HABITUAL DRUNKARDS BILL [H.L.], (Hansard, 14 March 1901)

*THE LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER
I shall not detain your Lordships many minutes in moving the Second Reading of this Bill, especially after the kindly reception which has been given by His Majesty's Government to the Bill, which has just been read a second time, and which, I understand, will be extended to the two other Bills for which I have made myself responsible.

§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY
What the noble Lord who spoke for the Government said was, that no opposition would be offered to the two Bills on the Paper today. The right rev. Prelate is extending that admission to a Bill which is to come on next week. I cannot promise so much.

*THE LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER
I am thankful for small mercies, and am grateful to the noble Marquess for setting me right. What is known as the formation of a black list has been advocated outside Parliamentary Commissions and outside Parliament for a long time, and it received what I am bound to say was to me a surprising amount of support from practically the whole body of the recent Royal Commissioners. It is perfectly obvious that such a proposal is fraught with certain patent difficulties. The proposal, roughly, is that any man who has been convicted three times during the course of one year, or nine times in all, of certain specified offences scheduled in the Inebriates Act of 1898 may—not must—be placed by the court upon a black list, and a penalty will fall upon anyone who serves a man so 1511 placed on the black list with intoxicating liquor, and a penalty will fall upon himself if he endeavours to obtain it. The difficulty in the case of large towns is constantly brought forward, and it is objected that identification would be impossible, and that a man would only have to walk a quarter of a mile in order to obtain the liquor. That is perfectly true; but there arc many places besides large towns, and there would not be the smallest difficulty in small towns and country districts. By another provision of the Bill habitual drunkenness comes under the definition of cruelty, and enables a wife to claim judicial separation from a drunken husband. Another provision makes it an offence for a drunken person to be found in charge of a child in a public-house or in a public place. These proposals obtained the approval of the representatives of what may be called "the trade" On the Royal Commission, and I trust that your Lordships will see your way to pass them in due time into law. Indeed, there is nothing in the Bill that has not been agreed to by both the majority and the minority on the Royal Commission. I ask your Lordships to give the Bill a second reading.

§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY
I can only say that so far as this Bill is concerned I am entirely in sympathy with the right rev. Prelate, and I hope that either he or the Government may be successful in passing such a Bill during the present session. It appears to me that, though this is not a very large Bill in itself, it is important as marking a different object on the part of temperance advocates from that which they usually adopt. In this case it is desired to promote temperance by legislation which is punitive as regards those who are guilty of intemperance. That is a perfectly legitimate action for Parliament to take, and I confess, without making any pledge on the subject, that I should be inclined to go even a step further than the right rev. Prelate. But the difference between this legislation and that of which we most ordinarily hear is that in this case the powers of the law are directed against those who commit the offence 1512 of intemperance, whereas what is ordinarily called temperance legislation goes in the direction of diminishing the opportunities for obtaining intoxicating liquor, and is directed equally against the person who is himself guilty of intemperance and against the very large body of innocent consumers who have no intention of committing intemperance, but who are restricted in their natural liberty by the desire of the temperance reformers to deal with inebriate persons. That seems to me unjust. The innocent consumption by temperate consumers of that which is not an illegal indulgence is not a liberty which it is right for Parliament to restrict, unless they are driven by some very supreme consideration to do so. It is not the line upon which I think temperance reform ought to work. It would be irregular and inconvenient to enter into a discussion now. I only wish to draw as strongly as I can a distinction between that legislation which punishes only intemperate men and that legislation which, desiring to punish and hinder the intemperate man, also grievously affects the temperate consumer. I earnestly hope that the right rev. Prelate may have full success in the line which he is at present pursuing, and that the I success of that Hue way induce him to I abstain from the other sort of legislation.