VINDICATED***


Transcribed from the 1855 William Tweedie edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org





                                   THE
                          NEW SUNDAY LIQUOR LAW
                               VINDICATED.


                                * * * * *

                                * * * * *

                           BY J. EWING RITCHIE.

                                * * * * *

                                * * * * *

                                 LONDON:
                      WILLIAM TWEEDIE, 337, STRAND.

                                  1855.

                                * * * * *

                                   THE
                            PUBLIC-HOUSE TRADE
                                AS IT IS:
                                    OR
                        AN EPITOME OF THE EVIDENCE
                              TAKEN BEFORE A
                    COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
                                  IN THE
                    PARLIAMENTARY SESSIONS OF 1853–4.

                           BY J. EWING RITCHIE.

                                * * * * *




THE
NEW SUNDAY LIQUOR LAW VINDICATED.


AN Act came into operation in August, denominated “The New Beer Bill,”
requiring public-houses to be closed on Sundays, with the exception of
the hours 1 to 3 p.m., and 6 to 10 p.m.  No sooner was it passed than it
was found there was a great decrease in the number of cases of persons
charged with drunkenness at the various police stations of the
metropolis.  Monday, instead of being a heavy day, was the reverse—the
magistrates had little or nothing to do.  But this great public good was
not brought about without inconveniencing some parties.  The publicans
felt their craft was in danger,—that they were, as Benjamin Disraeli
informed them the other day at Plymouth, “in a critical situation;” and
that if they acquiesced in the law, the result would be most
unsatisfactory, pecuniarily, to themselves.  Accordingly, they have
banded themselves into one compact Defence Association—they have taken
sweet counsel together—they have organised an opposition all over the
land.  Whether they have acted wisely is another matter: with the
evidence just published in two enormous Blue Books, I think silence would
become them better.  And so thought the knowing ones in the trade when
they accepted the new Bill instead of one that would have been harsher
still.  The opponents of the Bill—publicans by-the-bye—thus speak of it:
Mr. Luce of Hampton Court, “thinks it a despotic and tyrannical Bill.”
According to a Mr. Symes, “it is directed against all recreation on
Sundays—all relaxation after the toils of the week.”  Mr. Palmer said,
“The Bill ought to be called the Liberty of the Subject and Licensed
Victuallers’ Liberty Curtailment Bill.”  I take these extracts from the
report of a great meeting in Drury Lane in September.  Mr. Lyne, also a
publican, writes in the _Daily News_, that “since the curfew bell there
never was a measure which produced such general discontent.
Notwithstanding the genialness of the weather the social gloom which has
settled in the suburbs is indescribable.”  The _Daily News_, in the poor
hope of saving itself from annihilation, by opposing the new Bill, and
thus becoming the organ of the pot-house says:—“The Pharisees of our
drawing-rooms and saloons ought, before they are allowed to hamper and
annoy the honest poor by their enactments, to be compelled to share for a
season in the labour of the poor, in order that they might have some
conception of the privations which they entail upon their victims, and
the possible consequences of such privation.”  In another leader it draws
the picture of a working man returning from Brighton and starving in the
streets in consequence of the new Bill.  Such is an outline of the new
Bill, as described by the publicans and their champion, the _Daily News_.
Never was there a greater outcry and so little wool.  One would fancy
from the above remarks that an injustice was being done—such as the world
had never witnessed before.  You would have thought that at least we had
been robbed of _habeas corpus_, or that still more valued right the
Englishman’s right to grumble.  You would have expected every print to be
filled with tales of terror—you would expect every man you met to have
had a face of woe, and especially that the working classes, who have been
robbed of their rights in so atrocious a manner, would have talked of
armed resistance, or at least have provided themselves with pikes.  The
working men have not held a single meeting on the matter—not one single
groan has been wrung from them by the unheard of