PROFESSOR FAWCETT, M.P., ON THE PERMISSIVE BILL.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume II, Issue 196, 15 August 1874, Page 2

PROFESSOR FAWCETT, M.P., ON THE PERMISSIVE BILL.

Professor Fawcett having expressed his willingness to meet some of his constituents favorable to Sir Wilfred Lawson’s Permissive Prohibitory Bill, a number of them waited upon him in the Templar Hall, Windsor-street, Brighton, for the purpose of discussing its merits and principles. The chair was taken by Mr. J. Thompson, representative of the Brighton Auxiliaryof the United Kingdom Alliance. The Rev. Mr. Hughes, on behalf of the Order of Good Templars, explained the views of the body with regard to the Permissive Bill, and requested Mr. Fawcett to state the groundsupon which he opposed the measure. A number of questions having being asked, Mr. Fawcett said : “ The chief argument seemed to be this, that the abuse of intoxicating liquors produce great mischief, therefore they ought to be entirely suppressed, Now, I will ask you for one moment to consider to what extent this principle, if logically carried out, would lead us? Where are we going to stop in this legislative career? Are there not other things which also produce great mischief to the nation? Why speak of the effect produced upon poverty by drunkenness. Is not poverty also produced by imprudence? And what leads more to imprudence than a man who will not save money when he has the opportunity of saving it ? Are you, then, to pass an Act of Parliament that every one shall be compelled to save ? Then, again, we know perfectly well that nothing would tend to bring greater poverty upon a person than improvidence and an imprudent marriage. You are surely not going to promise that marriages are to be controlled by Act of Parliament, however desirable it may be to society that no one should marry before he is in a position to take a wife and maintain a family. You are not to say that the circumstances of everyone are to be enquired into, and that unless they can he will not be in a position to marry. I believe it will be easy to prove that no small amount of the misery and the poverty we are suffering from in this country is not simply due to drunkenness, but due also to imprudence resulting from people not saving, and also due to the improvidence that is too often exercised in marriage. Reference has also been made to injury done to property by having the public-houses next to it. No doubt this is the ease ; but what I maintain is this, that there are other businesses which are disagreeable to be carried on close to one’s house. You have to run the risk whether they are or are not nuisances. I can only say that public-houses, if well conducted, need not necessarily be a nuisance. I lived once near a well-conducted house, and I did not find it any greater nuisance than the carrying on of many other businesses I could name. (Hear Hear, and applause.) No one wishes that the sale of intoxicatng liquors should be carried on so as to produce a nuisance to those people living near the place, any more than they would wish that a butcher’s shop, or a fishmonger’s shop, or greengrocer’s, or any other business should cause a nuisance to those living in the neighbourhood. But the .argument upon which most stress was laid was the liberty of the individual. In support of this, one speaker quoted the Times, and as far as I could understand the quotation it was this : —‘ That you have a perfect right to interfere with an individual’s liberty if the exercises of that liberty is a harm to his neighbours.’ That is a principle which ought to be carefully watched before it is universally applied. Now the point on which I rest my case is this, that if I go into a public-house and buy a glass of beer I may require to quench my thirst, or to take a glass of wine which

I may require as a stimulant, I do no more harm to my neighbors than I do if I go into a baker’s shop and buy a loaf of bread. If Igo into a public-house and get into a state of drunkenness, I then become a nuisance to myself and to other people; but as to the mere fact of my going iiitd a public-house and calling for a glass of beer, I distinctly state that there is no: mote hattd in that act than in my going into a shop and buying a loaf of bread ; and this is my fundamental objection to the bill. Because certain people abuse the use of public-houses you have no right you are prepared, to say that the drinking of a glass of beer is in itself wrong —(cries of It is.) Well, if you maintain that, then you are logical ; but then you ought to go further. You ought to say that the trade in intoxicating liquors is a trade in poison. (Hear, Hear.) Ah! then I understand you. But that being the case, the Permissive Bill ought to have gone further than it does; you ought not. to allow private drinking. If alcoholic liquors are a poison, then it as bad to take them in a private house as it anywhere else. Now, it seems to me that if you are not prepared to treat it as a poison—which you are not, according to the principles of the Permissive Bill—your whole case falls to the ground; unless you can show and are prepared to maintain that a man going into a public-house and buying a glass of beer, performs a wrong to society and does an injury to himself, and creates a nuisance to his neighbours. I believe he does not do so; and I can only repeat that it seems to me one of the most unwarrantable interferences with individual liberty to say that if I like to get a glass of beer I should not be able to do so. I feel that is such an unwarrantable interference with the liberties of the people that this nation would never submit to it. Although I can most sincerely say that I regret most earnestly to differ from many of my constituents, with whom on almost every other subject there is the most cordial union between them and myself—(applause)—yet, lam bound to say that holding the opinions I do, there is no other course open to me than to vote in the way I have described.” In reply to a question as to how he would vote in respect to the Habitual Drunkards Bill, Mr. Fawcett stated that he did not sots for the Bill which was brought before the House because he considered it very illdrawn.—London Daily News.