NBWTA Report 1903-045
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ree Soe ea fy 85 84. to tions, use their great power and enormous influence in opposition This is the only way to bring the Government candidates. Government to see the needs for our rights being respected and It may be said that Opposition candidates our property protected. Never mind and Sunday Closing. Veto Local of are in favour We shall be fully prepared to fight Local Veto and Sunday that. At Closing when these measures ever come up for discussion, Let us then make present we have a great danger confronting us. our trade our politics, and, by putting forth our full strength, vender it impossible for Government candidates to secure election. “The licence holders of Woolwich have a chance that must not be thrown away to help the whole trade of the country to obtain If the present All Governments depend on votes. justice. must promise they olders, licence-h of votes Government wants the us the protection we demand.” At the 30th Annual Meeting of the Beer and Wine Trade Defence League, London, in held the announcement of the result of the Rye election was received with loud cheers. DEPUTATION FROM “THE TRADE” TO THE PRIME MINISTER. Bhe The history of the Woolwich election is known to us alled;y the at And majority. s Liberal candidate was returned by an enormou of days few a within and enacted, was thing same the Rye election Prime the to ed introduc place, these bye-elections, a deputation takes Minister, of representatives of the Licensed Victuallers’ Defence League lay and the National Trade Defence Association, whose object was to by before Mr. Balfour their views with regard to the policy adopted two in stated were es grievanc Their es. several benches of the magistrat heads, first that they had in consequence of the war had to pay extra taxation, and then the complaint that the magistrates had confiscated property, first in asking for the voluntary surrender of old houses where new licences were required (and over 300 licences, it is believed, had The Trade now felt them- been so-called voluntarily surrendered), the Government to take begging n, protectio for ask to selves compelled immediate action. In Mr. Balfour’s reply he said that no one was likely to undervalue the importance of the deputation or the importance of ‘We recognize to the full,” he said, ‘that all those inter- the subject. liquor traffic in this country are at this moment being, the in “ested “ subject to a very serious, and I think a very unjust, strain, and it is ‘natural and right that they should take an early opportunity of laying “their case before His Majesty’s Government and before Parliament.” He then proceeded to beg them not to form any erroneous opinion that the bill passed by his right honourable friend, Mr. Ritchie, last year, had brought about any of the difficulties in which they found them- selves, and proceeding, he said that “as that Bill was passed in the in- “terests of sobriety it was one which the whole Trade ought to, and ‘does, welcome, for no class of men have greater interests in sobriety “than they have.” Mr. Batrour’s VIEWS ON THE THE Poticy RECENTLY MAGISTRATES. ADOPTED BY And then Mr. Balfour proceeded to say that the inference which he believed magistrates may have drawn from the Bill passed last year which dealt with a definite circumscribed set of problems ee ee with the Temperance question, may have led them to imagine that com- pensation had not been mentioned and that therefore compensation was not intended, and that His Majesty’s Government regarded com- pensation as matter in which they had no particular interest. a ‘““T don’t know,” he said, “whether the magistrates who have : rawn this strange inference from these misleading premises are very "many, but if they are very many I should certainly not have my confidence in their capacity in other walks of life very greatl “augmented.” And then he proceeded to say that what they had got to consider was the real condition of affairs which appears to have been brought about over a large area of the country through the policy newly and recently adopted by these magistrates. " “T confess,” he said, “I regard this sudden and rapid change as “most regrettable from a great many points of view. I think it is “ regrettable because it really hardly gives a fair chance to the Bill of aM right honourable friend, Mr. Ritchie, to work all the good which “ham confident it will work. The problem of Temperance was I 1 thi left in a better state by legislation last year than it has ever be,en “in my experience. ri It was accepted likewise, and accepted “cordially by gentlemen in this room representing the great industry for which you have come here to-day to plead, and it was in a way to | Coens out uncontroversially, without bitterness, without injury to any “manin his legitimate business or in his property, a great work of social i ru . . . Iconfess I regret the course which the magistrates ae pursued ; but there are other reasons, and the main reason is f ee which every speaker this afternoon: has urged upon me, namely, : e insecurity which has been wrought in every branch of the Trade, and as a consequence accompanying that insecurity the gross injustice : which has been done to a large number of individuals. I gather that 4 that which was a legitimate investment is regarded as an investment eo longer, or scarcely worth regarding as aninvestment ; I understand j that property once insurable is insurable no longer, and that one _ Immediate result of what has occurred is that not only does every . licence-holder feel that he holds his licence without any fixed or adequate security, but that he cannot even go like other persons i engaged in a hazardous business to an insurance office, and by i calculating the risks make provision against loss, which may in a _, Moment, in the twinkling of an eye, reduce a man from a competence to 4 penury. ‘It is undeniable, I think, quite apart from all question of temperance, that the state of things which, if it has not arisen, seems |