DRINK TRAFFIC IN LIVERPOOL.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2258, 24 May 1881, Page 3

DRINK TRAFFIC IN LIVERPOOL.

A long and interesting discussion (says a London paper) took place on Wednesday in the Liverpool City Council upon the licensing question. The councillor who raised the question said that the annual drink hill o£ Liverpool was estimated at three millions sterling, and as the average income of a Liverpool laborer is £6O per annum, he maintained that the Bum spent in drink would support 50,000 families, or 250,000 individuals—that is to say, half the population of Liverpool. He proposed, therefore, that the Council should petition Parliament to pass, as speedily as possible, a licensing bill which should give to the ratepayers adequate powers to restrict largely the facilities for the sale of drink, and which would destroy the existing monopoly by providing for the sale of licenses by auction. In the course of a long debate, the Mayor stated that although the population of Liverpool had increased 54,000 in the last ton years, the number of public-houses had diminished by 22, and tho beerhouses by 147. The apprehensions for drunkenness had fallen from 21,113 in 1870 to 14,252 in 1880. A councillor fresh from a tour in Norway and Sweden strongly advocated the adoption of tho system prevailing there, and ultimately, after considerable discussion, two hostile amendments being rejected respectively by 34 to 6 and 26 to 11, the amended resolution, modified so as to include a reference to a Licensing Board and to exclude the proposed sale of licenses by auction, was passed without a division. The discussion and the decision are significant, for Liverpool has usually taken a I'no of its own. in dealing with the drink question, and the majority of the councillors are Conservatives.