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Show g Ufye BRITISH CRISIS P XXILT. THE LIQUOR TRADE. By FREDERIC J. HASKIN. run until twenty-one. yeara after the passage of the acL Under this bill, had It becomo law, no license could have been terminated for fourteen years except by paying of compensation. compensa-tion. To all others,1 fourteen yeArs notlc of the termination of the II cense must be given. In the. United States where licenses are revoked at the will of the authorities, and where absolute prohibition laws are passed without any notice whatever, this British bill would not seem unjust. No measure In tho legislative history his-tory of England wa9 so bitterly denounced. de-nounced. One issue of a leading Tory newspaper used these phrases In com-1 com-1 mentlng upon this licensing bill: "Utter "Ut-ter Iniquity." "Sheer brigandage." "Fanatical legislation." "Socialistic confiscation." "A gigantic act of public pub-lic theft." "A raiding expedition of partisan blackmailers." "The sum of hypocrisy with the maximum of wrong." "A measure of plunder." 'The government are acting In the spirit of a highwayman.'' "'Progressive "'Progress-ive and cumulative plunder." "A colossal co-lossal sham." And after oil that the editorial writer apologized for not doing do-ing better, saying. "We feel the utter inadequacy of words to convey a due sense of the magnitude of this issue." If the proponents of a prohibition bill In an American state were to give fourteen years notice, and then promise annuities for twenty-one years to all license holders, and then some newspaper were to say such things of the temperance reformers, it Is highly high-ly probable that some rude person would Insinuate that that newspaper wa.s controlled by tho liquor trade But, of course, there Is no such thing as a subfldlzed preSB In Britain. It required exactly ninety minutes for the House of Lords to defeat this licensing bill. The conservative lead ers declared that thoy' deplored tho evils of drink, but they were unwilling to attack the sacred Institution of private pri-vate property in order to restrict Intemperance. In-temperance. Being defeated in their efforts at direct legislation, the liberal leaders resolved to attack the trade by using the power to tax as a power to de-stroy. de-stroy. The average liquor license was Increased to $1,200 a year. Instead of $300 a year, and after tho first year nearly 20,000 barrooms went out of business hecause they could not afford af-ford to pay the new tax. Under the licensing bill It would have required twenty-one years of time and tho ex penditure of millions of dollars In com pensatlng annuities to close as many saloons as the high taxes already havo closed. It would have been better for the liquor trade If it had accepted the licensing bill. But the history of I legislation against the alcoholic liquor I traffic proves that "The Trade" has I suffered more from the foolhardiness of its friends than from the attacks of its enemies. This Is as true In Great Britain as It Is In the United States. LONDON, July 27. The liquor trade Is a powerful factor In British politics, and In the present struggle for supremacy hotween the House of Commons and the Houso of Lords "The Trade" Is fighting with the, Peers and against the people- It Is the liquor trade which the Asqulth government govern-ment must fear oven more than the landlords and the church, hecause the present government cannot live without with-out the support of the Irish Nationalists, National-ists, and In Ireland the Nationalists are not in sympathy with the Liberal policy of restraining the traffic In alcoholic al-coholic liquors The controverted Llojd-George Budget Bud-get was the first effective blow dealt In tho warfare against the liquor bus!- I ness in Great Britain. The House of Lords had rejected the liberal llcens-1 Ing hill of 1908, and recourse was had to the power of taxation. In Great Britain the annual Finance Bill, or Budget, goes Into effect on the day it Is Introduced In Parliament, Instead of after It Is enacted Into law, as Is the case wllh all legislative measures in the United States. Thus the liquor taxation features of the Budget wero In effect for more than a year beforo i the Budget actually became the law of tho land, These taxes had proved to be such a great burden on the liquor trade, that In the- general elec tlon of January the liquor Interests were militant in their opposition to tho liberal government This fact accounts for a preat many Tory gains, especially In urban communities. The ledars of both the Conservative Conserva-tive and tho liberal parties agree In deploring the evil effects of drink upon the people of the Kingdom, but they differ widely as to measures to be taken to remedy the present conditions. con-ditions. The Liberals favor a policy of cutting down the number of drinking drink-ing places, both by arbitrary restriction restric-tion and by high taxation. The Conservatives Con-servatives are opposed to any measure meas-ure which will In any wise Interfere with "property rights." In the first year of the operation of the new liquor taxes the British people peo-ple spent $R0f),O00,MO for alcoholic liquors, a decrease of $20,000,000 as compared with the previous year. The . current year show an even greater great-er decrease on account of tho higher price of liquor and the smaller number num-ber of public houses. The exciso duties on the liquor Itself were greatly great-ly Increased, and tho Hcen60 fees practically prac-tically were quadrupled under tho new Budget, and yet Mr. Lloyd-George confessed In Parliament that the government gov-ernment was dl3appoinled In tho amount of revenues derived from the new liquor taxes The people stopped buying liquor when the prices went up. This was true to a remarkable extent In thrifty Scotland. The British people drink more liquor per capita than any other people en earth exrept the French. Reduced to pure alcohol, statistics show that the English people are at the head of the 11st as consumers, followed closely by the Irish and then the Scotch The figures show that the annual average consumption of pure alcohol Der head Is 1 0 gallons In England. 1.5 gallons In Ireland and 1.3 gallons in Scotland, making an average for the TTnlted Kingdom of 1.8 gallons. The annual per capita consumption of spirits, wines and beers in the United Klnc-dam Klnc-dam Is 33.1 gallons, ns against 33.fi gallons for France, 29.0 gallons for Germany and 14.2 gallons for the United States How difficult It Is to deal with this vexlnrr problem In England Is mad manifest by the ntorv of the licensing bill of 190S In the United States a license li-cense to sell liquor is a privilege which may be granted at the will of the community, but It never has been looked upon as property. In Eneland, on the other hand, a retail liquor license li-cense Is property. Is a vested richt, and Is a sacred thing which the law may not terminate without givlne compensation com-pensation Until the I,loyd-C.oor?e Budget, tho liquor license foe In the Ignited Kingdom varied from S-'O In towns of under 1,20 people to $301 In London These compared with an average In the United States of from J17.T for village licenses up to ?2,5nn In the large cities The liberal licensing bill was devised de-vised as a measure of temperance re-' form directed lo three main ends the Immediate and progressive improvement im-provement In circumstances attending tho sale of liquor; the gradual hut complete recovery for the community of itx dominion over property in II-censlnp: II-censlnp: and tho greater power of preventing tho growth of drinking Clubs. Having due regard for the British notion of property rights, the bill created a special court of licensing licens-ing Justices, whose duty it was to pre. pare a scheme of the reduction of the number of liquor licenses to a certain graduated scale based on population. Under this scheme 3",000. or about one-third of the existing licenses would have been terminated. Fourteen years' noiloe was given, before the arbitrary sections of the act were to become effective In tho meantime, any old license extinguished extinguish-ed was to be paid for at a fixed rate of compensation which would give to the license holder a guaranteed annuity annu-ity equal 1n amount to the annual value of the llcenEe. th annuity to |