DRUNKENNESS IN SCOTLAND.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4813, 25 August 1876, Page 3

DRUNKENNESS IN SCOTLAND.

■ Mr.W. Gordon Davidson jJ.'P. for for Fife, in-spector-General of Hospitals of her Majesty's Army, writes again to T/ie'Times i-^~" I .must again solicit your help foi"pb6i' Scotland, over-• come as it is by drink: 'Government can do nothing, yet the matter is as simple and as practicable as anything .can well be, as you will see below, and without any Act of Parliaiment. For a license is a contract between : a Justice of Peace Court arid a publican, by which the former grants the latter power to sell whisky in retail for a year, at the end of which year the contract is completed, and may, like any other lease, be renewed or not, with the. most perfect fairness, according to the; will of the contracting parties. If the ' justices have. seen evil resulting from their licenses, as in the present excessive intemperance of the country, it is not only fair and just in them, but it is their bounden duty to decline to renew the licenses, and the contracts are thus ended. All Scotland is crying out at present against the excessive drinking ; yet.the Justices of Peace and the Burgh Bailies have, in their annual Courts on the 18th day of April ■ last, with scarce any important exception, re ; peated and renewed all licenses, as if it were a mere matter of course that they should do so. The recklessness of these officials will appear in the following data :—ln Kinross 36 applications' were granted ; in Forfarshire 28 licenses were renewed ; in Kothesay Burgh, all renewed;; and this was the case in the west of Fife, the' clerk merely reading over their names.;: Iln Perthshire, Dunblane district, 41 applied for renewal ; all granted, and also new ones. In Linlithgow, 111 > applications for renewal y all granted, and 13 new besides. In Caithness, 49 new certificates! geanted; :in Stirlingshire 241 were renewed and 10 new ones ; in Lanarkshire, 316 for new arid renewal, and in almost every I case granted., , The; conclusion of the whole matter is, that in the hands of the, justices of the peace and city magistrates there is power to remove entirely this-obnoxious system of retail whisky selling—that is, by .ceasing to fco give out any new licenses, and by-declining to renew one-third or one-fourth of those presented for renewal, previously announcing that this was to happen." >