Sitting of 8 May 1872

MINUTES.
SELECT COMMITTEE—Report—Letters Patent [No. 193].
PUBLIC BILLS—Ordered—First Reading—Imprisonment for Debt Abolition* [156]; Criminal Law Amendment Act (1871) Amendment * [157].
First Reading—Tramways Provisional Orders Confirmation (No. 4) * [155].
Second Reading—Permissive Prohibitory Liquor [3], debate adjourned; Consolidated Fund (£6,000,000).*
Committee—Report—Municipal Officers Superannuation* [64–154].

PARLIAMENT—ASCENSION DAY.

  COMMITTEES.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That no Committees have leave to sit To-morrow, being Ascension Day, until Two of the clock."—(Mr. Glyn.)
  MR. BOUVERIEsaid, he did not intend to oppose the Motion, but wished to give Notice that he should feel it his duty to take the sense of the House on the subject next year. The practice to which the Motion had reference was of quite modern introduction, and inflicted great hardship on the promoters of Private Bills. He believed it was originally proposed by the noble Lord the Member for North Leicestershire (Lord John Manners), and that it was accepted by the right hon. Gentleman now at the head of the Government, who, on the occasion in question, was the Leader of the House when Lord Russell was Minister. Ever since that time it had become a sort of rule that Committees should not sit till 2 o'clock on Ascension Day; but he ventured to say that not one of the officials of the House, or of the counsel, witnesses, agents, or other persons interested in Private Bills, would go to church to-morrow, and consequently the two hours allowed them for that purpose would be lost. Moreover, he found that two of the Select Committees were investigating Bills of considerable importance relating to Scotland; and, of course, the numerous witnesses who had been brought from that country did not think it at all necessary to go to church on Ascension Day. He
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  would further remind the House that the practical result of Committees not sitting till 2 o'clock on that day was to impose fines amounting altogether to perhaps £2,000 or £3,000 on parties promoting Private Bills, for the counsel, agents, and witnesses had, of course, to be paid just as much as for an ordinary day, although the Committees sat for only two hours. That, he ventured to assert, was unjust and wrong. Not having given Notice, he should not propose to take the sense of the House on the subject; but another year he should take the liberty of dividing the House, with the view of protesting against the imposition of so heavy a fine on parties promoting Private Bills.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 47; Noes 52: Majority 5.

PERMISSIVE PROHIBITORY LIQUOR BILL— [BILL 3.]
(Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Lord Claud Hamilton, Sir Thomas Bazley, Mr. Downing, Sir John Hanmer, Mr. Miller, Mr. Dalway.)
PERMISSIVE PROHIBITORY LIQUOR BILL— [BILL 3.]

  SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  SIR WILFRID LAWSON, in rising to move "That the Bill be now read a second time," said, that although he might in the course of his speech say many disagreeable things, yet he thought few hon. Members would disagree with him when he said that the question of the liquor traffic had become the irrepressible question of British politics; and not only so in that country, but that it was, indeed, becoming a great question wherever the English language was spoken—in the United States and in our colonies. The question was also beginning to excite interest even in France, where the other day a debate arose in the National Assembly, respecting how far they should carry a law for putting down drunkenness in that country. It appeared to him, in fact, that in all countries where there was any considerable amount of intelligence and knowledge among the people the question was being discussed as to how far law should be made available for the purpose of checking the evil of drunkenness. He should, not, however, dilate upon those evils, for after the recent debate on the

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  Bill introduced by the hon. Baronet the Member for West Essex (Sir Henry Selwin-Ibbetson), he took it for granted that all hon. Members admitted drunkenness to be a great evil, and differed only as to the proper means of preventing it. Whether the evil were increasing or decreasing was a matter of considerable ambiguity and uncertainty, and he should not make any statement to the House in favour of one point or the other, but would mention that a pamphlet entitled The Case against the United Kingdom Alliance and the Permissive Bill stated that all the evidence obtainable from the judicial statistics went to show that drunkenness was not on the increase in the country at large; that, on the whole, it had a tendency to diminish; and that in many places, and more especially in the metropolis, it had materially declined. On reading that passage, he lost no time in referring to the judicial statistics, which showed that the number of persons charged with being drunk and disorderly had greatly increased. It was 93,000 in 1863, gradually increasing to 131,000 in 1870, and last year, according to the Returns made up to October, it had increased to 142,000. He did not know whether, after all, these figures proved very much, but as their opponents had based their case upon those statistics, he thought it right to bring them under the notice of the House. Again, the Return which had been moved for by the hon. Member for Halifax (Mr. Akroyd) showed that the apprehensions for drunkenness in England and Wales amounted to 1 in every 132 of the population. But they were told that, at any rate, things were improving, and that the case of Liverpool was one in point. Well, so be it; they were quite bad enough in any case. But even with regard to that town, what did they find? Why, that in 1841 the convictions for drunkenness bore the proportion of 1 to every 18 of the population, and in 1869 the proportion of 1 to every 23. Thereupon, Mr. S. G. Rathbone, speaking at a meeting in February last, said—
  "The conclusion he had come to was, that not only in Liverpool, but throughout the whole country, the vice of drunkenness was rapidly decreasing among them."
  Did hon. Members know that of late a new system had been adopted in Liverpool, on Mr. Robertson Gladstone's sug-
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  gestion, and that on every Tuesday there was a drunken Gazette published, in which was printed the name of every person convicted of drunkenness on the Monday morning? The number so printed on January 22 was 135, and on April 30 they had fallen to 92. Those were the facts concerning Liverpool, which was held up to them as an improving town; but let them look at Manchester, where the convictions for drunkenness in 1860 were something over 2,000; whereas in 1871 they had increased to 10,000. The pamphlet before referred to accounted in the following way for this increase:—
  "Undoubtedly the chief reason is the extraordinary activity of the police, and the peculiar influence brought to bear upon the magistrates…. Harassed by these emissaries (Good Templars, teetotal spies, and adherents of the Alliance), the Manchester constables arrest scores and scores of inoffensive inebriates, who in any other town in the kingdom would be allowed to go quietly home."
  So that, according to that statement of the publican party themselves, there was abounding drunkenness in most of their large towns, if the police would only look out closely for it. Nobody, however, who had paid any attention to this question could doubt the interest which was taken in it by the great mass of the community. He would not lay any great stress upon the number of Petitions presented in favour of this Bill as a proof that that was the case, because it no doubt would be said that these Petitions were got up. Well, of course they were got up; but they were got up by persons who took an interest in the matter, and he, for one, had never heard of Petitions being collected in any other way. And to his mind the spectacle of working men devoting a large portion of their leisure moments to collecting signatures to Petitions in favour of something designed to promote not their own but their neighbour's welfare had something touching in it, and was not deserving of ridicule. But great interest had been shown during the recent Parliamentary elections, and the action of the publicans at those elections, and the undoubted success of which they boasted, tended to prove that the question was daily becoming more and more one between the public and the publican. Another proof of the interest taken in the subject by the people throughout the country was the fact that at the present moment

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  there were no less than six Bills professing to deal in one way or another with the liquor traffic before Parliament; and, in addition, a Committee sitting upstairs, which, while not intending to recommend any extension of legislation with regard to the facilities for procuring licenses, were designed to deal with the evils resulting from that system. The Committee he spoke of, in fact, dealt with the "finished article;" and as they had victims of that abominable traffic, and as it was necessary to put them somewhere, it was proposed to furnish additional receptacles for those poor misguided creatures, there being absolutely no room available in the existing gaols, workhouses, and asylums of the country. Well, then, so far as these Bills tended to lessen the facilities for procuring drink—and two of them did so absolutely, during the whole of Sunday in England and Ireland respectively, because Sunday was the day of greatest temptation to the working man to spend the money which ought to be expended on his wife and family—so far, at least, they were good and worthy of support. But The Scotsman, the other day, speaking on the subject, said—
  "The legitimate issue of all proposals to limit public-houses on philanthropic grounds is their complete extinction. Sir Wilfrid Lawson, therefore, is the logical conclusion of Sir Robert Anstruther and Sir Henry Selwin-Ibbetson."
  He was very glad that it had been found, at last, that he was a logical conclusion, for, in the conclusion intended, he thought it proved a great deal in favour of the course of dealing with the subject he put forward. But it would be as well if they looked to what their opponents said further on this question. The great leader of their opponents, the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. M. T. Bass), speaking at the Derby Licensed Victuallers' dinner in November, 1871, said—
  "He was the child of the licensed victuallers of the country, and to them he owed the fortune he had acquired, and was still through them able to maintain."
  The hon. Gentleman added—
  "People in authority asked them what they suggested? He had nothing to suggest. Let things go on as they were."
  Thus hon. Members could see that there was one party whose efforts were directed to obtaining some diminution in the drunkenness which was so prevalent, and that there was another party who
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  were in favour of nothing being done. He did not wish to disguise from hon. Members the consequences of voting for his Bill. Hon. Members would, no doubt, support him at their peril, because they would be marked by the great party interested in the continuation of this traffic for political destruction. He desired it to be clearly understood that he did not bring in this Bill as a rival to any of the other schemes before the House. Indeed, he regarded it simply as supplementary to the Bills of his hon. Friends the Members for Fife-shire and West Essex. Scotland possessed already a good licensing law, dealing, among other things, with Sunday closing, yet the people were not satisfied, and demanded further legislation. Sunday closing was popular in Scotland. ["No, no!"] An hon. Member says "No;" but he (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) said it was so popular that no Scotch Member dared vote for its repeal. The opposition which his Bill encountered in that House was almost confined to England, because, on the last occasion, if the second reading had been left to the Members of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, there would have been a majority of two to one in favour of the measure. The present law he might describe as a Maine Law, with exceptions. No man could engage in the liquor traffic without a license from the magistrates, and in granting this license the magistrates had to consider three questions—the fitness of the applicant, the fitness of his premises, and the wants of the neighbourhood. With the first two points he did not propose in any way to interfere; but by his Bill it was intended to give to the inhabitants themselves the power of stating what their wants really were. He did not wish at that time to make any reflections whatever upon their conduct; but there could be no doubt that, however well-intentioned the efforts of the magistrates were generally, they occasionally failed, and failed lamentably, to exactly meet the requirements of certain districts. No one could contend, for instance, that the requirements of the neighbourhood justified the licensing in Scotland Road, Liverpool, of one in every five houses as a gin-shop. Again, to show that the conduct of the magistrates could not be invariably relied upon, he might take the case of one of the lowest neighbourhoods in London,

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  where Mrs. Bailey, a lady well-known for her benevolence, established a working men's club. That club soon began to make an improvement in the habits of the residents of the neighbourhood to the detriment of the profits of the publicans, who, becoming alarmed, an application for a license to a house close by was made. The license was strongly remonstrated against by the working men in the neighbourhood; but although the magistrates listened to the remonstrances once or twice, they ultimately decided to consent to the establishment of a drink shop close to the club. Could it be contended that he was wrong in wishing that the decision in such a case should be determined, not by the magistrates but by the memorialists, by those who knew their own wants and temptations best? Although objected to on account of the permissive nature of its intended legislation, there was nothing new in the doctrine embodied in his Bill, because not only was the whole of the traffic at present permissive, but they had permissive Acts always in operation for the promotion of public health, sanitary improvement, education by the opening of free libraries, and recreation by the opening of public parks. If they gave power to the majority in all those instances, why should they not equally do so in regard to the licensing system, and so get rid of all the drunkenness, and its accompanying train—sickness, squalor, dirt, and hunger which surrounded them? He was not, however, bigoted in his attachment to this Bill, and he was willing to support any Bill or any clause which contained the vetoing principle for which he contended, and if the hon. Member for Derby would only change his policy and bring in such a Bill, he would give his hearty support to his hon. Friend's measure, or he would be perfectly willing to insert the clause in the Bill of his hon. Friend (Sir Henry Selwin-Ibbetson) if he would accept it. In fact, he would give his countenance to any Bill which would give that veto power, and he might further state he should make a point of moving it in any Bill which came under the consideration of the House. In favour of that line of conduct he would state that it was only the other day that the Legislature of New Zealand had carried unanimously a Bill restricting the liquor traffic, and giving at the same time to the people this power of veto.
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  He felt bound to vindicate his Bill from the charge of being an extreme measure, for it was quite the reverse, being in reality one of the most moderate measures ever introduced. Clause 93 of the Bill of his hon. Friend the Member for Fifeshire provided that—
  "Houses of persons licensed to sell intoxicating liquors to be consumed on the premises" (elsewhere than four miles from St. Paul's) "shall be closed between 10 at night and 7 in the morning. But the licensing board of every district shall have full power and authority to order the closing of all such houses at any other earlier hour when requested by a memorial signed by a majority of two-thirds of the ratepayers of the district."
  According to that legislation, if the feeling of the board was prohibitory, they could do what he by his Bill wished to do—practically put an end to the traffic, for they could order that any or all houses should close five minutes after opening. He thought that was so from what his hon. Friend (Sir Robert Anstruther), speaking at St. James's Hall in November last, said—
  "The Permissive Bill, if it passed, would not take effect except in places where two-thirds of the ratepayers were found to vote in favour of bringing it into action. What they really wanted was a far more radical measure than the Permissive Bill; they wanted to see the issue as well as the regulation of the licenses put in the hands of the people themselves."
  His hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth (Mr. Morrison), speaking on the same occasion, expressed similar opinions—
  "We, of the Association, want to get some means into operation which will deal with the evil at once. I think if the Permissive Bill were carried into law, it might perhaps be brought into operation in some localities, but, how long would it be, I ask you, before you could convert such towns as Liverpool and London, and other large towns where the evil is at the greatest? But we go fully with the Alliance, on the point of the people having full control of the issue of licenses."
  The passages which he had quoted would, he thought, be sufficient to show that his Bill was in no way an extreme measure. While striving in the same direction as his hon. Friend the Member for Fifeshire, to give effect to the veto of the majority, so that they might be protected from the evils of the liquor traffic, he believed his own plan to be more simple and more easy than that introduced by his hon. Friend. With regard to the opinion of America, the President-elect, Mr. Horace Greeley, speaking on this question, said—

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  "Our State should have a law requiring the people of each city and township to vote 'license' or 'no license' at each municipal election, and forbidding the traffic whenever and wherever any city or township had voted no license, until they at a subsequent election shall have reversed that decision. We could then determine the effect of either policy on the morals and prosperity of communities. If men drink more and rush to ruin faster because of prohibition, that fact would be made manifest by the increase of pauperism and crime when the liquor traffic was forbidden. Why should not all consent to give this experiment a fair deliberate trial?"
  All that he now asked the House to do was to give his proposal a fair trial throughout the United Kingdom, and he asked that with the more confidence because he knew that wherever the experiment had been tried it had proved signally successful. [Mr. GOLDSMID: No, no!] He trusted his hon. Friend would specify some particular instance where the principle of determining this question by the voice of the majority of the inhabitants of a district had failed. [An hon. MEMBER: In America.] He repeated that where it had been decided upon and enforced by a large majority of the people it had not failed. That was his point. It was all very well to speak vaguely about America, or for his hon. Friend to get up and refer to the State of Maine; but his hon. Friend would have to quote chapter and verse, because he had in his pocket an abstract of all the American laws dealing with the subject. He would, however, tell his hon. Friend, that in the State of Maine it had been a great success; and, if so, surely in this country, where they had such a network of police representing the machinery requisite to carry out the law, it would succeed more than it had in the State of Maine. There could be no doubt of the advantages which had resulted to districts in England where benevolent landlords had removed from the inhabitants the temptations which stood in their way; but the removal of such temptations ought to be within the power of the inhabitants themselves if they desired it. From Scotland there was equally satisfactory testimony in its favour, while from Ireland the evidence was perfectly overwhelming as regarded its beneficent effect, so much so, that The Times admitted that if the statements were true—which they undoubtedly were—they entirely settled the question. He would, however, give a further proof how much
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  legislation on the subject, as devised by his Bill, was required, in an abuse of the present system lately brought under his notice. The facts of the case showed that in a village in Lanarkshire containing a population of about 250 there was no public-house. In 1869 an application was made for a license. A petition against the granting of the license, signed by every male inhabitant but four, was presented to the justices, but they treated the inhabitants with contempt, and thrust the public-house upon them. He thought it was undesirable that any such petition should be so treated, and had his Bill been in operation it would have prevented it. And not only that, but they should consider the situation of the many other places—which there undoubtedly were—who like this village in Lanarkshire were entirely opposed to these drink shops, in deciding upon the merits of the question. He was sorry he had kept the House so long; and, in conclusion, would treat of the objections against the Bill which he supposed he should have to meet, and which he thought would prove to be of the same nature as those he had heard before. One of the objections against this Bill would probably be that it was going against public opinion. But that he denied, for the principle was the one upon which the Bill itself was almost exclusively founded. It could not, indeed, be carried into effect without the aid of public opinion. Another argument was that it would have no effect except in districts where its operation could be dispensed with, but that he believed to be a delusion, for, in his opinion, the existence of such a power as that embodied in the Bill would act as a source of terror to evildoers. Again, they were told that the present law if put in force was strong enough for every purpose required. If that were so, why had the Government brought in a Bill to deal with this subject? The Earl of Kimberley, in introducing that measure, had referred to the case of Luton; but it was only the other day that a magistrate of that division, writing about the state of the neighbourhood, said—
  "I believe not one in 50 of the convicted drunkards in our county are from the habitual criminal class. They are, as a rule, from the artizan and labouring classes, who frequent the respectable drink shops, where, now that wages are high and work plentiful, they indulge in this dreadful habit to a greater extent than ever."

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  From that it would be seen that it was not in the low public-houses that all the tippling was carried on, but that a great, if not the greater part of it was from the respectable houses. Another argument was, that the progress of education under the new step which had been initiated, would gradually eradicate drunkenness from the land; and that being so, there was no necessity for the kind of legislation he proposed. But he would say that it would be a very long time, indeed, before an end would be put to the existence of that necessity; and while he would at once admit that they need not trouble about such legislation when the people were thoroughly educated and trained to act rightly; yet he thought it was an irresistible argument in his favour when they admitted that at that moment the country was full of people who could not resist temptation, and upon whom all agreed it was a cruel thing to force temptation upon. He would, of course, be met by what he might term the rich and poor argument; but without intending to be un-Parliamentary in his language, that argument was one which he could not help thinking savoured of cant and clap-trap. However, rather than that any difficulty should remain on that score, he would accept in Committee a clause proposing the disfranchisement of any person paying rates above a certain amount, and so leave the question as to whether this Bill should come into operation to the decision of the poorer inhabitants alone. Moreover, the Petitions which flowed in from the country in favour of the Bill did not, as a rule, bear the signatures of persons in a superior class of life, and it therefore seemed to him that they should be allowed to remove the temptations which laid in their path; but it was the most refined and educated Assembly possibly in the world which said that those temptations should remain, and that, he thought, was wrong. He thanked the House most earnestly for listening so patiently to his well-worn arguments, on a question which, however popular out-of-doors, was not very popular there, and would appeal to both sides of the House for support to the measure. He appealed for support to his Friends on that side of the House as the advocates of local self-government, and he also appealed for support to hon. Members on the other side of the House, who
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  were essentially the friends of order. Lately, also, they had said—and said well—that the public health was to be the object of their supreme efforts. But he would not put this question on party grounds; and, therefore, more confidently did he appeal to those on both sides of this House, who, refusing to be the blind servants of party, still more disclaiming to be the slaves of one powerful, wealthy, and tyrannical vested interest, found the true charm and noblest object of political life in protecting the weak, in helping those who were desolate and oppressed, and in doing what in them lay to raise the general level of national prosperity, happiness, and virtue. The hon. Baronet concluded by moving the second reading of the Bill.
  MR. CARTERseconded the Motion.
  Motion made, and Question proposed," That the Bill be now road a second time."—(Sir Wilfrid Lawson.)
  MR. WHEELHOUSE, in rising to move—"That the Bill be read a second time that day six months," said, he hoped the House would concur in his Motion; and, indeed, he trusted that the time would never come when it would be read a second time in that House. He knew, as well as the hon. Baronet, that the arguments on both sides of the question had been stated so frequently, both in that House and elsewhere, that they were thoroughly and completely—to use a common phrase—"thrashed out." But the hon. Baronet had thought it necessary to state at great length the grounds on which he asked the House to assent to the principle of the Bill, and it therefore became his (Mr. Wheelhouse's) duty—though he hoped he should not detain the House so long—to explain his reasons for moving the rejection of the Bill. The hon. Baronet had told them that his Bill was the logical sequence of the Bills of the hon. Member for Fifeshire (Sir Robert Anstruther) and the hon. Baronet below the gangway (Sir Henry Selwin-Ibbetson). He (Mr. Wheelhouse) contended, on the contrary, that this was a Bill which stood alone, and had no resemblance in principle to any Bill which had been brought forward on the subject, either by the Government or by private Members; and that the hon. Baronet wanted the House of Commons to enact a Bill which did not in any

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  degree represent public opinion, but which, if passed, would give certain persons called ratepayers in boroughs and parishes power to meet and determine whether licenses should be granted or not—so that persons must become ratepayers in boroughs or parishes before they could have a voice in the matter, and give a vote. He (Mr. Wheel-house) said that was not fair. There were many persons in both boroughs and parishes who were not ratepayers, but whose convenience and comfort would be seriously interfered with by a meddlesome and intolerant clique bent upon carrying out their own crotchets. After the ratepayers had met in some small back room belonging to the Alliance or The British Workman, in a borough or parish where there happened to be a teetotal mayor or churchwarden, and found they had the requisite majority of two-thirds of the few ratepayers present, they would have taken the initiative step towards closing the licensed houses in their locality. Notices were to be posted on the doors of the town halls in boroughs where there were town halls, and in the parishes where there were none, and where they would be displayed he could not tell; but it was clear that the notices might be so arranged in connection with a little hole-and-corner meeting that the public opinion might never have been heard at all, and nobody know anything about the matter except the small compact and zealous body who could be reached and set in motion by the agents of the Permissive Bill advocates, who would be the real movers in the matter. The hon. Baronet (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) had pointed with exultation to the rows upon rows of Petitions which had been sent up to the House in favour of the Bill, and to the large number of signatures which were attached to those Petitions. But what did these Petitions really mean? Did it mean that they really represented public opinion? Not at all. It meant simply that the organization which promoted this Bill had a great number of very active secretaries, the payment of whose salaries depended upon the success which attended their going about with sheets of paper and getting signatures wherever and however they could. Let that statement be denied if it could be. Everybody who knew anything of the facts knew that those Petitions were all
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  nonsense so far as they professed to represent a real and genuine opinion upon this question. The hon. Baronet told them that those Petitions were not sent by the rich, but by poor people. That was very true, because the persons who had charge of the sheets did not go to gentlemen whom they knew would refuse to sign. No doubt there were a few weak-minded, capricious, or crotchetty people belonging to the educated classes who might be induced to do so; but the agents went about with these sheets and got the signatures of children, women, and persons who were ready to sign anything, whether they understood it or not; and then, when a number of separate sheets had been filled up in this way, they were pasted together, though coming from different localities, a gentleman of some position in favour of the principle was got to head the list with his name, and in this way a very imposing Petition was got up and sent to that House. That accounted for the Petitions said to be signed by 20,000 or 25,000 persons which had been presented. As to the astounding number of 47,000 said to be attached to the Sheffield Petition, he knew Sheffield and the West Biding well, and to say that any such number of signatures could be honestly and fairly got in Sheffield was to tell him what he did not and could not credit. The hon. Baronet said these Petitions represented public opinion. He (Mr. Wheelhouse), on the contrary, said that if they were closely scrutinized and the signatures carefully verified they would be found to be not worth the paper on which they were written. It was said that question was one between the public and the publican. He (Mr. Wheelhouse) thought that it might rather be described as a question between the publican and the pump. Let them get at public opinion really, and it would be found that the Bill was directly contrary to the feelings and wishes of the country at large. Before, however, passing a Permissive Bill in that House, let them set the working classes an example in their own persons. There was a refreshment-bar in the lobby established expressly to supply the Members of the House with needful refreshment, and perhaps many Members who intended to vote for the Permissive Bill might strengthen themselves for the duty by taking a glass of wine before, or refresh themselves after

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  voting by a visit to the bar. Before they shut up the public-houses, which were the clubs of the working men, let them shut up their own clubs in Pall Mall. No doubt there were some Gentlemen water-drinkers in that House; but even they were compelled to act in accordance with public opinion and the general habits of the community, and when they invited their friends to dinner they placed before them champagne and wines of that sort, and invited them to help themselves freely, though they did not choose to partake of the wines personally. The hon. Gentleman who had charge of this Bill and his supporters might say to their friends—"Drink as much as you please, only help us to pass this Permissive Bill into law." He had no hesitation in saying that the great and overwhelming majority of the ratepayers of this country were totally opposed to such a measure as this. Then it was said that those who opposed it were in favour of beer-drinking throughout the country. Well, and what if that were so? If he (Mr. Wheelhouse) could have his claret, or champagne, or Madeira, when he liked, why should not the poor man have his beer? No doubt the poorer classes were the best customers of publicans; and why? Because they knew it was there alone they could get a good glass of fresh beer. It was not in their power to keep it in cellars at home, and those who could do so had only to produce a gallon, or half a gallon of it, for a friend 24 hours after it was there, and they would find that it was not drinkable. The promoters of this Bill said—"It does not affect us; we may have barrels or flagons of beer in our own cellars, and no one can hinder us from partaking of it when we choose; but we will prevent the poor man spending his three-half-pence or two pence for a pint of good beer in a public-house, lest, forsooth! he should be demoralized." That was not fair or just. It was not only not fair nor just, but gross class legislation against the poorer classes of this country, which he trusted that House would never sanction. Then, said the friends of the Bill—"Why don't you allow the majority of ratepayers to decide the question in every district?" Certainly, he should be ready to do so; but who were the majority? In one district a body of people might be found who would not allow a public-house to
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  be within it; but adjoining it, another body, holding contrary opinions, permitted them; and the consequence would be that the locality must become flooded with public-houses. That was neither fair nor just nor politic. Ratepayers holding the opinions of the hon. Baronet would not permit any public-house within their district; but outside this Arcadia or Alsatia as many might exist as circumstances would render necessary, and there not only would the public of the neighbourhood, but many of the dwellers in Arcadia itself go and have their beer. And why should they not? If the hon. Baronet had the right to stop his beer, why should not he (Mr. Wheelhouse) have the right to stop his beef? If a man who drank his beer suffered for it, so did a man who ate too much. The whole question was one of a social and domestic description, and they had no right, by any legislation, to interfere with the freedom of the people; and he was quite sure that even if it were carried, no portion of this Permissive Bill would ever be carried out, or any attempt made to carry it out, in any part of this country. He believed, also, that that House would never consent to pass such a measure. Now they had heard a great deal of talk about the United States of America, and especially of the State of Maine. But, it was notorious to everyone who knew that part of the world, that what was called the "Maine Liquor Law" had failed miserably. The effect of it was—as indeed it would be in all similar cases—that when people did not or could not get a glass of beer in public, they would have it—aye, and treble the quantity—in private. Was it not better that men should do everything openly and above board, so that all their neighbours could know what they did, than go and drink in shops which were illicit and illegitimate, and which were always sure to exist in localities where stringent measures of this description were adopted? Was it not true that it was found necessary to appoint corps of Excise officers to prevent the open violation of the Excise laws in many parts of the country. And if that House came to the conclusion that there should be no open public-houses, they might depend upon it that five or six of those illicit shops would spring up in their stead. The hon. Member for Carlisle might differ from that opinion; but his (Mr.

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  Wheelhouse's) honest belief was that they had no right whatever to prohibit one class of the people from eating or drinking what they chose, and that being so, he asked the House to reject the Bill.
  MR. GOLDSMID, in seconding the Amendment, said, he must protest against the assertion that every one who opposed this Bill was subservient to what the hon. Baronet called the interest of the publican. [Sir WILFRID LAWSON denied that he had said so.] The hon. Baronet had just said that this Bill "was not to be laughed at by those who were in the interests of the publicans," and that "the fight was to be between the public and the publicans," and the only logical deduction from these words was, that all those who opposed his Bill were acting in the interest of publicans. Now he (Mr. Goldsmid) had no interest in upholding public-houses; but on behalf of the public, he opposed the hon. Baronet's Bill, and he believed the great majority of the people of this country were equally opposed to the measure. Two or three Members of Parliament, he regretted to see, had gone wandering about the country in the capacity of itinerant lecturers on teetotalism, and followed the same course as the hon. Baronet ventured upon in the House. For example the other day a meeting was held at Exeter in support of this Bill; and some persons who objected to the Bill having obtained admission wished to discuss the resolutions submitted to it, certainly in an adverse sense. On finding that these persons disapproved the Bill, the chairman stigmatized them as drunkards, and men favouring drunkenness, and refused to hear them. Now, these were mistaken tactics. He could tell the hon. Baronet and his supporters that those who opposed his Bill were as hostile to drunkenness as he could be himself, and it was not by such abuse of those who differed from him, or by such ridiculous legislation as this Bill proposed, that they could accomplish their object. He told them last year on the Sunday Trading Bill, and he told them now on this Permissive Prohibitory Liquor Bill, that they could not make men sober, religious, or well conducted by Act of Parliament. Much had been said of the example of the United States and of the working of the Maine Liquor Law. Well, there were Members of that House who had gone to the United States for the
  464
  express purpose of observing the working of the Maine Liquor Law, and he believed they were about to inform the House that they found it utterly futile, and intended to vote against this Bill. The hon. Member for Leeds (Mr. Wheelhouse) had pointed out that wherever they prevented drinking in public they facilitated it in private. Now, he (Mr. Goldsmid) said that if drinking in public was a bad thing, there was one thing that was worse, and that was private drinking, for the man who got drunk by drinking in public would, in all probability, be prevented from drinking the rest of the day through, and would most likely get sober again before the day was over; whereas the man who got drunk in private would go on drinking to the end of the day. It was better that public drinking should become private sobriety by the man being locked up, through the assistance of the police, than that private drunkenness should remain private drunkenness, as it assuredly would, to the end of the chapter. In Scotland there were certain laws in force with respect to drinking. Now, he had himself learnt that there were more men in Scotland drunk on Sunday than on any other day. When he inquired the reason, he found that though drinking was not allowed in public, there was a good deal of it in private; and it was believed there was more Sunday drinking in Glasgow, and a few other large Scotch towns, in private, than in all England put together. The principle of the Bill was thus seen to be entirely a mistaken one. But there was another, and, as he (Mr. Goldsmid) thought, fatal objection to the proposal of the hon. Baronet. He wanted to know on what principle the hon. Baronet proceeded when he said that two-thirds of the ratepayers should have the power of preventing the remaining third of the ratepayers and all the rest of the population from doing that which, in itself, was perfectly harmless? He knew himself that when, after any arduous exertion, the nervous system was exhausted, a glass of beer was a wholesome and proper stimulant; and he appealed to any hon. Member who had had occasion to consult a medical man whether he had not been told that a certain amount of stimulus was necessary for the restoration of the nervous system? That being so, he contended that

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  it was nothing but tyranny to say that a minority, however small, should not have the articles of food or of drink to which they were entitled. It was the most tyrannical legislation—especially as regarded the working classes—that had ever been brought into that House. That the measure was opposed to the feeling of the country was shown, notwithstanding the enormous mass of got-up Petitions, by the very little way it made in the House. It was shown, too, by the Resolution which the Society formed to promote this legislation had passed on the previous day, and the declaration that if they got a smaller number of votes for this Bill they would thereby be encouraged to make still greater exertions, while if they got a larger number of votes they would take it to be a proof that the feeling of the country was in their favour. Under any circumstances, therefore, they would be equally well satisfied with the division, and he hoped the House would gratify them by giving them a smaller number of votes. He knew that last year many hon. Members voted for the Bill, not because they approved of it, but merely as a protest against nothing being done on the licensing question by Her Majesty's Government. Well, this year the Government had shown much earnestness in their effort to deal with it—though he did not know whether they would be able to pass their Bill. It was a Bill for the regulation of the sale of liquors. Now, it was very necessary to have proper regulations for the conduct of every trade, and especially of such a trade as this; but why there should be prohibitory legislation neither the hon. Baronet, nor any of his supporters, had yet succeeded in showing. The hon. Baronet had no right to come there year after year, wearying the House with his oft-repeated arguments in favour of this wretched Bill. The opponents of the Bill, as he had said before, were not in favour of drunkenness any more than the hon. Baronet himself was—they, the opponents of the Bill, were not the slaves of any vested interest any more than he was; but they said that as long as the country desired to preserve liberty of action they would refuse to accept the Bill which he so persistently advocated. A great majority of the country, he was satisfied, were of that opinion; and in view of that fact he trusted the House would
  466
  throw out the Bill by a larger majority than they had ever done before, and that the hon. Baronet, whose good intentions he appreciated, would gain wisdom from experience, and would not again trouble this or any future Parliament with a repetition of the Motion he had now made. He begged to second the Amendment for the rejection of the Bill.
  Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day six months."—(Mr. Wheelhouse.)
  Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  MR. MELLYobserved, that he was not a member of the Alliance, and he had but small sympathy with the Maine Liquor Law; but he gave a complete and entire adherence to the principle of local self-government. He thought there should be some check upon the issue of new and the renewal of old licenses, where, in the opinion of those principally concerned, they were not required. He should support the second reading of the Bill, on the ground that it recognized the vital principle of self-government, and gave to the ratepayers a control over the indiscriminate issue of licenses. No doubt it would require much modification in Committee. Clauses giving compensation to existing public-houses when closed by local authority would have to be inserted; and on such a question the vote of all adults, whether ratepayers or not, should be taken. The hon. Gentleman who had moved the rejection of the Bill had stated that the Petitions presented in its favour had not been signed by a single gentleman, and that the signatures attached to them were mainly those of women and children. He (Mr. Melly) could only say that a Petition had been presented from Liverpool in favour of the measure, which was signed by 116 ministers, 213 physicians and surgeons, 329 gentlemen, 353 merchants, and 384 schoolmasters, and another Petition had been signed by 679 ministers of religion residing in the metropolis. It had been charged against those Members of Parliament who supported the Bill that during the Recess they had gone about the country endeavouring to stir up the people on this subject, and to get up an agitation in favour of the Bill. But had not a similar course been adopted during the great Free Trade campaigns

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  of Cobden and Bright? It was a new doctrine that hon. Members were not to go forth and take their proper place as speakers at public meetings. Thus only by popular agitation in all time have the great monopolies of powerful classes been abrogated or controlled. He had welcomed his hon. Friends to his native town, where some 10,000 persons had assembled to hear them. Royal Dukes and noblemen often presided over public meetings called to support associations in which they were interested; but there never was an agitation more real and true than that supported by his hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle. Springing from a terrible sense of the injury done by the traffic, of homes made wretched, of widowed mothers and neglected children, of increased rates and a wasteful expenditure of wages, the movement was based upon the daily experience of all classes. It was chiefly supported by the working classes, who were most nearly interested. True, there were but few Members of Parliament who supported the movement, because they dare not; it had sprung, not from the top, but from the bottom of society, and was all the more to be respected on that account. It was a mistake to assume that there was not a Permissive Prohibitory Liquor Law in force in this country at the present time, though most unequally enforced. As a licensing magistrate of some standing he had often listened to "the requirements of the neighbourhood" argument, based on the Statute of George IV. Who was the best judge on this point? The old law said, a dozen magistrates at Quarter Sessions, whose homes, as he should shortly show, were carefully protected from contiguity with gin palaces; the new law they proposed asserted that the thousands amid whose homes it was proposed to thrust "accommodation," not required, which would depreciate their value and demoralize their inhabitants, were the best judges. The old laws contemplated Licensed Victuallers' houses—places of entertainment for man and beast, "hostels," with garrulous host, bar-parlour, newspapers, political and social chat, beds, food, as well as drink. Too many licensed houses were now simply bars for drinking, instead of inns in the old sense of the word. They gathered round them crowds of bad characters, disturbed the peace of the streets, and greatly an-
  468
  noyed the neighbourhood. To attempt to restrict the number of such houses was no attack by the rich upon the privileges of the poor, as the hon. Member for Leeds asserted. The rich protected themselves. The principle of the Permissive Bill was already acted upon in a sort of way by landowners, who took restrictive covenants in reference to licensed houses upon their estates. In this way particular neighbourhoods were protected from the existence of public-houses and the evil of drunkenness; but there was no such protection given in the case of the poor. He had been favoured by Members of the House with copies of the leases of the great ducal estates in the metropolis. The leaseholders for 99 years were guaranteed against any public-house being established other than those already in existence. He himself held a lease for 75 years, renewable, under a rich corporation, and had the same protection. The working man, who through a building society and weekly savings of hard-earned wages had purchased his modest dwelling, might see the baker's shop at the corner of his street converted into a flaming dram-shop, certainly depreciating the value of his property, probably driving him from his home. He had no such protection. He had had occasion before, and on other points, to show that, however equal to all classes were the laws of ownership in the letter, how unequally and unjustly they too often were in the mode in which they operated. But even the Maine Liquor Law was already in operation in this country. In 1,000 parishes in the diocese of Canterbury there was no public-house. Were they the most miserable villages in their respective counties, or the most prosperous? He had shown that the owners of large property in many districts in the metropolis and in several provincial towns declined to permit public-houses to be built on their estates, and in a very large village and shipbuilding yard on the banks of one of their great rivers, the Maine Liquor Law was most strictly enforced, and it was impossible for a man employed there to get a glass of beer without going three or four miles by railway to buy it, and the result was that in that yard 20 s. a-week wages was regarded by the wives of the workmen as equal to 23 s. a-week in the neighbouring town, while pauperism was unknown. In a

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  new district near one of the large manufacturing towns in Lancashire, 400 houses had been built, and not only were no public-houses allowed, but no grocer was permitted to sell intoxicating liquors. Yet were the houses empty or the workpeople discontented? The powerful steamships which sailed from Liverpool to America, India, and Australia, in a majority of cases, carried no spirits, except as doctors' stores, and the men were teetotallers for periods varying from a fortnight to six months. Did they complain or refuse to ship at the ordinary rate of wages? There were 13 steamships in which he was interested trading between China and Liverpool, in which that rule was enforced, greatly to the benefit of the men, the safety of the vessels, and the advantage of the owners. Landowners, manufacturers, and shipowners, thus enforced temperance at their own discretion; but the opponents of the Bill said it was tyranny that a minority should be compelled by a majority. The common law allowed the absolute power of restricting licenses to every landowner. They insisted that all the occupiers should share that power, and have some direct control in a matter which affected them more nearly, and of which they were the best judges. It had been contended that they had no right to make men moral by Act of Parliament; but was not the whole tendency of penal legislation to enforce the observance of the rules of morality? What were the volumes of statutes on this subject but attempts to make men more sober by Act of Parliament? Why were there any licenses at all, or any hours of closing, or any police supervision? He was convinced that the manner in which the evil of excessive expenditure in drink, and also of drunkenness would be effectually dealt with in the first instance, would be by restricting the hours during which public-houses should be open, and by providing for a more severe police control, and the abolition, as far as practicable, of adulteration. There must be such a system of supervision established as would make it almost impossible to perpetuate those evils which at present existed to so large an extent throughout the entire British dominions, and higher penalties enforced against those who, for the sake of a miserable profit, encouraged the excessive drinking which was robbing them all of so large a portion of the na-
  470
  tional wealth. He should support every such clause in any of the Bills before the House. But he was not the less persuaded that all these measures would fail to satisfy the real desire of a vast majority of the working classes, who were chiefly interested in this question. They would never be satisfied until a clause was introduced into a Government Bill which should give to them a control over the issue of licenses—a matter which touched in so deadly a manner the sanctity of their homes, and the religion, education, and morality of their children.
  MR. HENLEYsaid, he desired to state his reasons for voting as he was about to do. Much had been said with reference to the Petitions that had been presented to that House; but, for his own part, in view of the prolonged agitation and widely-extended organization that had been got up all over the country in connection with this subject, he was surprised that only 400,000 signatures had been attached to those Petitions—more especially seeing that most people regarded this measure rather as a simple protest against drunkenness than as an actual attempt to interfere with the existing law. He was unable, then, to vote for the Bill—first, because he believed it to be unjust; and, secondly, because he very much doubted whether, even if persons were disposed to commit an injustice for the sake of an eventual good—which he confessed he was not—he believed that, instead of good, evil would certainly come of it. He was also of opinion that there had been no such increase of drunkenness of late as to demand the passing of such a wild and violent measure as the one under discussion, for either its cure or prevention. He, in common, he supposed, with other hon. Members, had received a letter that morning from the hon. Members whose names appeared on the back of the Bill, stating a certain view that would be taken of votes given in favour of the measure, which view, he was bound to say, was not the one which was likely to be taken on reading the terms of the Preamble of the Bill, which went a vast deal further and raised a much larger question than the terms of the letter indicated. The Preamble of the Bill stated that the common sale—what that exactly meant he did not know—of intoxicating liquors was a fruitful source of crime, of immorality, of pauperism,

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  of disease, of insanity, and of premature death. Whether the sale or the abuse of the use of intoxicating liquors led to those results was a question upon which people might fairly entertain different opinions; but, admitting that the promoters of this measure were right in the view they toot of the matter, how did they propose to check the evils which they thus pointed out? He should have thought that a trade which entailed all the evils referred to in the Preamble of the Bill should only be dealt with by Act of Parliament, after serious and careful deliberation; but the promoters of the Bill proposed to leave the matter to the chance vote of a parish or a borough where it was said to exist; and to do that would, he thought, be a gross injustice to the community at large. Would it be just, for instance, towards a large portion of the community that their property, in which a vast aggregate sum had been invested, should be liable by such a chance vote to be utterly destroyed? In the letter to which he had referred, hon. Members were asked to vote in favour of giving large majorities some power of checking the establishment of public-houses where there was a desire in the district to do without them. There was something rather Jesuitical in that letter, because it would lead to the supposition that such establishments were not in existence already; whereas the real root of the injustice of this measure was, that it sought to destroy a large existing trade, which had been permitted to grow up in this country with the sanction of the Legislature, and which was founded upon the ordinary and the true principles of supply and demand. He would also remind the House that matters with respect to that trade did not stand in the same position as they did 50 years ago, when the licensing authorities could either license or put down a public-house at their good will and pleasure, for at the present time, a public-house could not be put down without good reason shown, and the decision given could be reviewed on appeal to a judicial tribunal—in fact, the owner of a public-house held his license, not at will, but during good behaviour. Under those circumstances, he asked whether the vast mass of people who had invested their money in this trade were to be exposed to utter ruin by a mere chance vote, which might be the result of an
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  active canvass on one side or the other? He had said that, in his opinion, more harm than good was likely to result from this Bill, and he would explain his reasons for adopting that view. It was not to be expected that when the property of the publicans was at stake all the activity and all the canvassing would be restricted to the temperance side of the question. All who knew what influence the quart pot had in elections would understand that this Bill, instead of restricting drunkenness, would be likely very largely to increase it, and to give rise to habits that were not easily left off. Then, again, who were the persons that it was most desirable should keep public-houses—was it desirable that that trade should be exercised by those who were reckless of consequences, and who would do anything to procure a temporary trade during the uncertain term that they might be permitted to enjoy it? In his opinion, it was of the greatest importance that the trade should be conducted by respectable persons, who would do their best to obey the law, and to restrict, as far as they could, evils which flowed from the abuse of the use of intoxicating drinks; but if this measure were agreed to, the contrary result would ensue, for no respectable man would dare to run the risk of allowing his money to remain in a business that a chance vote might destroy at any time. Was there such a pressing necessity for this measure, that the injustice of putting an end to that enormous trade must be overlooked, in order to stop the consumption of liquor at any price? He believed that drunkenness, instead of increasing, was steadily decreasing in this country—except, perhaps, in Lancashire—and he feared that the agitation that had been got up in favour of this measure had had the evil effect of banding together all those interested in the trade, who would look for some time on all necessary reforms with a jaundiced eye, which otherwise they would willingly have accepted. Another evil result of this agitation had been to induce the public to think that the public-houses were the causes of intemperance, which was far from being the case. In 1831 the population of the metropolitan police district was 1,500,000, the apprehensions for drunkenness being 41,000; whereas, in 1871, the population was 3,800,000, and the apprehen-

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  sions were 20,000. Thus, while population had doubled, the arrests had decreased by 50 per cent. Considering that the police were under similar arrangements at the two periods, he could not but conclude that drunkenness had decreased. He had, moreover, inquired into the state of Bristol and Liverpool, and Birmingham and Manchester, places which were a fair sample of the large towns of England. Now, in Bristol the number of public-houses and beerhouses in 1870 was 1,220, or 1 to 149 of the population, a very handsome allowance. The number of persons arrested as drunk and disorderly was 1,040, or 1 in 175 of the population. In Liverpool there were 2,294 public-houses or beerhouses, or 1 to every 215 persons, a much smaller proportion; but the arrests were 21,000, or 1 in 23. If public-houses were the cause of drunkenness, and not merely the means which other causes drove people to avail themselves of, how could that great discrepancy be accounted for? Again, in Birmingham the number of those houses was 1 to 185 persons, while the arrests were 1 to 154; whereas in Manchester the public-houses were 1 to 146, and the arrests 1 to 32 of the population. He could only attribute the excessive drunkenness of Manchester and Liverpool to the rapid increase of population having brought together numbers of people who were addicted to drink. Indeed, taking the country generally, the amount of intemperance was in proportion to the ratio of increase of the population. It had been suggested that the Manchester police were extremely vigilant; but that was a question which could be tested by the criminal statistics. Now, in 1870, the number of indictable offences which came to the knowledge of the police in Manchester was 5,744, while 539 persons were committed for trial, or 1 for every 10 offences. At Birmingham, on the other hand, the offences were 822—and, considering that the population of the two places was nearly the same, this showed the close relation between crime and drunkenness—and 360 persons were committed for trial, or 1 for every 2½ offences. It thus appeared that the police at Birmingham were four times as vigilant as at Manchester. At Liverpool the offences reported were 4,500, and the committals one in 6½, while at Bristol the offences were 210, and the com-
  474
  mittals 104, or 1 in 2. It was evident, therefore, that the comparative efficiency of the police did not explain the anomaly, but that some other cause which could not be exactly got at drove people to drink, and whether a public-house was 100 yards nearer or farther off would not affect the matter. In illustration of the comparative influence of affliction and prosperity, he might mention that at Manchester, in 1861, during the Cotton Famine, the arrests for drunkenness were 1 in 148 of the population, while in 1870 they were 1 in 32, the proportion of public-houses being 1 to 155 in 1861, and 1 to 146 in 1870. He feared that to aim at restricting the number of public-houses would land them in a fool's paradise, and he believed the large sums of money earned in these places, and the great amount of work to be given for it, lay at the root of the terrible state of things of which they all complained. In short, he must repeat that, looking at all those considerations, he could come to no other conclusion than that the Bill was unjust not only to the persons concerned in the trade in question, but also to the country at large, for were public-houses really the direct cause of the evils mentioned in the Preamble it would be the duty of Parliament not merely to close them, but to forbid the brewers to brew, the distillers to distil, the merchant to import wines and spirits, and to oblige everybody to slake his thirst with what the spring afforded him. The mischief was caused not by the sale, but by the undue use of the drink. Nobody had a right to say to another—"You shall not drink, even in moderation;" yet the Bill would have that effect on persons unable to obtain what they wanted except at a public-house. He opposed it, therefore, as a measure which would prevent Parliament from regulating public-houses, and preventing that abuse of them which was so common.
  MR. PLIMSOLLsaid, that he had never yet been able to give a vote in support of that Bill, because he had never been able to see that two-thirds of the inhabitants of a parish had a right to coerce the other third in a matter affecting their personal comfort. The evils of intemperance, however, were so great, so forced upon their attention at every turn, and his sympathy with the hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle,

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  in the hon. Baronet's desire to find a remedy for some of those evils, was so intense, that last year, at the expiration of the Session, he determined to visit the United States and see whether prohibitory laws were as efficacious as they had been represented; for if they really reduced drunkenness, crime, and poverty almost to zero, the objection to infringing the personal liberty of the minority might deserve reconsideration. He accordingly went through Canada and most of the States, and would now give the House a few of his experiences on the subject. In Montreal he found that spirit licenses had been extended to grocers, in the hope that intemperance would thereby be checked; but the effect was quite the reverse, and the measure was accordingly repealed. The experiment of vesting the licensing power in the municipality had also been tried, but the members were subjected to such pressure from their constituents, that they unanimously petitioned for relief from the duty, and it was accordingly intrusted to Commissioners appointed by the Legislature. In the State of Ottawa, again, he found a most extraordinary law, passed a few years ago at the instance of the then Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Dunkin, the spirit of which was to make the publican responsible for all his customer might do, if he became intoxicated. For instance, if a man got drunk at a public-house, and assaulted anyone, the publican keeping the house was liable for the consequences arising therefrom. He could also be sued for damages if a man who had become drunk at his house fell down in the street and perished of cold; or if he supplied drink to a person whose husband, brother, or father had warned him against doing so. In fact, there never had been a measure of a more stringent character, and the House would be surprised to hear what was the result. He asked Mr. Dunkin if any convictions had taken place under the Act, and that gentleman said he did not know. He (Mr. Plimsoll) then said to him—"You conducted the Bill through Parliament, and if anybody had been convicted or fined you must have known of it;" and he replied that no such conviction had ever been obtained to his knowledge. It seemed, however, to him (Mr. Plimsoll) folly to legislate if legislation was not to be operative. In Carolina, no new li-
  476
  cense was issued unless the applicant obtained the written concurrence of two-thirds of the inhabitants, a provision which he thought might be adopted in this country if the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department should think it worthy of consideration. In Massachusetts and Maine, the sale of intoxicating drinks was altogether illegal. On his asking, however, the present Mayor of Portland, a city of 31,000 inhabitants, how many public-houses existed in spite of the law, he was told that there were probably about 300, and that there were about 2,000 arrests per annum for drunkenness, though only 600 persons were brought before the magistrates, those guilty of no violence or disturbance being liberated the next morning. An agency was provided in these States for the sale of intoxicating liquors for sacramental and medical purposes, and to see how that was carried on, he went to the bar and asked for a pint of whisky. To his surprise, the only question put to him was—"Which sort will you have?" He was so taken aback that he was silent, whereupon the barman handed him a list of 13 qualities of whisky. Finding that General Neal Dow, the well-known advocate of the Maine Law, lived at Portland, he called on him. On his putting the same questions to him as to the Mayor, General Dow denied that there were 300 public-houses, expressing his belief that there were only 50, and certainly not more than 100. He (Mr. Plimsoll) was reduced to great perplexity by these conflicting statements; but he resolved to try and clear the matter up, and he did so in the following way:—The State of Maine had decided that the traffic was illegal, and had prohibited it, but the Federal Government treated the matter in a different way. There were two licenses—the one issued by the State and the other issued by the Federal authorities. There was a revenue officer, whose duty it was to collect the license duty from all persons who sold spirits; but as the public-houses did not differ in appearance from other houses, he was obliged to find out the people who dealt in spirits. He (Mr. Plimsoll) got an introduction to that gentleman; he was called Mr. W. H. Smith; and he found him a very pleasant and amiable gentleman. He informed him that in that town of 31,000 people, there were 12

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  wholesale licenses and 290 retail licenses. Mr. Smith also told him that, though with the exercise of great vigilance, he managed to collect about 300 Federal licenses, there were he supposed 100 more houses that managed to evade it because the traffic was contraband, so far as the State of Maine was concerned. The Mayor also told him that the number of houses was much the same as before the State authorities refused to issue licenses. In Rockland, Augusta, and other towns he found the same state of things prevailed. In order to judge for himself, he turned out of his hotel one night after 12, to see whether the public-houses were open or not. He found them everywhere open. He had with him the dinner bill of the United States Hotel, Boston, Massachusetts, which he would hand to the Home Secretary, from which that right hon. Gentleman would see that one part of the carte contained the dishes for the day, and the other the list of wines obtainable, with the prices affixed. That was in a State where there were stringent liquor laws intended to prohibit drinking entirely. At Portland, he found the same thing at the hotel where he stayed. That being the case, it did not appear to him that legislation such as that proposed by the hon. Member for Carlisle would secure the object which he and his Friends had in view. He (Mr. Plimsoll) was not a partizan in this question. He was as sincerely desirous as the hon. Baronet to put an end to the evils arising from drunkenness; but he would suggest to the hon. Baronet that he should hold his hand until he had obtained accurate information as to the actual working elsewhere of the system he advocated. Until the hon. Baronet had gone to the trouble to do that, and was prepared by practical experience and realised facts to sustain his proposals, he would ask the hon. Baronet whether it was fair in him—whether, in fact, he was entitled to ask the House to legislate before he had ascertained those important facts? What he would suggest to the hon. Baronet was, that at the end of the Session he should visit the United States and ascertain for himself the actual working of the system he recommended for adoption by that House. Surely, it was not unreasonable to ask an hon. Member who had made a much larger request of the House in asking it to pass that Bill to
  478
  inform himself as to the working of such laws, for if the Alliance would but send out a dispassionate man to report, they would hear the last of that wretched Maine Law. The Foreign Office might also obtain through their Consuls a Return of the amount collected from spirit dealers in Maine Law States, with the number of arrests for drunkenness and of the population, so as to refute what he must term the mendacious statements made at enthusiastic meetings as to the working of the law in America. Before these restrictions were introduced the sum paid for licenses by publicans was $1,200,000 in one district; since then publicans kept houses without paying licenses, and now they had fallen back upon the old system, they had only been able to collect to the amount of $300,000. He certainly could not vote for the Bill of the hon. Baronet; but he was quite as anxious as the hon. Baronet to promote temperance and moderation, and what he would suggest would be that the issue of new licenses should not in future be made, except with the consent of two-thirds of the ratepayers. They must recognize the licensed houses which now existed; but they could empower the local authorities to buy up say, 1 in 20 of the existing houses per annum for 10 years, raising funds to do so by levying a second license payment of a local character upon the remainder, which, in the absence of additional taxation, would be enormously increased in value by the diminution of their number, and that would neither inconvenience the public nor injure those engaged in the trade. When new neighbourhoods grew up the voting power of the inhabitants would be a check upon the issue of an undue number of licenses. One other important point upon which they should insist was the checking of adulteration by severe and stringent regulations. He knew that salt was largely used in adulterating beer, with the express purpose of creating thirst, and he thought it was a shame that when a workman purchased a pint of beer for refreshment he should find himself more thirsty after than before he had drunk it. Above all, he had great faith in the gradual power of education and moral influences, and he could not consent to impose harsh restrictions on the personal liberty of any individual in the manner proposed by the Bill.
  SIR HENRY-SELWIN-IBBETSONsaid, he was quite sure that the House would agree with him when he said that the hon. Member for Derby, who had just spoken, had no need to regret having paid the visit to America, and the acquisition of such a mass of valuable and important information as that he had laid before them, and which must be sufficient to prevent the introduction of a system that had proved in its working to be most prejudicial. At the same time, he (Sir Henry Selwin-Ibbetson) quite endorsed the statement as to the strong desire which existed on all sides of that House to deal, in some way or other, with the question. He admitted, also, that the hon. Baronet (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) and those who supported the Bill had the same object at heart as they all had; and it was only because he believed that it would not effect the object they had in view that he should that day vote, as he had voted before, against this Bill. Hon. Members of that House had had that day circulated among them a document signed by many clergymen and other respectable persons in its favour, and a large number of Petitions had been presented; but he could not help thinking that the gentlemen who had signed these Petitions and Memorials were utterly misled in the views they had expressed, for he was satisfied that if the Bill passed it would lead them into the greatest difficulty. In the first place, it would cause an annual agitation throughout the country, for those who entertained the same opinions as the hon. Member for Carlisle, and who formed a majority in any district, would, of course, triumph, and in consequence shut up certain public-houses. But did any hon. Member of that House mean to tell him that during the following three years, at the expiration of which only the decision could be reversed, a constant and perpetual agitation would not be kept up to obtain that reversal? And when that was accomplished there would commence fresh agitation by the defeated party for the same end. Then, again, such a perpetual system of turmoil and confusion would only have the effect of establishing public-houses without capital or character, and thus defeat again the object they all had in view. But then came another phase of the question—they would leave entirely untouched those districts where a majority of rate-
  480
  payers were opposed to the Bill of the hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle. No doubt an evil did exist which it was difficult to remedy by legislation; but, in his opinion, they would arrive at their object by steady and gradual means alone, and not by a sudden revulsion or change of the existing state of things in any particular district. Luton, with a population of 21,000, was an instance that by the application of the stringent provisions of the Habitual Criminals Act and of the Beer Act, passed a few years ago, crime and intoxication could be greatly reduced; for since the magistrates of Luton had rigidly enforced those provisions the grave crimes of that district had been reduced to less than a fourth of their previous number, and the minor offences had been reduced more than 40 per cent. In point of fact, night poaching had almost entirely disappeared from that district. The police reported that a very large proportion of those who previously took part in criminal practices had gone to regular work, because the ill-conducted houses in which they previously concocted crimes had been closed, and at the last Assizes there was only one prisoner for trial out of a population of 30,000 in the district. He believed, moreover, that the trade, generally speaking, was greatly maligned in this matter, for there was no body of men who detested seeing drunkards come to their houses more than publicans, seeing that their property was invested in these establishments, and the conduct of such men exposed them to the risk of losing their licenses, and, of course, what they had invested. In his (Sir Henry Selwin-Ibbetson's) opinion, therefore, any legislation which tended to strengthen the publicans' hands in dealing with such persons would not only give them as a body great satisfaction, but produce the best results not only in the management of public-houses, but in the suppression of drunkenness. That was, in his opinion, the course to pursue; but any attempt made to set up the arbitrary rules of the majority of ratepayers throughout the country would never succeed. He held in his hand a passage from a speech made some years ago by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham (Mr. John Bright), who was not now present in the House, in which he stated that a Permissive Bill, if passed, would create confusion and diffi-

  481
  culties throughout the country, and that it was a monstrous proposition that a majority of ratepayers should be empowered to suppress at once the trade of 100,000 of the people of the country. Then, again, there was another part of this question with which the hon. Member for Carlisle did not seem to remember—namely, that it was calculated to inflict a large amount of injustice; for by lâches, or by some other means, this state of things existed—that the persons engaged in the liquor trade had acquired the right of custom to have their licenses renewed, and that right would be taken from them. This Bill further proposed that great injustice should be done to a large mass of people throughout the country, because a certain number of houses might not have been properly conducted, and because a certain number of the population had not been able to control their own actions. If the House agreed with what fell from a right rev. Prelate in "another place," they would refuse to support a Bill which would destroy that freedom to which we owed our dearest posessions—namely, the individual freedom of the subjects of this country. The Bill proceeded from a false point of view; it would be a failure here as it had been elsewhere. It would produce such a reaction throughout the country that they would return to a far worse state of things than the present. As to the statistics which had been often quoted in the House, they ought to be looked upon with great caution, because a large proportion of those figures were merely the repetition of convictions against the same person. He would now refer to something that had fallen from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley). In dealing with the subject of drunkenness at Manchester, it should not be lost sight of that there had been a strong agitation going on there for some time past in reference to this question. The police had exhibited greater activity there than in other towns, and Manchester could not therefore be properly brought into comparison with other towns for the purposes of that discussion. When he inquired of the police last year as to the cause of the increase of drunkenness at Manchester and other places, he was told they believed it was more to be attributed to the fact that large numbers of public-
  482
  houses had been just put down, and the frequenters of them had thereby been thrust into more respectable parts of the town, where they had come more under the notice and observation of the police, than to any actual increase in the rate of drunkenness. He believed that to be the case, and that that circumstance should not be overlooked in making deductions from a comparison of one place with another. In conclusion, he would only express his hope that the House would strive, as far as they were able, to deal honestly, fairly, and even stringently with this question, and would not be led away by any such attempts as had been made that day from the calm and rational contemplation of a subject which required careful and gradual treatment, if any successful result was to be expected from the efforts of the Legislature.
  MR. T. E. SMITHsaid, the experience of the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll) would, no doubt, be of great value in that debate, if the extent of the country and the diversity of interests to be affected by the proposed legislation were at all comparable to those to which American legislation applied. One of the evils which attended the American system, however, was that the law was passed by the State Legislature, and thereby many classes and many interests were affected by it, and that led to opposition from very large numbers of the population. That evil had, however, been obviated in the Bill now before the House, which placed it within the power of each place to decide for itself. He (Mr. T. E. Smith) went to America quite as unprejudiced as the hon. Member for Derby, and he came away from that country with opinions entirely different from those of the hon. Member; for he returned with the conviction that it was his duty to vote in favour of the Bill; and from what he saw there, he had no hesitation in saying that the principle of the Bill failed in those parts of America in which it was unpopular; but where the people were in favour of that principle it worked well. The hon. Member for Derby advised the hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle to take a trip to America, as he would possibly come back with different opinions to those which he set out. Now, on the contrary, he (Mr. T. E. Smith) believed he would come back with his present

  483
  opinions more strongly impressed upon him, and he would advise the hon. Member for Derby, though he should be sorry to lose him from that House, to return to America and test the feeling of the country there. Let him become a naturalized citizen of America, and if he wanted to get into the Legislature he would soon find that he would have to adopt the prohibitory ticket. He believed the Bill to be based upon a sound principle, because it was based on the principle that it was not the duty of Parliament to interfere in matters upon which the people were quite capable of looking after themselves. It had been often said that this was an attempt to make people sober by Act of Parliament; but a greater mistake had never been made. Last year they had the Bill of the Home Secretary; this year they had a Bill introduced into "another place;" the Bill of the hon. Member for West Essex (Sir Henry Selwin-Ibbetson); and another brought in by the hon. Member for Fifeshire (Sir Robert Anstruther), and all of those had for their aim a diminution of the drunkenness which existed in the country. Now, all of those he maintained were attempts to make people sober by Act of Parliament; but the Bill now under discussion purposed simply to leave it in the power of the people to decide whether they liked or not to have great and enormous temptations for drunkenness in their midst. He believed the people were strongly in favour of a such a system, and he believed that the Bill was not only sound in principle and wise in policy, but that it was also opportune at the present time. They found that all previous attempts to settle the question had failed, and they had good reason to believe that most of the Bills now before the House would be failures also; that being the case, he thought it was the proper time to urge that the question should be left to the people themselves. He had been told by many friends that at the present day they were suffering from over legislation; but in that particular instance the House was not laying down an arbitrary law, but was simply leaving the question to the people themselves, and that, he believed, was the true way of dealing with the subject. Many men were in favour of the Nine Hours' movement; but if anyone had tried to pass a Bill to
  484
  make it compulsory, it might have been brought in year after year without the slightest chance of its passing. But that which never could have been done by Parliament had been done by the working classes combining, and thus by united action defeating the great army of capitalists and winning the day. They, in dealing with the liquor traffic, had also a great army of capitalists and vested interests to meet. He quite agreed with the hon. Baronet the Member for West Essex that there were vested interests to be considered, and that whenever the Bill got into Committee they would have to consider the subject of compensation. The country might think it unnecessary and very hard that they should have to pay compensation for what had been injurious to them; but they must do it. They paid out the slaveholder, and they compensated the officers of the Army; and he believed that where a trade had been licensed and had received the sanction of the Government, if they abolished it they would have to do as they had done in other changes which had been made for the public advantage—namely, to pay a considerable sum of money. It was said that the country would not stand it; but he entertained a different view of the question. Professor Leone Levi, in a pamphlet upon the subject, had estimated the fixed capital invested in the trade at £80,000,000. Accepting that estimate as correct, did it not seem an enormous amount; but what was the fact? Why, that they spent annually £100,000,000 upon the traffic itself; therefore, he said, they could approach the matter, and that the financial difficulty involved in the question was not so great as upon the face of it it appeared to be. Believing, then, that the Bill was sound in principle, wise in policy, and that it might be made just in practice, he should vote for the second reading.
  MR. F. S. POWELLsaid, it was impossible for him to feel anything but gratitude to the hon. Baronet and others, the object of whose efforts was the diminution of intemperance; but he thought the best way to effect the desired purpose, was not to enforce severe legislation such as that now proposed, but to rely on the beneficial effects of a moral, social, and Christian education. In discussing that question, moreover, they

  485
  must not devote too much attention to the experience of Scotland. In England, the great consumption was of beer; in Scotland, it was of spirits. Spirits might be easily bought on Saturday and kept until Sunday; but in the condition in which the majority of the artizan class lived in England, it was practically impossible for them to lay by a store of beer for the Sunday. Another great difference which prevailed between the North and the South of the Tweed consisted in the observance of the Sabbath. It was abhorrent to Scotch minds to have any business transactions on that day; while the same objection did not exist in this country. Therefore, he thought, they could not augur that because severe legislation in regard to one day of the week worked well in Scotland, equal popularity and success would attend similar legislation in England. He wished now to say a word on behalf of the right rev. Prelate who had spoken on the subject in "another place." That right rev. Prelate did not say, as the hon. Baronet had stated, that such a Bill as the present was an outrage on the moral sense of the people; but that it was monstrous to enact that it should not be a crime to manufacture, but that it should be a crime to sell liquor. What the right rev. Prelate meant was, that it would be an outrage on moral sense to allow an article to be made, and then forbid it to be sold. Neither did he agree with the hon. Baronet in regard to the brewers and the present law. He was not connected with the liquor traffic; but he believed the brewers wished to have the law amended in at least three particulars—they desired an amendment of the law of a stringent kind against adulteration; they wished keepers of houses to have a stronger protection against evil-doers, and greater power to enable them to preserve order; and they were also of opinion that the terms and administration of the law should be more severe with reference to those who became drunk or exposed themselves in a state of intoxication in the public thoroughfares. He believed that great benefit would result from the more severe punishment of drunkards, and it was a mockery of law that a person who had been convicted some 20 or 30 times should have a merely nominal punishment. He appealed to hon. Members whether the speech of the hon.
  486
  Baronet was not a Maine Law speech. Why, the language which he adopted with reference to those who dealt in spirituous liquors was the language of condemnation. They became "drink men"—they were "spoilers;" and he concluded by calling attention to the great controversy between the public on the one hand and the publicans on the other. He (Mr. F. S. Powell) could not concur in that condemnation. The names of Buxton, Hanbury, and other manufacturers of intoxicating drinks, were associated with all kinds of good works that had made this country great and happy. The hon. Baronet further said that this was a moderate measure. Surely, nobody could describe it as such, except those who in their hearts and souls desired a Maine Law. If the scheme of the hon. Baronet, therefore, was not a Maine Law scheme, his speech was a Maine Law speech. The Bill, however, had a Maine Law Preamble, and the Parliament which said that the "common sale of intoxicating liquors was a fruitful source of crime, immorality, pauperism, disease, insanity," and all the rest of it, and a Parliament which adopted that statement and any longer allowed that common sale to continue, was a Parliament not alive to its duties and unworthy of the English people. It had been his fortune, as it had been that of other hon. Members, to pass some time during the last autumn in America; and he was bound to say that his experience went entirely with what had been stated to the House with so much force that afternoon, and he thought the hon. Member who last spoke described not only the experience of travellers, but the judgment of the United States. Now, he (Mr. E. S. Powell) had received during the last few days a document of considerable interest, published by the Medical President of the State Board of Health in the State of Massachussets. It bore the date of January, 1872. That gentleman was one of the most distinguished physicians in America, and he was a man of enlarged philanthrophy. He said—
  "From the study I have made of our correspondence with American agents in all parts of the globe, I am induced to believe that the permission to sell mild ale, beer, and light wines would, under very general rules, be really the promotion of temperance in New England, as it apparently is elsewhere."

  487
  The hon. Baronet, too, was singularly unfortunate in the reference he made to Mr. Greeley, when speaking of him as the President-elect. [Sir WILFRID LAWSON: I said in the opinion of some persons.] In the opinion of the majority he would never be elected to the office of President. He was one of the staunchest Protectionists that ever lived in America or any other country; and he (Mr. F. S. Powell) would not quote a syllable written or spoken by a man from whose general policy he believed most hon. Members of that House emphatically dissented. The hon. Baronet had said that he had the American laws in his pocket. It must be a very condensed edition of those laws; and he feared the edition consisted but of extracts, and that the hon. Baronet was not familiar either with all the legislation which existed in all the States, or with the current of reform with reference to the liquor law. The circumstances of this country and the circumstances of America differed most widely. In America such was the invigorating character of their translucent atmosphere that comparatively but little desire was felt for intoxicating drinks, and the volume he held in his hand strongly confirmed that view. The amount of spirituous liquors which was drunk in this country with perfect impunity would produce painful intoxication in America. Therefore, the legislation of the two countries, where there were these important differences in their climate, could not be compared. The severity of the law failed in America, and he asserted that the law, where it was carried into execution, was most irregular and uncertain. The testimony of Americans was that the English policy of only attempting to regulate the sale of liquor was much wiser than their policy of nominal prohibition, the only result of which was regulation in an irregular manner. The hon. Gentleman had challenged him to bring forward one instance of a retrograde action; and he could give him two illustrations of it. Some years ago it was impossible to obtain a glass of beer in any public-house in New York on Sundays; but that law had been rescinded, and now there was no difficulty in the matter whatever. Again, in the State of Connecticut, finding it impossible to maintain the restriction, the Maine Liquor Law had been relaxed in favour of beer. It was
  488
  interesting to state these circumstances, as they showed that where the law was in force it either was not observed, or that the difficulty of enforcing it was so great that it led to the relaxation of the statute. The hon. Baronet said that a Bill such as this was the logical conclusion of the general desire to put an end to drunkenness; but in his opinion it was the illogical beginning of a new movement. He would give another extract from the report of the same distinguished gentleman, the President of the Board of Health of Massachussetts—
  "Alcohol is not by any means the only stimulus that brings disease and misery on human beings, although perhaps it is a stronger inducement to crime than all others. Were there, therefore, a strict rule that no article stimulating to the nervous system should be used by the present party of devotees to abstinence the dogma would split that party into innumerable fragments. It would probably be divided into various small cliques, each excluded for its intemperate use of some favourite stimulus—tobacco, opium, coffee, or tea, &c. Scarcely a week passes that I am not called to 'prohibit' in a particular case all use of one or other of these articles. There are thousands of what could be happy lives were it not for the 'demon of intemperance' in the shape of tobacco.',
  It was said that this was a Permissive Bill; but there were no more mischievous laws than those which were permissive. For the last 25 years they had had permissive laws with regard to the public health, and nothing but evil had resulted, and now that Parliament was alive to that fact, compulsory legislation was about to be enacted. If they desired to suppress habits of intoxication, that would best be done not by measures such as that which the House was discussing, but by ameliorating the condition of the people, by giving them better homes, by improving their workshops, and affording them every opportunity of bettering themselves. In conclusion, he hoped Parliament would not give its sanction to legislation such as that now proposed by the hon. Baronet—a legislation of pains and penalties, of bonds and shackles; but that it would resort to such measures as had already done so much to remove evils which had been long believed to be inveterate and invincible.
  MR. BRUCEsaid, he wished to state in a few words the reasons why he must continue that year to give the same opposition to the measure of the hon. Baronet as he had given in former years.

  489
  That Bill was brought in by an hon. Member deservedly popular, who always conducted his case with good humour and ability, and it was supported by men of whom no one could speak without the greatest respect—he meant immense numbers of the working classes and of others who looked to the measure as a means of saving themselves from the evils of intemperance. But when he came to look at the Bill his respect ceased, for it was framed on principles so extravagant and unjust that those who supported it were obliged to do so on some principles which they fancied they found in it, while they passed in silence over its main principles. They said that they supported the Bill because it contained the principle of popular control. But the Bill contained two provisions which were, in fact, its leading principles—one was, that by a vote of a certain majority of ratepayers all sale of intoxicating liquors should be stopped; the other was, that it could be stopped without notice or compensation in any form to those who, without any fault of their own, were to be deprived of their licenses. But those who opposed the Bill declared that it was a monstrous thing that popular control should prevent the sale of liquor in all cases whatever. For it should be remembered that this measure went not only to the suppression of public-houses and beershops, but to the prohibition of the sale of liquor by any grocer or wine merchant; so that a majority of two-thirds might prevent the other one-third from enjoying what in many cases was innocent and in some cases salutary. Was there any evidence that the Bill was likely to succeed in its object? On the question of the existence of drunkenness he wished to say a few words. He was bound in doing so to state that nothing was more puzzling than the statistics of drunkenness, for if he was to judge by his own observation and by what others had told him of their experience, he would say that in the last 50 years there had been a marked improvement in this respect and in the general conduct of the people. But if, on the other hand, he were to look to statistics, the picture was by no means reassuring. He had had prepared by a clerk in the Home Office statistics on this subject, and they appeared to indicate a very formidable increase in the vice of
  490
  drunkenness. For instance, the number of persons drunk and incapable, and drunk and disorderly, in 1861, was 82,000, or about 20 per cent of the persons proceeded against summarily; but in 1871 the number was 142,000, or about 26 per cent of the whole number of persons proceeded against summarily. In the one case, 1 in 244 of the population was charged with drunkenness; in the other, 1 in 159. Hon. Gentlemen who had spoken on the subject had always connected crime and drunkenness, and, undoubtedly, to a great extent they were right. But how was the increase of drunkenness, which would appear from the figures he had quoted, at all consistent with what was admitted beyond all question to be the great decrease of crime which had lately occurred? The year 1871, for instance, was remarkable for the immense amount of drunkenness. It was a year of undoubted prosperity and of high wages, and a large part of those wages found their way into the public-house; yet in that year there was a very large and positive decrease of crime. According to the figures quoted by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley) the criminal statistics of such districts as Liverpool and Manchester, showed charges of drunkenness exceeding in their proportion those of London by about 10 times. And if they returned to the criminal statistics of Ashton-under-Lyne, it would be found that 54 per cent of the offences came under the head of drunkenness. In London the cases of drunkenness were only 4·5 per cent of the crimes committed. The explanation was, that here those cases only were reported which were brought before the magistrates; but for everyone that was brought before a magistrate there were 10 who were locked up by the police and discharged next morning. It was clear, therefore, that in London no faith could be placed in our statistics of drunkenness for purposes of comparison with other places. Judging from the fact that there was, on the whole, a close connection between crime and drunkenness, and seeing that crime had greatly decreased, he had come to the conclusion that drunkenness, too, had considerably diminished. He ventured to say that much might be done in the way of regulation. By the stringent application of the Act of his hon. Friend (Sir Henry Selwin-Ibbetson), and of the

  491
  Act for the Prevention of Crime, the number of beer and public-houses in the district of Luton had been reduced from 226 to 188, and for 1 that had been opened 39 had been closed. But the reduction in crime had been out of all proportion to the reduction in the number of those houses, because the houses suppressed were exceptionally ill-conducted, and really nurseries of crime. The result was, that the number of criminal cases committed were reduced from 257 in the year ending with September, 1869, to 73 in the year ending with September, 1871. But that was not all; for the grosser crimes, such as might have been concocted in those houses, had been actually reduced by 75 per cent. He argued then, from the evidence which had come before him, for measures of regulation; for there was evidence in favour of regulation; but where was the evidence in favour of the measure advocated by his hon. Friend? The hon. Baronet had referred to America, but on that point it was impossible not to give weight to the evidence of the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll), who had given the results of his own observation, and whose figures were very carefully prepared. It should also be borne in mind that England was a country mainly of great towns, in which a large proportion of the population was collected. In some places where public-houses had been suppressed, there had certainly been a great diminution of crime and drunkenness; but that was in rural districts. And so in America. He understood that in the rural parts of Massachusetts, for instance, the law had operated with some success. His hon. Friend the Member for the West Biding (Mr. F. S. Powell) had quoted largely from the evidence of Dr. Bowditch, of Boston. That gentleman was called upon to report on the subject, but a portion of the information he had obtained went so decidedly against what he knew to be the convictions of the people of Massachusetts, that he shrank from embodying it in his report. It appeared from the report of the Chief Constable of Boston, that there had been a steady increase in the number of persons taken up for drunkenness in spite of all that had been done to suppress the liquor traffic, so that the prohibitory law had been altogether violated. Prohibition had not succeeded in checking drunkenness, but there was
  492
  one thing, however, in which it had succeeded—and that was in bringing about a systematic violation of the law. What they should do, then, was this—they should do their best to regulate the sale of liquor, but should not set themselves against what appeared to be a law of nature—that was, a desire for the use of stimulants—knowing that if they did so they would be only encouraging evasion and even defiance of the law. This Bill comprised principles which were contrary to a strict sense of justice, and which shocked all by their extravagance; and yet a number of men, whom it was impossible to speak of without respect, came to that House year after year raising false hopes by supporting the measure. He hoped the House would give an honest vote on this occasion, and that those only would vote for the second reading who were ready to support the measure to the end.
  MR. BIRLEYsaid, that although the House was doubtless becoming impatient of the continuation of the debate, he was reluctantly compelled to trespass for a few moments on their attention, in consequence of the observations which had fallen from his right hon. Friend the Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley), who had deservedly so much influence with that House. If he had known it was the intention of the right hon. Gentleman to prefer an indictment against Manchester with regard to intemperance, he would have taken care to provide himself with authentic documents which might have gone far to prove a solution to the difficult problem proposed. He did not believe, however, that they would have settled the matter entirely, because in those questions it was almost impossible to arrive at the absolute truth; but he thought it must be quite clear to the House that there was no real relation between the drunkenness of their large towns and the convictions for drunkenness which appeared in the police reports. He held in his hand a Return of the convictions for drunkenness which had lately been presented to the House, and while it appeared that in Manchester they were as 1 to about 40 of the population, they were in Tenterden about 1 in 3,500. It was impossible that that was a true test of the comparative sobriety of the two places. The fact was, that in Manchester there was

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  great vigilance on the part of the police, and there were not those summary discharges which were of usual occurrence in other towns, and therefore the drunken persons in Manchester were really brought before the magistrates. With regard to the Bill now before the House, he thought it worth while to consider for a moment whether the effect of passing it would be so immediate or so startling as either the advocates or the opponents of the Bill seemed to imagine. His confirmed impression was that if the Bill should pass into law they would find that in some places—not, perhaps, very numerous at first—an effort would be made to put the law in practice. He believed they would find that if the Bill were passed, none of those disastrous results which had been predicted would be realized. The demand for the Bill was not, as had been asserted, the work of a few agitators, but an honest expression of the popular feeling. It had been stated that numerous Petitions had been presented against the Bill; but he respectfully submitted that the Petitions in its favour had been far more numerous, as the signatories could not be less than 1,000,000. Of those at least 100,000 were from Manchester, and as he was a Representative of that city, that was his justification for the position he maintained on the present occasion. The Home Secretary had expressed a hope that the vote taken on that occasion would be an honest vote. He (Mr. Birley) hoped so too. By the Bill it was proposed simply to take the veto of the ratepayers instead of the magistrates, and everything else in the measure might be brought into harmony with that principle; while with regard to the question of compensation to those now engaged in the trade, whether brewers, licensed victuallers, or beer-shop-keepers, he was prepared—and he believed the people of the country were prepared—to act on the most liberal basis. In conclusion, he should not trouble the House with any further remarks than to say he should support the second reading of the Bill.
  MR. HUSSEY VIVIANsaid, he would not detain the House more than a few minutes in explaining the manner in which he intended to vote on the present occasion. In common with his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, and the hon. Members who had spoken,
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  he hoped most sincerely that the vote on the second reading of the Bill would be a thoroughly honest one, and would really represent the opinions of Members on the kind and degree of legislation requisite. Formerly he had voted in favour of the Bill, because it was the only chance he had of entering his earnest protest in favour of stringent legislation on this question; but now he found himself in a wholly different position. He found that at present there were no less than four measures before the House dealing with the subject of the liquor traffic, and he should vote for the one which, in his conscience, he believed most calculated to repress drunkenness. He had never supported the Bill as an advocate of the principle of permissive prohibition; and, if it had passed a second reading and not been altered in Committee in that respect, he should have always felt it his duty to vote against it on the third reading. As he had already said, he had hitherto supported the measure because it was the only opportunity he possessed of showing his feelings in favour of legislation to suppress drunkenness. He approved of regulating the liquor traffic rather than the principle of permissive prohibition, as more likely to effect that object. He thought that any attempt to enforce prohibition in this country would fail. He thought it right that they should try a system of regulation first, and, if that should be unsuccessful, he did not know to what extent he might be inclined to go in the direction of prohibition, in order to suppress the intoxication which now prevailed to such an alarming extent in this country. He regretted that that morning, when the House was nearly empty, the hon. Member for Leeds (Mr. Wheel-house) considered it necessary to advert to the manner in which he thought Petitions in favour of that Bill were concocted. His belief was, that there was a very earnest desire on the part of a large number of intelligent men and women throughout the country to suppress drunkenness by all the means in their power, and that they believed that that particular measure was calculated to produce that end; and he therefore did sincerely regret that the hon. Gentleman deemed it his duty to allude in the terms he did to the manner in which Petitions were got up. He had himself presented a large number of Petitions from his

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  own county. He believed they came from the very bottom of the hearts of those who signed them. He respected their feelings as much as he respected anything in the world, and he could not, without pain, hear the mode in which they were spoken of. Although in the altered condition of circumstances he did not intend to record his vote in favour of the Bill, he certainly would not vote against it. He felt so strongly in favour of every measure calculated to repress drunkenness, that he would not vote against the second reading of any such measure, even though he could not support its details; he now intended to give his preference to those other measures which were before the House.
  SIR WILFRID LAWSON, in reply, said, he rose at that juncture because he wished, before the House went to a division, to reply to some arguments which had been advanced against the Bill, and not because he desired to prevent any other hon. Gentleman from speaking. He would confine himself to one or two points alone. Perhaps the most telling speech of the debate was that made by the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll), who had made an impression on the House in consequence of his experience in America. But he (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) did not mean to say that prohibition enforced against the wishes and habits of the great majority of the people could be successful, or could work the benefits he desired to accomplish. What he wished was, that where public opinion was ripe for it, there prohibition should be introduced; and he believed that if the measure became an Act of Parliament it would be of no use whatever, except where the great majority of the people wished to carry it out. His hon. Friend recommended him to go to America. His hon. Friend and other hon. Members would, no doubt, be very glad for him to go to America next year, and that he might return too late to bring forward this question again, so that thus it might be got rid of. But he wished that his hon. Friend, instead of recommending him to go to America, would go with him somewhere nearer home. Would his hon. Friend go round with him some night to the gin palaces, and view the scenes of indescribable misery and wretchedness there to be witnessd—scenes more horrible than those which
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  any savage country could present—and then say that he would vote in this House to prevent those poor creatures from getting a chance of being saved? In that House they were legislating not for America, but for England, and on the experience of his own country he took his stand, and he defied his hon. Friend to indicate one instance in which, where drink shops had been done away with by the good will of the people, great good had not been done. While the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Henley) was speaking on the question, and condemning the Bill because it admitted of chance votes having effect in the matter, it occurred to him (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) that the right hon. Gentleman had forgotten that nearly every hon. Gentleman in the House was there in virtue of the chance votes of electors. Why was a vote arising from the too sad experience of the drink traffic to be stigmatised as a chance vote? The poor people of this country had had experience for years past of the results which accrued from drink, and he believed they would do away with it, if they had the chance. The right hon. Gentleman proved too much, for he wanted to show by the statistics which he produced that drunkenness prevailed to a less degree in places where public-houses existed in abundance, than where there were few; but if that be true, the right hon. Gentleman must, if he followed the theory to its logical sequence, become an advocate of an indiscriminate extension of public-houses. When he said, however, that their agitation had banded publicans together for mutual protection, he (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) confessed that he never had better testimony of the value and efficacy of their organization. The Bill was objected to by the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department on the ground that it would cause perpetual agitation in the attempt to adopt or enforce it. But was there not already agitation enough on this question? That agitation would never cease until justice was done. It would not be stopped by any of the arguments which had been urged to-day, or by the hostility of the right hon. Gentleman himself, and only a feeling of injustice could keep up such an agitation. The people of England had taken up this question, and, having once done so, they would certainly per-

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  severe with it. He should, therefore, go to a division with confidence, feeling that, though he might he defeated, he represented a cause which would ultimately triumph.
  MR. W. FOWLER,: as an hon. Member who, as yet, had neither spoken nor voted upon this question, said, he had made up his mind that it was his duty to vote against the Bill. Many hon. Members did not appear really to understand the nature of the measure proposed, for it had been described as a Bill for giving the ratepayers some control over the licenses; but it was really a Bill to prohibit all licenses. That was not just, and two-thirds of the ratepayers had no right to prohibit the remaining third from doing that which was in itself an innocent act. He could understand a Maine Liquor Law applied to the whole kingdom; but to hand over a prohibitory power in this matter to two-thirds of the ratepayers in any borough was a most anomalous proposal, more especially as a considerable proportion of the two-thirds would be people of the middle and upper classes who never went to public-houses, and would suffer no deprivation if public-houses were closed. He did not yield to any one in his abhorrence of drunkenness, and entertained great respect for many of the supporters of this measure, and should therefore vote with reluctance; but he could not do otherwise than oppose legislation which would be neither politic nor just, and which he thought unworthy of that House.
  VISCOUNT BURYsaid, he had also neither voted nor spoken on the question, but felt that it was no longer possible to pursue that course, for the Permissive Bill agitation had reached such a height that it was impossible for hon. Members to walk out of the House without voting, hoping that no notice would be taken if they did so. In his opinion that agitation was not right or constitutional, for it endeavoured to influence hon. Members, not by fair argument, but by undue pressure. Moreover, the machinery of the Bill itself supplied the means of applying pressure to the ratepayers, for by a system of voting papers the classes most easily worked on and overawed would be subjected to the same influences, and would find it impossible to give an impartial vote as to the adoption of the Permissive Bill; so
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  that the result would be the result of agitation, not the spontaneous decision of the people. It was not what the hon. Baronet said it was—a moderate measure; it was a measure for the confiscation of important interests, for the Bill provided that, after it passed, no license whatever should be granted or renewed for the sale of alcoholic liquor—
  "Provided, nevertheless, that nothing herein contained should affect any rights or privilege conferred or enjoyed by virtue of any license current or in force at the commencement of this Act during its said currency."
  Now, licenses were current only for the year during which they were granted. Many expired in September or October, and therefore those licenses would be absolutely terminated, and the property they represented would be confiscated, without any kind of warning. He would further say, that having lived in America—not merely as a passing traveller—he would add his testimony to the failure of the Maine Liquor Law in those parts of the country where it was attempted to be enforced. It was now found impossible to enforce it, and the attempt to do so was no longer made; but, even then, it was perfectly easy to obtain drink in any town in the State of Maine. For these reasons, he had no option but to vote against the measure under the notice of the House.
  SIR FREDERICK W. HEYGATE, who spoke amid considerable interruption, said, that the effects of the Bill upon Ireland would be very serious, and they had not been discussed. He should, therefore, move the adjournment of the debate.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned."—(Sir Frederick Heygate.)
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 15; Noes 369: Majority 354.
  And it being after a quarter of an hour before Six of the clock, the Debate stood adjourned till To-morrow.

  IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT ABOLITION BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. BASS, Bill to abolish Imprisonment for Debt, ordered to be brought in by Mr. BASS and Mr. ROBERT FOWLER.
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 156.]

  CRIMINAL LAW AMENDMENT ACT (1871) AMENDMENT BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. VERNON HARCOURT, Bill to amend the provisions of "The Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1871," relating to molestation, ordered to be brought in by Mr. VERNON HARCOURT, Mr. JAMES, Mr. MUNDELLA, Mr. DIXON, and Mr. MELLY.
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 157]
  And it being Six of the clock, Mr. Speaker adjourned the House till Tomorrow, without putting the Question.