LEGISLATION FOR DRUNKENNESS.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 54, 1 August 1874, Page 3

LEGISLATION FOR DRUNKENNESS.

Pall Mall Budget.’] The more the regulation of the liquor trade is discussed in Parliament the further Parliament seems to depart from the very simple principle which underlies all rational legislation on the subject. The question at what hour public-houses should be closed is almost always fastened on to the question whether this or that particular hour is likely to increase drunkenness. This last point is not one which Parliament has any business to settle. We not interfere to prevent goods being exposed in shop windows on the ground that it tempts men to steal them, and there is no more reason why we should interfere to prevent intoxicating liquor being offered for sale in public-houses on the ground that it tempts men to be disorderly or violent. The law takes hold of the man who steals from a shop window and visits him with severe punishment; and the proper time for the law to interfere with drunkenness is when it has led to the commission of crime or to a breach of public order. If it is objected that drunkenness is the cause of so much misery that it is best to check it at the outset, the answer is, that this is not the manner in which the law deals, or can hope to deal, with other vices which are productive of great misery. It is a commonplace of criminal legislation that the object at which it is aimed is crime and not vice. Adultery, for example, sometimes leads to murder, and when it does so the murderer is hanged ; but we do not for that reason make laws to diminish adultery. In the same way, drunkenness sometimes leads to murder, and very often to crimes not far short of murder ; and if the Home Secretary were to introduce a Bill for increasing the penalties inflicted on crimes committed by drunken persons it would be very well worthy of support. Instead of this we go on continually tinkering at the licensing laws. Public-houses, says one, are kept open too late, and it is in the last half-hour that most liquor is drunk :

therefore let them be shut up luilf an hour earlier. It is a mistake, aajs airother, lo suppose that more liquor is drunk when (he public-houses are open till half-past twelve than when th y clo:-e at twelve ; therefore let the convenience of the public be consulted, and the extra half-hour allowed. These arguments ought really to be reversed. If there is more liquor drunk in London from twelve to half-past than in any other halfhour during the day, that seems to show that there are more persons who wish to drink it then than earlier, and so far is a reason why public-houses should be open. If no more liquor is drunk when the public housis ;ue open till half-past twelve than when ( Ley arc closed at twelve, that seems to show that people can get all they want by the earlier hour, and if so there is no need of the law being altered. In strict theory there is no reason why a publican should not keep his house open all night, since he would hardly care to do so if there were not customers enough to make it pay. But the circumstances of the trade are so peculiar that it is found necessary to prescribe a fixed time of closing ; and, when this is conceded, the natural hour to fix is the hour by which the great majority of the population arc at home and in bed. This consideration clearly points to a different hour in London or other large towns and in country places, and it is the business of the Government to ascertain as accurately as they can what arc the habits, and by consequence the wants, of the population in these several cases. If these habits and wants require an extension of hours, it is beside the mark to say that the provision of additional facilities for drinking will increase drunkenness. That is a result to be regretted, and in so far as the sharper visitation of those forms of drunkenness which come within the purview of the law can prevent it, a result to be guarded against. But so long as increased drunkenness does docs not lead to crime, how is the law to interfere ? If it tries to stop drinking it annoys the sober man for the benefit of the drunkard ; if it tries to curtail the time during which a man can get drunk, it equally annoys the sober man who may wish to drink moderately at the very time when the drunkard is making himself drunk. There is no escape from an endless series of dilemmas if once the Legislature undertakes to check drunkenness pure and simple. If it were clearly understood that the fact of an offender being drunk when the offence was committed would be taken as an aggravation of his guilt, and would bring on him a heavier punishment, it is probable that many men who now go on drinking in the comfortable conviction that if they arc brought up next morning for an aggravated assault they will find mercy on the score of being too drunk to know what they were doing, would stop on the right side of intoxication. This is the direction which legislation against drunkenness ought to take ; and if it did so, legislation against drinking would soon be reduced to its proper sphere of simple police regulation. As to the question of the extra half-hour in London, on which so much of Monday’s debate turned, we are inclined to say that it ought to be conceded. Mr Melly argued against the change on the ground that the publicans as a body did not ask for it, and that the police were unanimously opposed to it. As regards the publicans, their opinion is only important in so far as it indicates the feeling of their customers, and we can readily imagine that provided no rival house is allowed to remain open, they would generally prefer to end their work as early as possible. But the Recorder London bears testimony to the absolute need of some extension of hours in the interests of public convenience, and in comparison with public convenience the wishes of the publicans are not much to the purpose. All that the police can say upon the matter is, that when people are turned out of pnblic-honses at twelve there is a smaller percentage of them disorderly than when they are turned out at half past twelve. But just as if cases of stealing from shop windows were found to be very much more frequent after dark we should not pass a law compelling shopkeepers to close their shops at sunset, so the greater frequency of cases of disorderly conduct at twelve o’clock is not a sufficient reason for restricting the liberty of a large number of sober people until, at all events, we have tried what can be done by direct legislation against disorder. “It is only right,” says Mr Melly, “ that some sacrifice should bo made for the general good and thereupon he proposes to offer up “ a considerable body of hardworking persons who are compelled to turn night into day.” We submit that these are not. to say the least, the class of persons who ought to bo sacrificed in the first instance. Let us see whether some sacrifice for the general good cannot be got out of the drunkards who turn night into day without any compulsion. There are few men who would order another glass if they knew it was poisoned, and it is yet to be seen whether there are many men who will order another glass when they know that if they they get drunk and take to breaking heads or windows on their way home they will run a serious risk of getting three months’ hard labor the next morning.