DRINK TRAFFIC IN LIVERPOOL.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2551, 25 May 1881, Page 2

DRINK TRAFFIC IN LIVERPOOL.

A long and interesting discussion (says a London paper) took placQ: recently in the Liverpool City Council upon the licensing question. The* councillor who raised the question, saidl that the annual drink bill of Liverpooll was estimated at three millions sterling;, and as the average income of a Liverpool laborer is £6O per annum, ho maintained that the sum spent in drink would support 50,000 families, or 250,000 indSviduls —that is to say, half the population of Liverpool, He proposes, 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 fertile sale of drink, and which would t destroy the existing monopoly by providing for the sale of licenses by auction. In the course of a long debate, the Ma} T or stated that although the population of Liverpool had increased? 54,000 in the last ten years, the number of public-houses had diminished by 22, and the beerhouses by The apprehensions for drunkenness had fallen, from 21,113 in 1870 to 14,252 in 1880:. A councillor fresh from a tour im Norway and Sweden strongly advocated! the adoption of the system there, and ultimately, after considerable discussion, two hostile amendmentsbeing rejected • respectively by 34 to 6 and by 26 to 11, the. amended resolution, modified so as to*, include a reference to a Licensing Boasck and to exclude the proposed sala of; licenses by auction, was passed without; a division. The discussion andi thedecision are significent, for Liverpooll has usually taken a line of its own im dealing with the drink question, and themajority of the councillors are Conservatives.