The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-07-20 00:00:00

THE rIIBLIC-HOUSES IN TOWN AND

COUNTRY.
The Timee, in a lender, on the Liquor. Licensing 1111,
remarks—
. .

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It would be impossible to name anything which
stands for so much loss to soul, body, and estate, for
so much discomfort and everything that is diaagrees
able,.as the publichouse, necessary as it may be, harm-
less as it may sometimes be. Even if we accept the
best case that can be made for it in principle, the fact is
still a huge nuisance and misery. Nay, if we even admit
that evil must be mixed with good, and that the public-
house only exhibits one form of that which is inevi-
table and lawful, still s thousand experiences give the
very name an evil and disastrous significance. It is
not only the quiet religious family, or the respectable
householder, that regards the publichouse as one of the
enemies of his peace, but it is almost everybody except
the publican and his landlord It is the wife and
children, who see the day's or week's wages spent
there ; it is the neighbourhood, disturbed by nightly
brawls and deeds of violence ; it is the employer, who
finds his men demoralised and enfeebled; it is the
honest tradesman, who sees the money that should
come to the counter go to the bar. 'nein is not a vice,
or is disease, or a disorder, or a calamity of any kind
that has not its frequent rise in the publichouse. It
degrades, ruins, and brutalises a large fraction of the
British people. . . .
Well, we are told there is no help for it. The public-
, house is the public life of the people. They must have
! a common resort and a social existence. Ilieh life has
' its society, with its manifold evils, its scandals, its
dung. s, its ruinous extravagances, and even its occa-
sional ieterference with the Queen's peace. The cus-
toms of the political and of the fashionable world do not
regard hours of sleep, or any laws of simple nature.
Labour, too, has its clubs • labour has its Parliaments ;
and the Trades' Unions, Which can only meet at public.
houses, require the nieht for deliberation and talk on the
affairs of the day. Mr. Bruce is told that he will not
be able to close publichousee at eleven, because the
Parliaments of workmen will then be sitting. The
other provisions of his bill are threatened in like
manner. for somehow or other it is always to be as-
sumed, in the spirit of our laws, that a publichouse is
innocent even if it seems to offend. But no estimate
of the British publichouee, and no largeness of al-
lowances for it, can cot over the fact that it is generally
a great nuisance. We have to pay extra police in exact
proportion to the pnblichouses which are open.. The
night broils, the vol -bevies, and worse incidents are the
fruit of late hours. his the publichouse, many one may
Ike in the course of a night's ramble in this metro-
polis and any large town, that disables the working
man from beginning his morning's work in health and
strength. The publichouse infratnes the Poor Bates
by throwing upon them the family of the working
man, and the uran himself us soon as he happens to
be out of work. His savings, or what ought to be
his savings, pass over the bar. All through this vast
metropolis, and in other large cities, the most frequent
of all spectacles is the working man in the gaudy,
liming, gm palace, inside or on the pavement before
it, while his family occupies some small, close room,
squalid, dirty, and half-starved. Such is the town
fashion. The country fashion is often as bad, though
on the rural scale. Benevolent people exhaust their
purses, tempers, and characters by rendering what
seems needful assistance to the wives and children of
incurable drunkards. There is a proportion of them
in every parish. High, then, as we may please to rate
the publiehouse, and impossible as we umy think it for
England to get on without it, still we tind it aagroes and
palpable an evil as a constitutional malady or an in-
testine foe. Almost anybody may by a simple calcula-
tion ascertain for himself that a hundred millions ster-
ling a year is no very unlikely or preposterous estimate of
the money spent in intoxicating liquors, and that work-
ing people spend more in proportion to their incomes
than the classes above them. Fortunate, happy, pros-
perous, and progressive as England is in eve!), respect,
it may be said that half her fortune, happiness, pr.-
perity, and progress is lost to her by that love of strong
drink which was the disgrace and degradation of the
Saxon a thousand years ago, and which placed him
under the heel of his Norman conquerors.

There are, no doubt, circumstances of great delicacy,
or, as it is otherwise expressed, "ugly aspects," in the
question. The publichonse is regarded as the best ally
of old English principles and social feeling, and is.ll.
sequently the proper antagonist of hypocrisy,
stilted sentiment, and fanaticism. The publichouse,
it is said, will generally take the side of the gentle-
man, even if it harbour the poacher. It will stand up
for the Lord of the Manor, even while it is the market
for his game. It is sometimes said that we need not
fear those who meet at a publichouse and tell their
1 minds to the world, but rather those who stay at home
and tell nobody what they are thinking of. All
this may be true enough; but, even so, it will not
be thu first time that a good cause, or what seems
to be such, has had dangerous allies ' • nor will it
be the first time that good and evil have been so
mixed up as to require disentanglement. Be the
publiehouse as necessary OA any other institution, that
in no wise affects the necessity of keeping it in order.
We are reforming, purifying, disestablishing when
necessary, and generally putting into order and ploper
from every part of our political and soejol condition.
It is the turn of the publichmse now. Why is it to be
exempt? Even if we are glad to keep it, and resist the
schemes for its total abolition, or for reducing it to a
bare contingency, still we may equally insist on its
reform. It need not robs;, of our sleep; it need not
fill our streets and roads with riot and crime; it
need not double the Poor and Police rate ; it need not in-
fect the manners of the people, and damage the national
character. The Bill in the House, honestly though
modestly, attempts to bring into order this hitherto
unruly child of the State; and we trust it will be al-
lowed to become law. If any reasonable objections
can be met by special provisions, let the attempt
be made, but not so as further to damage the
working of a Bill already reduced to its scisisiass of
efficiency.