THE PERMISSIVE BILL.
THE Bath Election, coming on the head of so many defeats in which the Licensed Victuallers have exercised a per- nicious influence on the constituency, created something like a panic in the House of Commons. On Wednesday member after member rose eager to speak in severe terms of the Permissive Bill, and Mr. Dalrymple, now unfortunately the only Liberal M.P. for Bath, came quite round to the common-place view of the Liquor traffic, voting against the Permissive Bill this year, for which he had, voted last year, though not without assigning in his speech good reasons,—derived from his expe- rience in America, of the absolute fruitlessness of a policy of prohibition,—to support his change. Quite a host followed him in the same line of criticism. Sir H. Selwin Ibbetaon,Mr. Bernal Osborne, Sir R. Anstruther, Mr. Aluntz, and the Home Secre- tary all spoke, and spoke sharply against the Bill in rapid succession ; while, before Mr. Dalrymple's speech, Mr. Wheel- house and Mr. J. Talbot had both taken the same hostile line. The second reading was refused by a larger majority than for many years back,-240 (321 to 81). Evidently the appeal of the Licensed Victuallers to all 3I.P.'s to vote on one side or the other, and not to delay the division by lengthy speaking, told upon honourable members. The speeches were short, but numerous, energetic, very distinct in their meaning, and mostly and very strongly on the Licensed Victuallers' aide. Not for years have the votes for the Permissive Bill been so few ;—while the votes against it have never, we believe, been so many. Undoubtedly, the Victuallers have "energised." to use the beautiful expression of their learned counsel, Mr. Wheelhouse (M.P. for Leeds), and have " energised " to some effect. In the face of a general election, and with the immense proofs of political vitality in Licensed Victuallers which every fresh election gives, members and can- didates feel that they cannot afford to trifle with the subject of beer. It has become necessary, as the Licensed Victuallers won't come over to either party, for candidates of both parties to go over to the Licensed Victuallers. There must be no excuse for the Licensed Victuallers banding together, either as Liberals or Conservatives, in the next general election. Accordingly, Liberals and Conservatives vie with each other in making their position clear in relation to this object of political fear and desire. Only a faithful few followed Sir Wilfrid Lawson and Lord Claud Hamilton into the lobby, while the converts made up for the awkwardness and embarrassment of a change of mind on the subject, by heartily cheering Mr. Samuelson when he expressed his indignation at the dictatorial political combinations of the Licensed Victuallers. -Mere cheers can- not be personally identified as showing the disposition of the cheerer towards the proprietors of public-houses, and consequently the attack on the tyrants was cheered, even while the cause of the tyrants was supported by steady phalanxes of votes.
Certainly the vast political influence which "an interest" like this can assert over the conduct of Members of Parlia- ment is not a subject for congratulation, or even for feelings of resignation. Nor do we think this the less true because, as regards the Permissive Bill at least, the supporters of the Licensed Victuallers are wholly in the right, and only wish to defeat a very needless and mischievous restriction on popular liberty. In those States of the Union where the Maine Law has been tried, it has been universally evaded, and so evaded as -to convey the impression that it is thoroughly unpopular. In Pennsylvania, Mr. Dalrymple seems to have been told that though the people "liked the Maine Law," they did not like it "enforced ;" and wherever else it was in operation, it was not only as easy, but rather easier to get the forbidden alcohol, than it had been while alcohol was lawful. Under such circumstances, it is quite clear that so far as it attempts pro- hibition at least, the policy of restriction is not only a complete failure, but a new stimulus to excess. And if it is replied that the Permissive Bill does not profess to prohibit, we must re- join that at least it puts it into the power of the people to prohibit if they will, and that if they exercise that power, all those evils are very likely indeed to follow which we have already seen following the absolute prohibition contained in the Maine Law,—namely, universal indulgence and universal contempt for the law. The only difference there is between the two cases of a prohibition pronounced by a majority of the representatives of the people in the central Assembly, and a prohibition pronounced by a two-thirds' majority of the people themselves in any one district, is that the moral authority of the former would at first command far more respect than the two-thirds' popular vote which might pro-
claim the latter. For a Parliament must at least listen to full debate, and give judgment after hearing argument on both sides ; but the two-thirds' popular vote might, very well, be a mere whim, a whim adopted without any canvassing of the arguments against that course. The popular veto would lead to riot and the use of force by the minority, who could hardly be expected to bow at once to the mere caprice of an ignorant mob on a question affecting their tradi- tional rights ; but the veto of Parliament would at least command enough respect to make the use of evasion more probable than the use of force. If there is to be any attempt to enforce abstinence from alcohol at all, it is to us per- fectly clear that the Parliamentary authority is infinitely to be preferred to the authority of a given majority of the rate- payers. All the evils of the former kind of restriction are repeated in the latter, and a great many new ones added. It is bad enough to be deprived of a right by the votes of a national Parliament, taken after full deliberation, but it is not nearly so bad as to be deprived of the same right by the votes of people who have, in all probability, never heard what can be said on more sides of the question than one. Sir Wilfrid Lawson's Bill not only proposes to do what is decidedly mis- chievous, but to select by far the worst method by which the mischief could be done.
But apart from the method of the Permissive Bill, the object itself is quite illegitimate. The public have no doubt a perfect right to diminish to the utmost the public annoy- ances and scandals connected with the sale of liquor, and for that purpose the licensing system has been invented. But if we go further than that, and without pretending to say that the drinking of beer and spirits is a moral and social offence, still maintain that we have a perfect right to demand from the whole community that they shoald give it up for the sake of a part of the community, we land our- selves in a martinet policy to the dangers and evils of which it is quite impossible to see any limit. As Mr. Osborne remarked, it would be quite as tenable to say that because women are the cause of much moral evil and crime, a two-thirds' majority of the people of any district shall have the right to banish all women out of that district for three years, or that because we may disapprove of Lent fasting, a two-thirds majority of the people of any district shall have power to put a veto on the Lent fasting of the Catholic minority for the same period. In short, there is absolutely hardly any absurdity of moral in- terference by Government of which this doctrine, if it could be accepted, would not euggest a justification. Sumptuary laws would be amply justified by such a precedent ; and so would parochial tyranny of any other kind. A two-thirds' majority has just as mach right to determine where the remaining third shall or shall not travel, as what they shall or shall not drink. Every principle of liberty and economy is violated by this assumption of the right of a given majority to banish a particular trade from a given district. If it may be done for one trade, it may be done for another, and we might just as well concede at once to the people the right to determine how many manufacturers, how many retail shops of every kind, how many medical men, how many attorneys, and how many barbers, if any, shall be distributed over any one parish, as concede to them the right to banish licensed victuallers. The truth is, that the principle is so monstrous that it is difficult to understand how it has been seriously discussed in Parliament at all. Only on the assumption that moderation in drink is akin to excess in drink, and that excess is a nursery of crime, has the discussion even a plausible side. But it is just as plausible to argue that moderation in political and social controversy is akin to excess, and that excess is a nursery of slander, libel, and moral violence, and that therefore a two-thirds majority of the public ought to have the right to veto public discussion in meetings and in the Press. We cannot help hoping that the very decisive vote on Sir Wilfrid's Lawson's Bill, and the still more decisive discussion, will give it a check from which it will hardly recover. Parliament ought not to be teased with the discussion of measures for which there is really no plausible pretence of reason.
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