The Sun.
London, England, 1868-02-07 00:00:00

appears to be continually increasing, and becomes
every year more determined and more clamorous.
Well, now you propose that these little bills should
not be brought in, and that Government should bring
in a general measure, but you know what that means,
and I know it too. Why, the moment they brought
mirwtel
wool
audsslyod:
reeit thathOefrl
in a general measure, which I believe they will
never
.do, you would set yourselves with all your
organisations to oppose it, and any material change
ocnanlyutilildmegrstaynoclu, aisreth‘Na'itl theling
whole to eonce
systemd concede,
oafs l
if :ere assi e
gI
from your present condition you would resist. The
should be placed under one authority ; but then you
are under that authority now, an I therefore to you
it would be no change. The beersellers would,
there is very little doubt about it, coalesce, and I
thisf
bctoevhueoerrnsylGei ,tnet,eldirenyfmr question
Government
might du
go
tn this, a
generalas the
don't know whether they would object to be placed
under that authority, having got their licenses al-
change would put them in the position you are now
m theof billthe aSltuengdeathyerßill
or
if it were included would receive from you exactly
the same organised opposition that you now offer
to the bill of Mr. Abel Smith. If you tell me
this—that in case the Government bring in a bill
like this of Mr. Smith's we shall be glad to make
some concessions to meet the views of a large portion
of the public, I could understand you ; but you ob-
ject altogether to this measure—that it is a bill in-
vading your rights, by telling you that you should
have your Lours of busineas on the Sunday curtailed
at all ; and therefore we corre no nearer a settle-
ment of the question by getting rid of this bill and
waiting for that very distant time when the Go-
vernment, which is already in a minority in the
house, should undertake to introduce a general
measure. Therefore I do not see one way out of
the difficulty at all, so long as licensed victuallers
resist every proposition that meets the view not only
of the teetotaller, but of an enormous number of
people who do not belong to teetotal societies at all,
and do not reject the notion that the use of intoxi-
cating liquors in moderate quantities may be right
and even beneficial. You have made known your
intention to grant no concession, and you fight
violently, and with a most admirable organisation,
against all the propositions which emanate from
the class of people to whom I have made allu-
sion ; and I must say that I know of nothing equal
to the powerlyou possess of managingand marshal-
ling your forces ; but you have outside your own
ranks a public that insists every year more
strongly upon something being done, and I, for
one, feel certain that in the long run you will be
beaten. I do not mean that you will be extinguished ;
I do not look in our lifetime to see any such thing
happen as that the articles in which you deal will
be prohibited from being sold or used in this coun-
try ; but with regard to several things, and parti-
cularly that of Sunday trading, I think you will be
eventually beaten—l do not mean that none of those
things will be allowed to be sold on Sunday, but
that the sale of them will be put under restrictions
greater than those which now exist. Then comes
the question, What are we to do in Parliament ?
Nobody is more opposed to interference with trade ,
by legislation than I am, but then your trade as i t
at present exists is a creature of law ; you have no
manner of right to open your places at all on the
Sunday. I cannot open my place of business on
the Sunday, and a photographer in New-street,
pursuing his most innocent avocation on that day,
would be brought *fore the Mayor for so doing,
and would get into trciahle. Therefore your keep-
ing your places open on Sunday is a creature of
law, and it is not in any degree a right as com-
pared with the other portions of the po-
pulation. You may say in reply to this that
you pay special taxes for licences and so forth,
and that if your houses of business are kept open for
only a certain part of the week you cannot be Willi

petted to afford the same amount of taxation. I
merely mention these things to show the almost
inextricable difficulty of the case—difficulty to us
who have to determine upon it in Parliament, be-
cause of the contending opinions abroad in the
country, and difficult to you because you are fight-
ing a battle in which you must eventually be
worsted. I think our friends of the teetotal per-
suasion have done their cause very great harm by
the I may say almost violent manner in which they
have attacked the licensed victuallers, as though
the members of that class were in the main less
anxious for the public good than other people. I
think, as I have said, that they have done their
own cause harm by this mode of procedure ; but,
at the same time, the one thing that has astonished
me almost beyond anything else in this matter has
been that there is not in any town in
England, so far as I know, any licensed
victualler, sufficiently—l am afraid of the
exact word I should use, lest I should be mis-
understood—but I mean sufficiently elevated in
his views, sufficiently, regarding the interests of the
public and his own interests, and the interests of
his family, as to propose voluntarily, if it could be
done by law (and if done voluntarily it might after-
wards be done by law), to close to a large extent
those houses of business. There is no teetotal
family, there is no drunkard's family, that is in
truth so much interested in the closing of public-
houses on Sunday as the families of the licensed
victuallers themselves. Some of them have spoken
to me on the subject ; and I recollect one man who
kept an inn in a most charming, retired vale in the
North of England telling me that he should leave
the trade, as he did not like his family, and parti-
ticularly his daughters, disturbed as they were
disturbed under the circumstances of the trade
which he carried on. Now, I have always been
astonished that the licensed victuallers have not
among themselves—there are good, bad, and
indifferent among you, as among all other
classes—(Mr. Wadhams. Certainly")—com-
bined for the purpose of discussing and
considering whether it might not be immensely
to their interest to promote a partial, and
iu some cases, I would say, an entire closing of their
houses on Sunday. Anything they may get out of
what is sold on the Sunday cannot for a moment
be put in the balance against the enormous gain
that would come to their families if they could have
the whole of that day as a day of instruction, of
rest, and of recreation. While Ido not unite against
those who bring indiscriminate and very often un-
just charges against persons keeping publichouses
and becrhouses, I must, at the same time, say that
I grieve beyond expression that nobody has arisen
in the trade out of the sort of captivity in which
they are by the practice of opening their houses on
the Sunday, and carrying on on that day a trade
which is not always of the most pleasant cha-
racter. If this were done licensed victuallers
might enjoy themselves quietly in the bosoms of
their families and share the tranquillity and the
rest of the day of rest with those persons engaged
in other trades. What are we to do? I will tell
you my opinion—not as unfriendly to you all,
because I am not unfriendly, but with the view
simply to ascertain what we are
contention.todo—.what 11Ir.
Dixon and myself are to do —in this
public opinion grows in favour of
Sunday, the pa
entire closing of publichouses onrtia o
Par-
liament arr
the _
(liiiacttnaetii-iothw will of
thatpublic opinion,
course tho, eninlend I
linatitohninakndytohue
de, and ought to let .
ought to find out something that
Ayboteil wsomulidthcoonr-
ce
somebody
else, or the Government, know that
made that might,
if some fair proposition were
perhaps
ou
from for o r a d
numberana
harassing, aysesai nr save
you
y furthereens irritationerable
conces-
sion. If you du not do t his, lam afraid that the
would be willing on your part to make a
worrying of which you complainwillthelohby of h
continue,
House
of that you will always be in
of Commons—about the moesrtehwatir
kleptlhbl uacelnkpnieoa.
know
a except the inside iacith
•