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

~2711E-Theitrall:QcSlT MONOPOLY AND
THE NEW BEER- BILL.

•• (From the Examinfr.)
The committee of the House of 'Commons, which in
1 quired during the past session into the operation of the
laws affeeting public-houses, have recommended a change
in the system of licensing. Any person at present, by
complying with certain conditions, can obtain a license
from the Excise for the sale of malt-liquor ; but the
power to grant licenses for the sale of spirits rests with
the magistrates, who confine the urivilege to a select
few, instead. of throwing open the trifle 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, ie the vast majority of
instances, to sustain the competition ; and thereby the
magistrates have virtually the power of nominating the
dealers in both departments of thie 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
l'on matters of Church and State are not in accordance
with those of the justices of his locality, has very little
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
houses exist in different hands to prevent a monopoly.
That 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
value of the building, because the purchaser knows that
he is likewise buying the right to supply the neighbour-
hood with ale, beer, and spirits. Permission to open
new houses is very sparingly granted ; aid the bree er
dpiens
strict, the
hashtohlee
monopoly et'
of th
who owns the village public-house, or, as frequently hap-
es of a considerable
she
is full of evidence upon this head which is quite irre-is-
7eus market. The report
tilde. Knowing that the people must drink his beer, or
go without, the brewer's Only care is to make it of such
a quality as that it ehal; seem better than none. The
publican, ag in, who receives an inferior article, of-
which the wort ingredient is cell-Imo:Ay an excess
of water, adapts it. to the dull and craving paastes
of his customers by a large admixture of salt, sugar,
and drugs. Those who are accustomed to whole-
comer beverag.eS can seldom drink a glass of beer at
a wn3Nide public-Howse without hav:ng to pay hea-
N iiy fur the refreshment with headache. le siegle cir-
cumstance is of itself sufficient to show the advantege
which is taken by the country brewer of this wonstrone

privilege—for sueli it surelfis— to he tae 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 cme 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 con-
forming to the regulations of the Legislature. To this
it has been objected that the multiplication of public-
houses will give a stimulus to drunkenness. The objeo-
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 o f
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 an 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
instances 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
they 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 advanlageous 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 for time, 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 evilpointed out by the committee, has /se-
tually had the supsAtt 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 have
connived at an evil. Something, it was foreseen, must
be sacrificed to public opinion ; and the sprat has been
resigned, in the hope of being rewarded for such an act
of virtue by permission to keep the whale.
In Tither words, the more influential • among the li-
censed victuallers have allowed' 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 tee.
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 be 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 jnded till six ;
if on his return, he is not at his destination before
ten, he must wind up his one day of ease in the
seven with a mug of cold eater. 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 comfort, 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 bones 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
traveller on Saturday does not make one on Sunday, by
what magic is the publican to distinguish between the
roan who is really just alighted from a carriage, and the
wan 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
constructioa to an illiberal bill. He held tnat a gentle-
man who went every Sunday from Northampton-square
t
to Hampstead-heath for the express purposeforefddi
air
rg
he
the Castle Tavern, and breathing the
could get in the week, was a bane
excursion to Richmond, Hampton,s
in Mr. Long's judgment, rfi-Gdrcen leY'v r traveller.hi oh , would
came reason, constitute
magistrates may adopt
It is to be hoped that his brother h
• is as much as possible
an equal title to refreshmiberntthien the prohibited hours.
the evils of a harsh and idll-
this view. They will thus d
d
iigmesinted measure, until Par-
ent which already has been
pitmseent_
d by the public, and
can satisfy the
judgment
or do away with it

altogether.
At the best it will be a bill of pains and penalties.
But any riOd construction of it can only result in
endless absurditiek, contradictions, injustice, and, what
is worst of all, fraud. On the other hand, if any medium
is tried between the lenient views of
,Mr. Long and the
preposterous doctrine of the police, who virtually deny
litaihf,eev
.wp g i
bbh
rii Ileieat,Y of a
k honestthro uSundayg
men
h tshueff eor
r,traveller,dtihneary the
less
trs
ac
mrnecessitiesscrupulous of
wt
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 21 to 3. The French rate of
exchange is steady, with a tendency to renewed firm-
ness. From Alexandria, also, the quotation shows an
improvement, vvhieh will probably check the export 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 Lyndon at 120 s. per ton. ...