Welsh Journals

ments of those who consume them moderately. Sale for consumption off the premises would not meet these conditions, and would lead to serious undesirable results. The truth is, moderate drinkers in every class are, as a body, responsible for our liquor trade as it exists to-day. Licensed premises exist and are licensed for them and for them alone-the various classes of premises being suited to the social position, convenience and require- ments of the purchasers, and no class of moderate drinkers can, with any appearance of consistency and practicable reasonableness say that the supply of their requirements in a particular kind of premises is a moral business, and in another kind of premises and under other conditions is immoral. The proprietors of all branches of the business push their trade, sell as much liquor as they can and afford facilities for obtaining and temptation to obtain it. Total abstainers who regard the sale of drink as im- moral, and tell us that they have a conscientious objection to being implicated in it, and that Nationalisation will compel them to commit sin, are in an equally weak and false position. The complicity they would have in the trade if the State owned it would be as members of the community sharers in responsibility for what the com- munity as a corporate body did. As individuals they need not have any more part or lot in the trade than they have now but in precisely the same way as they would as members of the community be implicated then they are implicated now morally, legally and financially. Again I may quote what I have previously written on this point As a community, we license and regulate, and thereby permit and authorise the trade, and we derive a revenue of millions a year from it. They say they are in it in this way against their will. That is not so. Every step that has been taken in increasing con- trol and making the taxation of the trade greater and more revenue- producing has been taken with their active support, and often at their pressing request. If it were true that they were opposed to licensing, regulating and taxing the trade, it would mean that until the people were ready to prohibit the sale it was to be unregulated, unrestricted and untaxed, and that would mean that anyone would be able to sell intoxicants anywhere, and that the price of them would be vastly less than it now is. Next, they tell us.that liquor taxation has nearly always had the same object-to penalise and thus to limit consumption." Again, that is not the fact. During the whole of the last half-century, when higher taxes on beer and spirits have been imposed, it has been when more revenue was required, and the avowed object of the increase was to get more money. For a long time no substantial addition was made to the spirit duties, because it was thought they could not be increased without so reducing the consumption as to diminish the yield. Then they contend they are no more involved in complicity in the trade because the community licenses, regulates and derives a large revenue from it, than they are implicated in offences against the law because our courts fine those who commit them. Others say they are no more partners in the liquor trade than they are in the pawnbroking and patent medicine trades, which are also licensed. All this wriggling and special pleading can be brought to a simple and decisive test. If it were proposed to license and regulate brothels and gambling-houses and take a heavy toll from them in proportion to the trade they did, these same people would most vigorously oppose such a step on the ground that it would involve the community, and them personally as members of it, in par- ticipation in and complicity with immorality and wrong-doing. But if licensing, regulating and deriving a large revenue from them would involve participation and complicity in those cases, so it does involve participation and complicity in the liquor trade now. The old stalwarts of the United Kingdom Alliance realised far more clearly than their successors do that complicity and participation exist under present con- ditions. Mr. T. H. Barker, who was the able Secretary of the Alliance in the palmy days of its strength and influence, wrote in March, 1871 The liquor seller merely enters into a limited contract with the Government of the day, who virtually claims the monopoly of this vicious and perilous traffic in fascinating liquors. This monopoly is farmed out by the excise under the discreet super- vision of the magistrates at brewster sessions, the consideration being the payment of certain fees and certain duties on the articles vended. The Government manage to clutch some twenty- five millions sterling out of the transaction. It will thus be seen that the liquor traffic is a privileged monopoly, grasped by capitalists and by that great officer of state, the Chancellor of the Exchequer." The position which the State occupies towards this trade as the result on the one hand of licensing, regulating and thereby sanctioning and authorising it, and on the other of sharing in its proceeds to the amount of scores of millions of pounds annually, carries with it grave res- ponsibilities and duties. The State claims and professes to restrict, regulate and tax and thereby control the liquor trade, and the trade is only allowed to be carried on subject to that control. It is the duty of the State to make that control effective, so that the protection of the well-being of the people thereby shall be as complete as possible. It cannot be regarded as sufficient and satisfactory that it should content itself with increasing from time to time the revenue that it derives from the trade while its control is so ineffective and inadequate that its efforts are con- tinually thwarted and defeated because it leaves the actual conduct of this difficult and dangerous trade in the hands of men who are engaged in it for the sole purpose of making money, and who, therefore, naturally and inevitably, do their utmost to sell as much drink as possible and resist, avoid, and evade every effort and regulation which is made to restrict their operations and thereby limit their profits. The position is an impossible one, and is bound to fail as 400 years experience of it has demonstrated. But the responsibility and duty remain. The trade is one which so long as it continues must be as effectively controlled as possible, and it is perfectly certain that it cannot and will not be as effectively controlled as it should and could be so long as it is left in the hands of people who have a direct personal financial interest in preventing the attain- ment of some of the principal objects at which effective control would aim and which the well-being of the people urgently demands. To decline to take the steps which are necessary to make control of the trade effective is to approach far more nearly to being guilty of national sin," than is the conduct of those who while they would gladly sweep away the traffic altogether, and are convinced that no complete remedy for its evils will be found short of that, also realise that so long as the trade continues to be licensed the community and they as part of it have responsibilities and duties in this matter of which they cannot divest themselves by hair-splitting logic chopping which ignores the most obvious facts and flies in the face of the plainest common-sense.