The Sun.
London, England, 1854-08-30 00:00:00

THE PUBLIC-HOUSE MONOPOLY AND
TILL NE!V BEER BILL.

(From. the Examiner.)
The committee of the House of Commons, which in-
quired during the past session into the operation of the
laws affecting public-houses, have recommended a change
in the system of licensing. Any person at present, by
complying with certain condition:, can obtain a license
from the Excise for the sale of malt-liquor ; but the
power to gran' lenses for the sale of spirits rests with
the magistrates, who confine the privilege to a select
few, instead of throwing open the trade to all respectable
applicants. The right to vend spirits as well as beer
proves so advantageous to the publican, that the seller
of beer alone finds it impossible, in the vast majority of
instances, to sustain the competition ; and thereby the
magistrates have virtually the power of nominating the
I dealers in both departments of this enormous branch of
trade. Such a system, which is opposed to every sound
principle of commerce, has produced its natural results.
It is admitted that the magistrates are guided more
by private feelings than by public convenience in the ex-
ercise of their discretion. One man gets a license
because the brewer who owns the house has friends
or acquaintances on the bench ; another is favoured
because he votes at elections on the same side
with the majority of his- judges ; a third, because
be has been butler or footman to one of their wor-
ships. The applicant who had not had luck to sit or
wait at the table of a magistrate, or whose opinions
on matters of Church' and State are not in accordance
with those of the justices of his locality, has very little
j chance of being permitted to sell spirits.
In towns, nevertheless, a sufficient amount of competi-
tion is managed to be kept up. There, in spite of these
unjust partialities, a sufficient number of contiguous
souses exist in different hands to prevent a monopoly.
But it is otherwise in the country ; and it is here that
the mischief of the licensing system is most strongly felt.
The license once granted, it is practically considered as
attached to the house. If the latter changes hands, it
sells for a price which is quite disproportionate to the
teiselnsef the building-, because the purchaser knows that
hoold likewise buying the right to supply the neighbour-
new houses is very
with ale, beer, and spirits. Permission to open
who owns the village
the whole of the
Paringlygrated and the brewer
ppublic-house, or as frequently hap-
pens,district, has the monopoly
public-houses of a considerable
of the market. The report
is full of evidence u this head which is quite irresis-
go without, the brewer's° people must
drink
irresis-
tible. Knowing that tnh
pwuhbileihca n,
the again,ors t
iwhongrereceives s
commonly
a quality as that it shall seemny care is to make it of such
his beer, or
better than none. The
an inferior article, of
an excess
of water, adapts it to the dull
of his customers by a large admixture crazing
palates
and drugs. Those who are accustomed to 17°
somer beverages can seldom drink a glass of blevern f);
a wayside. public-house without having to pay ahea-
vily for the refreshment with headache. A single
cir-
cumstance is of itself sufficient to show the advantae
which is taken by the country brewer of this monstrous
_ _

privilege—for such it surely is—to be the exclusive ven-
der of particular liquors in particular districts. When a
public-house has an independent owner who can choose
his market, they are accustomed to furnish him with
far better beer than that which they impose upon their
own publicans. This fact is proved in fifty instances.
But in truth such evidence is almost superfluous. To
state the case is to expose it. Competition is the life of
trade ; when it stagnates, it grows corrupt.
To remedy these evils, the committee proposes that
the distinction between beer and spirit licenses should
cease ; that one license should confer the right to sell all
intoxicating drinks ; and that any respectable person
should be entitled to the privilege, on giving his own
bond, with that of two sureties, as a security for cons
forming to the regulations of the Legislature. To this
it has been objected that the multiplication of publics
houses will give a stimulus to drunkenness. The objec-
tion comes too late. The brewers have already taken
care that wherever a cluster of houses exists one of them
shall be set apart for the accommodation of the thirsty.
It is no longer a question of whether the labouring man
should be supplied with beer, but who shall brew it ?
not whether he shall confine himself to tea, coffee, and
water, but whether he shall drink from a good tap or a
bad one ? The lady who asked her butler how she could
economise her barrel of small beer, was told that the surest
method was to place a barrel of stronger beer by the side
of it. This will be the ordinary effect of a reform in the
licensing system. The drugged and worthless barrel of
beer will be left untested, and the barrel of generous ale
will be drunk in its stead. It is probable that in very
many country places no additional public-house will be
opened ; for the instant the monopoly ceases, the brewers
will have the prudence to secure that custom by the ex-
cellence of their goods which they now attain by the pro-
tective tyranny
~of their licenses. Or, if a successful
rival springs up, it will soon absorb the opposition estab-
lishment, and the only change will be that a new house
is built out of the ruins of au old one.
But it is urged that labouring men are more attracted
by cheapness than quality, and that it will not be so
much a race of who shall produce the best beer, as of who
shall sell it at the lowest price. If this should in some-
iestances prove the case, the change will still be advan.
tageous. At present the consumer has neither cheapness
nor quality. As he is entirely at the mercy of the
brewer and publican, they sell him the worst mixture
!ley can venture to concoct at the highest price they
can venture to charge. With free competition he can
take his chance ; and either he will give less money or
he will get better beer. Those who profit by an abuse
readily persuade themselves that the system which is
most advantageous to them is most beneficial to the pub-
lic ; but all other persons will probably be of opinion
that it is high time this anomalous and pernicious mono-
poly should be broken down.
Our legislators, however pressed fortime,have preferred
to give us a new Public house Bill of another sort. And
this piece of notable legislation, very far from' having
touched the real evil pointed out by the committee, has ac-
tually had the support of those "licensed victuallers" most
interested in maintaining the grievances by which they
profit so largely. To avert a good, those who are most
anxious to maintain the close system of licensing bays
connived at an evil. Something, it wss foreseelei, mug
be sacrificed to public opinion ; end the sprat has been
resigned, in the hope of being rewarded for such an act
of virtue by permission to keep the whale.
In other words, the more influential among the li-
censed victuallers have allovVed the " New Beer Bill" to
pass, that they may defeat the proposition to throw open
the trade. In both cases the poor man is the victim. By
the licensing laws he is confined to dear and often dele-
terious drink, and by the New Beer Bill he is not per-
mitted on Sundays to drink at all except between the
hours of one and half-past two, and between six and ten.
Such a restriction will commonly be found in practice
either useless or mischievous. The man who is sottishly
inclined will find abundant scope for his propensities in
the hour and half at noon, and the four hoursof evening;
while his sober neighbour, whose wholesome tastes carry
him out of noise, smoke, and tainted air, to seek health
and quiet in the suburbs, will find that he is debarred
the ordinary refreshment which nature craves. If, when
he is outward bound he does not arrive at his goal till
half-past two, he must remain thirsty and jaded till six ;
if on his return, be is not at his destination before
ten, he must wind up his one day of ease in the
seven with a mug of cold water. The complications
of life are so various, and indeed endless, that not a
single Sunday can ever pass without the stipulated hours
in this vexatious act interfering with the convenience,
the gpmforr, the necessities. of thousands. It is almost
impossible to calculate the effect of social restrictions ;
but there is a much greater likelihood that the orderly
man who finds his innocent recreation turned into a
penance, will have recourse in its place to some neigh-
bouring public-house where he can tipple and smoke
from six to ten, than that those who are in the habit of
profaning the Sunday by their over addiction to drink
will be driven by the New Beer Bill to church between
half-past two and six.
In the meanwhile, the difficulties which might have
been anticipated have arisen in the interpretation of the
act. As it was impossible to decree that no person,
under any circumstances, however urgent, should be
permitted to taste drink at certain hours at a place of
public entertainment, an exception is made in favour of
lodgers and bona fide travellers. The police have main-
tained that the passengers who arrive in London by rail-
way are not travellers within the meaning of the act ;
which, now that nobody comes from a distance by any
other mode of conveyance, is equivalent to saying that a
bona fide traveller cannot exist. If, on the contrary, the
plea be admitted, and the person who has come all the
way from Plymouth or York is no longer to be told, in
defiance of truth and common sense, that what makes a
dfrc.m distinguish
a carriage,
anden the
the
traveller on Saturday dues not make one on Sunday, by
whatmman
wh
magic i s
reallytl
justpublican
l alighted tteo
roan who feigns a journey to obtain a pot of beer
It is evident at a glance that the act must either be a
nullity or an intolerable oppression.
The determination of which it shall be rests for the
present with the magistrates. At the Marylebone Po-
lice-court on Saturday last, Mr. Long, in the first deci-
sion which has taken place under the act, . rejected the
stringent interpretation of the police, and gave a liberal
construction to an illiberal bill. He held that a gentle-
man who went every Sunday from Northampton-square
to Hampstead-heath for the express purpose of dining at
the Castle Tavern, and breathing the Only fresh air he
could get in the week, was a bona .fide traveller. An
excursion to Psichmoud, Hampton, or Greenwhich, would
in Mr. Lonts'e judgment, for the same reason, constitute
an equel title to refreshment in the prohibited hours.
It is to be hoped that his brother magistrates may adopt
this view. They will thus diminish as much as possible
the evils of a harsh and ill-digested measure, until
Par-
liamenth
can satisfy the judgment which already
ywith it has been
passed by the public, and amend or do away
altogether.
't the best it will be a bill of pains and penalties.
But any rigid construe .
t:on of it can ouly result in
endless absurdities, contra
:belong, injustice, and, what
other- hand, if any medium
is worst of all, fraud. On the. ovrt;ofr. toatidthe
is tried between the lenoieltatheviie)olice,
tNA.,ho
virtugally
deny
preposterous doctrine f
of a Sunday traveller,. the necessities of
the possibility
will break through the ordinary trammels of the
lifefw While honest men suffer, the less scrupulous will
get by trickery
what they are refused as a right.

HAMBURG.—The advices from Hamburg yesterday
mention a further increase in the demand for money, dis-
count having advanced to 2 to 3. The French rate of
exchange is steady, with a tendency to renewed firm-
ness. From Alexandria, also, the quotation shows an
improvement, which will probably check therexport of
sovereigns to that quarter. The Odessa advices are to
the 18th inst., but they contain no information, except
that one or two vessels had been engaged to carry lin-
seed to Loudon at 120 a, per ton.