these taxes come to be discussed in Parliament it will be extremely difficult to lay down either with respect to the Horse Tax, with respect to the Waggon Tax, or with respect to the Wheel Tax, a system which will not be so full of exemptions and anomalies that it will be practically unworkable. Now, let me repeat again what I said just now. I said you will not find it necessary to raise any new taxes if you leave the income Tax alone. Why not give the Local Authorities, instead of £826,000 in the shape of obnoxious new local taxes, as you propose to give them, an equivalent amount from the House Duty, say, one-half, or more precisely four-ninths, which would reach £840,000? This transfer and the non-enactment of the additional Wine Duty and stamps and other imports, will be just met by not taking 1d. off the Income Tax. I would suggest that for the consideration of the Government. Of course, this is not the time for debating in detail any change of this kind which affects mainly the Budget proposals; but, so far as local taxes are concerned, I would only repeat that I greatly deplore these additions to the charges on locomotion, just after they have been one by one abandoned; and if there ever was a time when the warning "Why cannot you let it alone?" was applicable, was the present.

Motion made, and Question, "That the Debate be now adjourned,"—(Mr. Firth,)—put, and agreed to.

Debate further adjourned till Thursday.

The House suspended its Sitting at Seven of the clock.

The House resumed its Sitting at Nine of the clock.

Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; House counted, and 40 Members being found present:—