The Sun.
London, England, 1851-11-22 00:00:00

RAILWAY RETURNS

1

it‘t

;
_V,

-is

THE HIGH PRICE
(From the Morning Chronicle.)
So the brewers mean to let judgment go by de-
fault. They offer no defence—the fact is not
con-
tested—it is not for an instant disputed that, whether
barley is twenty-four or forty-four shillings a quarter,
beer remains at the same price. Nobody attempts to
deny that these gentlemen are robbing the public to
the amount of about 100 per cent. It is a fact which
remains uncontradicted, that they have doubled their
gains in four years, whilst every other interest has
had to make sacrifices for the common good, in a
general lowering of prices. It was certainly not fur
the private benefit of Messrs. Barclay and Perkins
that statesmen abolished the corn,laws. We must
say that, in this matter, the beer-consuming millions
and the barley-producing thousands are pillaged
merely for the individual gain of the Twelve Tyrants
of London. All that the poor ought to save by the
low price of barley is intercepted by the associated
dozen of London brewers. This immoral combina-
tion is monstrous—so monstrous that it cannot find a
single defender.
But it is said that the beer trade is open—that
there is no chartered and guaranteed monopoly—that
anybody who chooses to pay for a license may brew
if he will, and beard Barclay and all his butts. This
London—let
is true theoretically ; but let a pensive moralist,
flaring in all directions " whene'er," like Dr. Watts, he "takes his walks
abroad," cast his eyes on the extant public-houses of
count,
Whitbread'slEm Entire," himec
triebands thosen p u
rpprleeg
andna n t
gold—let inscriptions
bim
signia as we have done, the brewers' houses against
the free houses—let
that only promisedcas _unn''am"
enumerate the gaudy in.
tre
and the other "Entire'," against the modest sign-
boardser—and then
let him think of the
to face a dense andbe required
pital which would
compactat
tl monopoly which has
actually planted itself, east three deep, in every
street of the metropolis. Besides the mere commer-
cial difficulty of the speculation, et him consider
what likelihood there is of licenses being got for just
double the number of public-houses alreadyi in exist-
ence—for unless a cheap beer-house opened for
every brewer's house nothing is done. Its
then, be
true that the present monopoly is not legalized—that gaized—that
the awful Twelve have not any actual patent ;. but
we are as completely at their mercy, practically
speaking, as ever was the consumer in the days
protective and prohibitory duties. As a fact, of
must either take Barclay a beer at Buda ' we
y s price, or
go without beer altogether.
The present state of the London beer trade is
elidanbabur Y's
Entire,
about the boldest defiance of political economy which
the world has yet seen. It baffles all analogy ; it
is the crucial instance which shows that sheer insoe
lence, contempt of public opinion, and an organized
outrage upon common sense and common justice, will
occasionally falsify all calculation, derange all natural
adjustments of supply and demand, and trample upon
Ia
natural law. Everybody knows that the commer-
-1
prices is in competion ;
andci al
ws Tent Ili
et yr
ill:LE; a
di ni
as
mt
later the public will get their article at the proper
ohnidgshor in cab-fares, sooner or
price. It will of course be so with beer in the long
run, for the compensating and levelling power of
justice, truth, and public interest will at last beat
down even such an anomaly as the London beer
trade. As in bread, so in beer—the poor
man will get his rights some day; but the
giants of Chiswell-street, and Bankside, and Brick-
lane will not relinquish their grasp upon his purse
without a struggle. It takes some time before the
consumer can satisfy himself that he is cheated to
such an incredible extent. It really requires some
patience and consideration to apprehend the astound-
ing fact, that, though the price of bread always follows
that of corn, the price of London beer is always the
same, and is never altered by fluctuations in the value
of the raw material. We must repeat it—reiterate it
—reproduce it. Rhetoric cannot make it more im-
pressive—its unadorned massive force is what tells—
in the simplicity of the fact consists its power. It
can be repeated over and over again. It is of no use
to de!course about it, to put it in different lights, to
turn it round—it has but a single aspect.

The brewer is the true man of fate—the Stoic of
the nineteenth century—the great unmoved. His is
the region of the unchangeable—the fixed, stern,
crystalline spheres of being, which know neither
youth nor age. All institutions, customs, profes-
sions, modes of thought, credentials of truth, are in
these days of mutability, fluctuating, changing,
surging, rolling onwards, upwards, forwards, in
every direction—the price of porter alone is stable in
this universal flux of all material and moral things.
Metternich is down—Cobden is up—empires fall—
constitutions are given and taken away—Presidents
sit in the place of Kings—the corn-laws are no more
—church-rates tremble—parish beadles are laughed
at—the one thing immortal, immutable, and eternal,
is London porter. Beer is the sole symbol of perma-
nence, of everlasting rest, of solid repose—of Saturn's
steadfast iron reign. The realm of Silence and old
Night is reproduced by the Dii majorum gentium—
the twelve greater deities of the sacred College of Ale
and Porter Brewers. Every other necessary of life,
every other commodity of trade, has fallen from twenty
to fifty per cent.—beer alone continues at war-prices.
In the crash of kingdoms, creeds, commerce, and
politics, the serene form of the great brewer, un-
changed and unchangeable, is the solitary symbol of
fixity.
Let not sentimental spinsters, who drink their two
or three glasses of sherry a-day—certainly without
ever dreaming that their favourite beverage can possi-
bly be too cheap—shrug themselves with philan-
thropic complacency under the persuasion that beer at
double its proper price is a sort of moral benefit
to the poor, as tending to prevent intoxication. If
the commercial interests of the empire forbid a Go-
vernment to introduce ethical checks on cheapness,
we are not going to allow millionaire brewers to wax
fat, and kick at the public, on high moral and religi-
ous principles. We do not see why the twelve great
brewers should put a million a year into their own
pockets because drunkenness is a filthy vice. We
are speaking of beer, not as the sot's luxury, but as
the labourer's necessary. We cannot forget how
large a portion of the artizan's weekly earnings goes
in beer. In the case of a family of the ordinary type,
consisting of a man, his wife, and two children, and
including three workers—viz., the married couple and
one boy—it has been shown hat their joint earnings
are about 1/. Bs. weekly, and that, out of this,
they expend in beer 3s. 6d., or one-eighth of their
whole income. This, in point of fact, is London life—
this is the labourer's existence. It may be an excess—
labourers may expend too much on beer—but this is
not the question. It is of the fact we are speaking.
One-eighth of the wages of the London poor goes in
beer ; and the brewers, in their cupidity and greedi-
ness, compel the poor man, as regards this eighth of
his income, to pay just twice as much as he ought to
pay—for, if barley is half the price it bore in 1847,
then beer ought to be half the price too. In short, it
comes to this—of every three shillings and sixpence
which the London labourer pays for his beer, just one
shilling and ninepence goes to buy gold plate, and
race-horses, and hunting studs, and estates, and shares,
and equipages for the twelve great brewing companies
—their gains being exactly double of what, four years
ago, they accepted as a fair return for their capital
and skill, and good beers. Think of this, men of Lon-
don ! Think, when you pay precisely one shilling
army,
and ninepence a week more than you ought to pay, that
yitannoatrisftoorcrancym,oonrarachpo,
police—not
annnot fmorya,
church,youpa
or
or a pestilence—but only for the honour and owrara,
glory
and pelf of Barclay and Perkins, Truman, ins, Hanbury,
and Co., &o. A great a i conso lt. on this—a patriotic
thought—that we are pinching •
wife and family, and
depriving ourselves of a
our f •
i fair amount of coals,
blankets, and nourishing food, n order that we way
afford, at the trifling coatof • • •
one shilling in every six-
teen, to keep twelve bloated brewers in purple and
fine
linen.
We are certainly a wise and discerning
people.

- Now, let us apply this principle to any
that a man
of life or branch of trade. Suppose
501.
he pays has eight hundred a year, and that he
a necessary
for house-rent, which is something I
combination
of life•—what would he say if;
by
some
suddenly called
of builders and landlords, he were other rank
on to pay 1001. a year?,.
who expends on
in whatever class otsociety,
commodityone-eighth of his income,
any given a _
ed of one•half of that eighth
Let any head of a family,
discover that he_isnpdiii
immoral state of trade—should
by an unnatural
ta
of leagues, meetings resolutions,
we not have PI" Y t
remonstrances, protes s, and struggles? It will be
sudch. a state of things is simply impos-
siblebut it is the literal fact in the
brewing business. To a man of five hundred or eight
hundred a year it is, indeed, of very little conse-
quence objecitne objected
nt
whether he pays 2d. or 4i. or 63. a pot for
ya.tra e ,
beer; but the brewers' extortion falls with cruel
severity on the poor, for to them the article is an
absolute necessary of life. It is the working men
who are most deeply and vitally concerned in this
question; and, in the existing Mate of public opinion
and feeling on matters affecting their rights and in-
teres!s, we may almost say that it will be their own
fault if they allow the present condition of the London
beer trade to continue.