The Evening Star TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1873.

Evening Star, Issue 3287, 2 September 1873, Page 2

The Evening Star TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1873.

The question of the administration of the Liquor Laws is one which is occupying the attention of an ever increasing section of the thinking public. That such is the case, speaks well for our general advancement in civilisation, and augurs well for the social and moral improvement of the masses in the future. Few appear to be satisfied with the working of the present licensing system ; and the existence of many disreputable houses under the protection of the law, cries aloud for a radical change in this direction. There is little doubt that we are on the eve of a change that will materially affect a great many persons. In all social changes there is a temptation to rush into extremes, and the inclination is greater in proportion to the magnitude of the evil to be dealt with. At the same time that we cannot agree with the Permissive Bill, as advocated by Mr Fox and his adherents, we earnestly deprecate anything like free-trade in liquor, and these are the two extremes between which public opinion is swaying at the present time. If the law allowed any person, without reference to his character, to sell intoxicating liquors, the result would be a multiplication of houses of the lowest order selling the most unwholesome and injurious compounds, demoralising towns, and carrying into hamlets and scattered districts the seeds of disease, madness, and ruin. It would be the means of closing good houses, and preventing respectable persons from entering upon a business in which they would not only share the odium reflected upon them by the baser sort j but, owing to the increased competition with which they would have to contend, they would be unable to conduct a house of entertainment with any profit to themselves or satisfaction to those who patronised them. The Permissive Bill, on the other hand, while its operation would be an act of injustice towards those who had invested money in what we fail to see, when properly conducted, is other than a lawful and respectable business, would at the same time inflict an inconvenience upon a section of the community within the district brought under the Act, as well as upon those who may be sojourning in it or travelling through it. That the Maine Liquor Law has nob proved the success its promoters anticipated is saying very little, and we are not sure that it has not been a total failure. The Permissive Bill, we believe, would in its effects produce greater evils than those it aims at removing, and would give to a majority of householders in any particular district a power of tyrannising over the minority without risk or cost to themselves ; and would deprive those keeping hotels of the means of gaining a livelihood, even when they maintained a well-conducted house. The good and the bad stand upon an equality, and he who has spent thousands upon the erection of an expensive house shares the same fate with him who rents the lowest beer shop. It appears to us that a Permissive Bill, embracing a principle that when a majority of the householders in a district agree to enforce the closing of the public-houses, they should, at the same time, provide compensation for the outlay incurred by the proprietors, to be computed in the usual way ; and the licensing fees at least doubled, the popular contest would, on the one hand, be counter-weighted by a very practical Consideration against an act of injustice, and on the other it would prevent a great many very objectionable persons applying for licenses. What the practical effect of a Permissive Bill would be, it is difficult to foretell ; but the disastrous effects of free trade in liquor have already been exemplified in Sweden, which twenty years ago was probably the most drunken country in Europe. There every landowner was allowed to distil spirits for his own use, and every burgher could become a publican if he liked. The physical and moral ruin produced by the facility with which people could obtain drink under so loose a system of legislation, caused a cry to ascend from one end of the land to the other for deliverance from a scourge which was sapping the vitals of the State and demoralising society. When measures were passed restraining the sale of spirits after 10 a.m., making drink debts irrecoverable in a court of law, forbidding to sell liquor to persons already intoxicated, or to turn such persons into the street without some one to provide for their safety, the number of individuals fined for drunkenness declined within six years nearly one-half, and the cases of delirium tremens diminished one-third: and this under a strict licensing system. Whatever measures may be adopted, it

is very apparent that we cannot, in this dountry, long continue without some change; and it behoves every one, who has his country’s good at heart, to give this subject his earnest consideration.