The Express.
London, England, 1855-07-31 00:00:00

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IL 41a. 1
416. I. 1

LONDON, TUESDAY, JULY 31.

Tess general viewswe have so frequently expremed
sato the desultory and incoosiderate manner in which
Aetna: Parliament are pained, and the unworkable
form they in consequence too often assume, receive a
sties; confirmation from the remit of the Committee
oil the Sale of Beer Act. Here was a statute hastily
smuggled through the House of Commons towards the
Gloss of a Session, during the late hours of its sit-
tinge. It was a compromise by which certain parties
delegated to watch over the interests of a numerous
and influential body of traders sought to escape the
messeeity of declaring explicitly in favour either
of the advocates or the opponents of laws professing
to promote temperance and the decorous observance
of the Sabbath. It was a measure that could not
stand the test of principle. It was a measure that,
if rightly understood, would have raised a dorm
against some of its most zealous promoters that they
could ill milord to brave. And therefore was it
pressed, hurriedly and noiselessly, through sittings of
the House of Commons, attended by only a few
drowsy and jaded members, " whipped " together to
go through the form of assenting to whatever mea.
• sores the managers of the House had pre-determined
to carry on the eve of prorogation. As might have
been expected, the Act was as unintelligible in its
details ss irreconeileable with any principle. During
the brief period of its existence it has already gives
occasion to a world of vexations meddling and irri-
tating oppression. And now, at the fag-end of a
seemioo, it is found necessary to relax its stringency
in somewhat the sums hurried manner in which it
was enacted, in order to avert worse consequences.
We feel to their full extent the obligations under
which Mr. BERIELET has laid the public by his bold
and skilful generalship. He saw that to seek to ob-
tain the attention of the Legislature to the whole of
the broad question involved in a decision on the merits
of the Act, during a session disturbed by the weighty
discussions on the management of the war, the crash
of falling cabinet', and the intrigues attendant on
their reconstruction, would be fruitless. He there-
fore waited quietly till an unequivocal expres-
sion of public feeling demonstrated the uni-
versal exasperation diffused through society by
the operation of the Act; and then struck
in at once, demanded a committee of inquiry,
the investigations of which he urged on with equal
tact and decision, and upon its report tendered a bill
to the House of Commons, which will afford imme-
diets relief from the moot intolerable of the annoy.
anoes inflicted by the Act. We confess that, in our
opinion, Mr. Briticeutr, in framing his bill, has kept
in view too exclusively the grievances of excursiocista.
It will afford no relief to the greater part of those
members of the industrious classes who are under the
necessity of resuming their labours during the night
which intervenes between Sunday and Monday; and
we do not clearly see how it is to meet the case of
the numerous class of lodgers who habitually take
their meals in coffee-houses or taverns. But Mr.
BEIMLIAT knows the temper of the Assembly with
which he has to deal, and probably has good reasons
for not attempting too much at this advanced period
of the session.

As we have made special allusion, at the outset of
thus remarks, to the part taken by certain pro-
famed champions of the Licensed Victuallers, it may
be se well to guard against the possibility of our
being supposed to consider the Sale of Beer Act as
peculiarly a grievance of the publican class. True,
the famous "bona fide traveller" clause gave that
trade a great deal of annoyance, but the im•
pertinently meddling provisions of the statute
passed far more heavily on the general public
than on the vendors of refreshments. The
Sale of Beer Act is but as a drop in the
bucket of insult and oppression which certain legis-
lating dilettanti have for years been filling up for the
especial use of the publicans, though perhaps it may
have been the last drop that makes the vessel run
over. Publicans have long been set up to be peren-
nially pelted by sanctimonious or ascetic legislators,
exactly as cocks used to be set op to be pelted by
the rabble on Shrove Tuesdays. The name of their
grievances from this cause is Legion—the Sale of
Beer Act, vexatious though it be, being one of the
least. But in the general public—among those who
are no publicans, whether they be sinners or not—
there is scarcely one individual who has not, at some
time or another, been annoyed and inconvenienced
by that contemptible statute.
Already a formidable opposition to Mr. Branum's
Relief Bill is being marshalled and set in motion.
The paid agency which has a "vested interest" in
the perennial agitation for Sale of Beer Bills, Sunday
Trading Bills, Maine Liquor Law Bills, and all kinds
of kindred absurdities, is already actively at work.
The members of the House of Commons are inun-
dated with memorials complaining of the early termi-
nation of the inquiries of Mr. BERKELEY'S commit-
tee. Its investigations are called " one-sided;"
whereas the fact is that their great merit consists in
their having been "no-sided." Neither publicans or
excursionists on the one side, nor tee-totallers or Bab-
latarians on the other, were examined, but the principal
police magistrates of the metropolis. These gentlemen,
who have no interest either in the perpetuation or the
repeal of the hale of Beer Act, and who have opportu-
nities of studying its operation such as no other class
of men enjoy, have pronounced an all but unanimous
sentenc of condemnation against it. This being the
ease, where would have been the use of wasting time
by allowing a few individuals, hungry for public
display, to iofiict over again on a nauseated public their
dreary platitudes and deceptive half-truths which are
already imbedded in the most unreadable of all Blue
Books ?
We sincerely wish all success to Mr. Beartzute's
Relief Bill, but it is evident that the controversy
gannet terminate with its being passed into a
law. The amateur promoters of the class
et
statutes to which the Sale of Beer Act
belongs, will not allow the matter to rest there.
Next session they will return to the attack with
new and more stringent measures. Nor, even if they
were disposed to remain quiet, is it likely that the
public will quietly acquiesce in the perpetuation of
the numerous measures these men have ere now sue-
seeded in obtruding on the Statute-book. The great
question whether religion and morality can be pro-
meted by restrictive laws in matters which involve
as breech of the peace—no infringement of the secu-
rity of person and property—must be thoroughly
investigated in all its bearings, and decided is cal-
amity with the dictates of common sense.