The Sun.
London, England, 1863-05-07 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—Now that Mr. Gladstone has retired from
his crusade against the charities, we hope he will
reconsider his declaration of war against the clubs,
which in the natural course of things should come
under discussion to-night. If he insist upon it, he
may perhaps succeed. There are, however, many
things which a man in a certain position may do,
but which most men prefer not to do. Mr. Glad-
stone's achievement of assimilating clubs and public-
houses is eminently one of these. He can do it, per-
haps, but only because he is Chancellor of the
Exchequer. There are many other minor follies
which he might also safely permit himself for the
same reason. People will not refuse the Supplies,
or damage a Government upon the vital point of
their finance, for so small a matter as this. Mr.
Gladstone is safe in the company of his friends, and
he will get a certain amount of applause in a certain
quarter. People who have not much chance of ever
getting into a club enjoy the fun in the good-
humoured way in which an English crowd enjoys
a good joke played off upon their betters. Its very
absurdity makes the joke pungent. Its curious in-
justice makes it facetious; for there is a point at
which a minor act of injustice does become facetious
in proportion to the palpable nature of the injustice.
The people know that the clubs are stately, orderly
places, where folk are very careful whom they asso-
ciate with, and where bishops and judges may any
day be seen silently exercising their moral police
influence over the respectability of the institution.
There is a mysterious magnificence about these
palaces which the people do not envy, for there is
too much constraint about them to suit their tastes.
But that a Chancellor of the Exchequer should fix
upon these places a " license," which license is the
badge and tribute of a monopoly supposed to be
necessary to keep liquor shops from becoming dis-
orderly houses, is such a slap in the face, and
such an unprovoked slap in the face, that
the clubless cannot choose but laugh. They
laugh for the same reason that they laugh at
the clown in the pantomime when he turns round
and rubs his hot poker against the wrong man.
The public, however, does not laugh. If by
any reasonable tax upon clubs Mr. Gladstone could
have given relief to other taxpayers ; if he could
have taken a penny a pound off tea or off sugar, or
if he could have abated a fraction from the Income-
tax, we might have seen in the importance of the
object a reason for disregarding the means. We
might still have regretted that Mr. Gladstone had
not the art of doing a necessarily disagreeable thing
in an agreeable manner, and might, perhaps, have
pointed out that a poll-tax upon gentlemen would
be, at any rate, a less insulting tax than to assimi-
late their clubs with gih palaces, and make them
take out licences. But if the Exchequer were to
get a good round sum out of the transaction we
should have said, " He does not mean it as an insult
—he wants the money." But, as it is, he will get no
money that will pay for collecting. It would not
pay a half year's salary toe retired Lord Chancel-
lor. It would not retrieve the smallest blunder in
calculating when to buy or sell Exchequer-bills. It
is too small even for Mr. Gladstone to estimate it
singly. It is but a speck of dust in the balance of
his yearly Budget—a little bit of dust, moreover,
which is but an impertinence in a scale already so
heavy with a surplus of near a million. It cannot,
therefore, be for the sake of the money that the
Chancellor of the Exchecrier has chosen to exhibit
club palaces and gin palaces before the country as
having a common character and necessitating a simi-
lar license. Neither can it be a matter of principle.
However false the notion that wherever wine or
beer is served out, there the Excise has a right to
exact the price of a monopoly--which is licence
money—yet we could understand such an idea if it
were consistently carried out. That to " serve out"
beer requires a licence is a proposition that might
be almost dignified into a principle. Mr. Glad-
stone might, under the protection of such a prin-
ciple, expatiate upon the injustice of taking licence
money from publichouses for "serving out" beer,
and omitting to take it from clubs. But he by no
means adheres to his " principle." It is only a
club held in a house of £lOO a year which is in the
same category as a publichouse ; a club in a
house of 1:90 a year is in a different category,
and is exempt from the necessity of a licence. By
his very exception Mr. Gladstone deprives himself
of all pretence for saying that this tax is defensible
upon the ground on which he put it the other
night. If to " serve out" beer and wine and spirits
is
so
perilous a thing that the law has a right to
preside over every such transaction, and to surround
it with police regulations and restrict it by licences,
then public-houses and Clubs are undoubtedly
within the purview of the necessity, and the lower
the rent the more reasonable the fear of disorder.
But under this "principle," so also are boarding-
houses and private dinner parties, and even large
families, servers out of beer, and therefore liable.
In all these cases the obnoxious liquids are