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METHODS OF SOUAL REFORM.
hse Iately been done under the authority of the Local Government
Board ; but I regret to say that the ratepayers still
dwline to incur the expense of mending the roads.
Bat whetever ratepayers may think about the
Permkive
Prohibitory Law, there is no doubt as to what publicans think.
To them, if put into operation, it would be Domesday, and the
result of the persistent agitation of tho Alliance is to make the
publicans band themselves together in opposit,ion to all reforms.
The publicans, like every other largo body of men, include all
kinds of characters, but I refuse to believe that they are
wholly unreasonable and unwilling to acknowledge the evils
which flow from their trado when badly regulated. If assured
that license roform was not intended as L step towards their
suppression and ruin, but that it would tend to the elimination
of tho less rcspoctable members of t,he trade, I cannot believe
that the publicans gonerally would oppose reform aa bitterly
as they do at present. Tho true mode of reforming the sale
of liquor is to diminish competition, and to weed out the ill-
oonducted houses, until tho value of the remaining licenses
hae been EO far raised that their holders will not dare and will
not have sufficient inducement to tolerate abuses.
011.
The following are the terms in which the Alliance describes
its attitude both towards the publicans and towards other
schemes of licensing reform : “As the United Kingdom
Alliance is constituted for the annihilation of the liquor tdc,
and not for its sanction and regulation, your committee
cannot, in loyalty to the trust imposed upon them, enter into
any lioensing scheme whatever; and they are bound, in selfdefence
and consistency, to look with coldness and even
suspicion upon any propoaals that favour the obnoxious policy
of forcing licenaes into communities in defiance of the peuple’e
wiahes and petitions.”* Thae the Bllianoe distinctly and
q d y pbs itself in opposition not only to the pabli-
* Nineteanth Report of the Executive Committee of the United
Kingdom AIIianoe, 1870-?l, p. 34.