The North Cumberland Reformer. — 1891-08-06 (Carlisle, Cumbria, England)

AMBLER.  lemperanee 6 Prohibition Xotes. [From our London Correspondent.]  London, August 4th, 1891.  Lord Chief Justice Coleridge has made a noteworthy addition to the long roll of judicial dicta as to the evil influence of drink. In an address on "Holding One's Tongue," Lord Coleridge discussed the late Bishop of Peterborough's famous saying that he "would rather see England free than sober," and remarks upon it that if Bishop Magee could have gone on circuit and could have seen the misery, the wasting disolation, which drink brings with it, Lord Coleridge thinks that he would have hesitated long before he gave utterance to an opinions so certain to be misunderstood. "Anyone," continued this high authority, "who sits in my position must know that if you could make England sober you might indeed in another sense make her free, because you might—not literally, of course—but you might speaking broadly, shut up three-fourths of her goals. Speaking generally, almost all the crimes of violence, and many of the crimes into which dishonesty enters, are begun or are completed in the publichouse."  * • In his True Thiuker for August, Dr. F. R. Lees discusses in characteristic fashion a dozen different topics of current interest. One page deals incisively with Lord Bramwell "as Lawyer and Logician" and it is remarked that "few men could have made more blunders—indeed he displays great talent in that direction. In the law and its verbage he is an expert, but as to seeing principles beneath the words he is as blind as a bat at noon day. The capacity is not within him." Lord Bramwell's latest utterance about Sharp r Wakefield is the occasion of these remarks. "As a lawyer he went with the rest of the law lords. Of course anybody with any brains could not do otherwise. He read the letter of the law aright, —therefore he now reads its spirit wrongly to console the poor publicans. He affirms that though the magistrates have absolute power to refuse all applications for licence, they will err if they refuse on the special ground that there is no public need for any particular house to be licensed." Dr Lees pertinently asks, why have we not free trade and a mere monetary license for revenue, and he points out that though the L.S.D. license system was introduced for the purpose of corrupting the people, yet many later acts of Parliament proceeded on the principle that there is a social danger in the trade of drink-selling which must enter into the calculations of the licensing justices. "The law assumes that the house is for the needs of the public and the magistrates are the only legal judges of the need until the people shall possess the Direct Veto. Lord Bramwell therefore practically proposes that the justices shall not exercise the general power given to them in the interests of good order, but licence all applicants who desire to get rich on the poverty of the people. * *  The True Maer also contains a couple of gems on "Equitable compensation," in the form of an extract from a letter of Mr Frank Garrison. the son of the famous Lloyd Garrison, the great anti-slavery advocate. Mr Garrison says:—' I have always felt that it was the victims of the publican who were entitled to compensation; and I have never been able to see why a drink crazed murderer might not fairly turn upon the State prosecuting him, and declare it particeps erbninis for licensing the publican to sell the drink that nerved to his crime. Emerson expressed it finely when in was proposed to pay the Slaveholders for emancipating their slaves.