The licensing laws and proposals for their amendment : (from "Meliora," April, 1869).

Date:
[1869]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The licensing laws and proposals for their amendment : (from "Meliora," April, 1869). Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    THE LICENSING LAWS AND PROPOSALS FOR THEIR AMENDMENT. HPHERE are few subjects so intricate as our licensing JL system, if system it may be called. Enactment after enactment bas been made, establishing such a variety of licences, that very few persons are acquainted with all the conditions under which the privilege to sell intoxicating drinks can be obtained, or with the laws which are in force for the regulation of the trade. There is only one thing in connection with the system on which all persons seem to be agreed, namely, that the result of all the laws has been most unsatis¬ factory. All classes of the community are loud in their complaints, and proposals for amendment are being brought forward on every hand. The magistrates all over the country and the judges of the highest courts, the convocation of the province of Canterbury and the conference of the Primitive Methodists, the members of the United Kingdom Alliance and of the Licensed Victuallers^ Protection Societies, the Association for the Promotion of Social Science and the numerous associations scattered over all the land for the avowed object of amending the licensing laws, all declare unanimously that the present incongruous mass of inconsistent enactments produces confusion and uncertainty in the admin¬ istration of the law, and promotes rather than diminishes intemperance and its attendant evils. We do not intend in the present article to enter upon a consideration of the amount of the evil which does exist among us; we will assume, unhesita¬ tingly, that our readers are well aware of its extent and deplore it sincerely; we shall take for granted that all desire to remove what all regret; and believing that what is really needed is a fair statement of the law as it at present stands and of the remedies proposed, we shall attempt as impartially as possible to describe the existing confusion, and to point out the nature of the proposals made for its removal. We do not dare to enter into a history of the licensing system of this country beyond the first quarter of the present century. Prior to 1830 the only licensed retailers of beer, wine.