Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 November 1879 — The New Liquor Law Proposed in England. [ARTICLE]

The New Liquor Law Proposed in England.

Hew York Sun. Much interest has been excited both in Great Britain and this country by the method of dealing with the liquor question practised in the Swedish city of Gothenburg. There reason to expect that some modification of the Gothenburg plan will be adopted in the United Kingdom, since it has been warmly commended by a committee of the House of Lords specially organized to suggest some practicable remedy for intemperance. < The inquiries instituted by this Committee seem to have been of the most extensive and careful character, and the taking of evidence has occupied more than two years. The report begins by conceding that the liquor 3uestion in England demands immeiate solution, and that individual and national ruin is threatened by the already excessive and rapidly increasing consumption of alcoholic liquors. It takes for granted, however—and the repeated votes on Sir. Wilfred Lawson’s bill justify tire assumption—that a general prohibitive measure, even if desirable, could never be passed in England, and need not, therefore, engage the attention of practical legislators How best to control and curtail the public sale of liquors was the object of their inquiry; and with that

view they scanned the workings of the various systems by which the bestowal of licenses has been adjusted or restricted, and among others that of “local option” followed in some of the United States. The latter method was not approved by the Committee, on grounds identical, it seems, with those recently announced by the well-known Liberal, Mr. W. E. Forster. During the last session Mr. Forster declared in the House of Commons that to give a local majority power to prevent the innocent use of a given article because some had abused it, would constitute a grave interference with the rights of the minority, not to be tolerated except in matters of supreme political and social moment. As such matters would naturally foil within the scope, not of local but of imperial legislation, it follows that Mr. Forster thinks “local option” even less defensible than national prohibition. It is certain that nothing is more bitter or more short sighted than the squabbles of small communities, or more odious than the tyranny of a petty township magnate. But while Mr. Forster and Mr. Bright, and the great majority of leading men in both political parties, are opposed to prohibition, whether local or national, they are all agreed that communities should have a much larger share of control over the liquor traffic than they at present enjoy in England. Nor is there much difference in ©pinion on the further point, viz: that, granting the necessity of restricting the sale of drink within narrow limits, security should be taken that the monopoly thus occasioned should be worked for the benefit of the whole community, and not for any given individuals. The Committee of the House of Lords proposes to compass such security by recommending that legislative facilities should be afforded for the local adoption of the Gothenburg or of Mr. Chamberlain’s scheme, or of some modification of them.

The Gothenburg system has already been described in these columns, and may be defined as the transfer of the whole retail liquor business in a given town to a private corporation—the com pan y undertaking not to derive any profit from the traffic, but to conduct it solely in the interests of temperance and morality, paying to the town treasury the whole returns beyond the ordinary rate of interest on the invested capital. On the other band, Mr. Chamberlain’s plan, which has been heartily supported in Birmingham, places the liquor business in the hands, not of a private corporation, but of the local representative authorities, who must so carry on the trade, however, that uc individual shall have any pecuniary interest in the sales or derive any profit from them. There is an obvious objection to Mr. Chamberlain’s scheme, which would have quite as much weight, moreover, in the United States as in Great Britain. When asked to define his phrase, local representative authorities, he explained that he meant the town councils of boroughs. Now, the election of such officers, like that of Aldermen in our American cities, is very largely influenced by the liquor interest, aud they could scarcely be trusted to carry out a policy of rigorous supervision. In Sweeden the success of tne Gothenburg plan is largely owing to the fact that tae citizens who conduct the drink trade give guarantees for their good faith by undertaking pecuniary responsibilities on behalf of the community, without receiving any personal advantages whatever iu the shape of profit. Township officers, however, iu England or in this country, w©uld often be under personal obligations to the very elements which, under the Chamberlain project they would be expected to control. It will be observed that both the schemes advocated by this committee are alike in one essential feature, viz : that no profit ought to accrue t® any individual from the sale of alcoholic liquors. There may be a question us to the fittest machinery for completely eliminating personal interest in the trade, but, this object once attained, we know from the experience of Gothr enburg that the morality, sobriety, and physical well-being of a community would be surprisingly promoted.