NBWTA Report 1903-048
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90 Ol is in most cases overwhelming, and that the competition necessary, in order that each house should make a living, probably more than trebles the temptation, because if the sober customers of one house were more than enough to keep it in existence that house would necessarily dis- courage the drunken loafers, and the police would not be tempted by the publican, as they habitually are, from carrying out the duties entrusted to them. An ABSURD a public-house beckoniug him to shelter and forgetfulness, or if, after a long day’s work at a dangerous trade in a huge factory, he returned to a desolate lodging or an insanitary home, and on the way thither had to pass again and again the temptations that lure to drunkenness, I think he would realize that the prevalence of temptation means the likelihood of a fall; but it is easy to draw absurd analogies in the comfort of Hatfield about matters of which, with all his great gifts, he has not the capacity of sympathy or the practical experience that would make his judgment on this question of weight. 1r A Gross ‘ For instance, ita man can prove that he is eminently ‘‘respectable, he can obtain a licence which will change the value of a house from perhaps four or five hundred pounds to five or six thousand pounds. In 7; he Lemperance Problem and Social Reform several valuable instances are given, which I venture to quote again because they are only typical of a number that have come under my own observation and which can be reproduced by hundreds of people interested in the question, ANALOGY. It will be remembered that Lord Salisbury once illustrated his view of the case by saying that there were ‘more bedrooms at Hatfield “than in any of his other residences, but that he did not feel more “sleepy there than elsewhere.” It is difficult to believe that a man of the calibre of Lord Salisbury could have uttered so fatuous a sentiment. If he wandered through the streets of the East End at night without an overcoat, in a bleak winter wind, having had scanty and ill-cooked food during the daytime, and he saw at every turn the bright lights of Is ‘‘who confer it.” INJUSTICE? How far, however, has the insecurity which has been brought about as a consequence of the magistrates’ action justified Mr. Balfour’s charge of ‘the gross injustice done ‘to a large number of “individuals”? ‘For I gather,” says Mr. Balfour, ‘ that that which “‘ was regarded as an investment is regarded as an investment no longer, ‘‘or scarcely worth regarding as an investment.” Now, what is the investment into which the publican has placed his money? I maintain that the enormous profits which he has made by the free granting of a licence could only be regarded as legitimate because as insecurity balanced such huge profits. The financial facts have become notorious now, and it is to me strange that to this aspect of the question so many have remained indifferent. ‘‘A licence to “retail alcoholic liquors,” say Messrs. Rowntree and Sherwell, “carries ‘‘ with it a huge monopoly value to which the recipient has absolutely no “ claim—that is to say, that the State in conferring the licence bestows ‘upon the licensee at the same time a huge monetary gift for which he ‘‘makes no return, but on the part of the recipient there is always the possibility that the gift may be withdrawn at the discretion of those THE Eight years VALUE OF A House ago a public-house was witH A LICENCE. built in a northern colliery village, from which drink had hitherto been excluded. The cost of the building, exclusive of land, was £6,500, but when licensed the rental value was immediately fixed at £1,000 a year, and at present its rental is £1,800 a year. Owing to the extension of the village, the population of which at this present time is 12,000, this same place, a second and larger public-house in the form of a fine hotel has since been built ? and sold for not less than £40,000. In another northern town a new licence was granted in 1897 of a small house valued at 43,500, but on the receipt of the licence the owner immediately sold the house for £24,500. Again, in 1896 a house, which forty years ago had been sold for 4900 in Newcastle-on-Tyne, was put up for auction, and the price reached £15,800, and at that time no important structural alterations had been made in the interval. The London Daily Chronicle, in its Review of Property Sales for 1897, describes the competition for licensed property as follows :— ‘“The extraordinary prices which are realized for licensed property may be said to have reached their maximum when such sums are paid as £80,000 for a freehold ground rent of £8 per annum, secured on the Royal Oak public-house, Bayswater, with reversion to the premises in eight years; the Liverpool Arms and Royal Oak, Barking Road, £112,000; the Red Lion public-house, Walworth Road, Camberwell, held on a term of forty-nine years’ lease at a rental of £500 per annum, £50,000 ; the freehold of the French Horn and Half Moon public-house, East Hill, Wandsworth, with possession, £56,000; the Pontefract Castle public-house, Marylebone, with sixty years’ lease, at a rental of £300 per annum, 449,500; the Crown, Lavender Hill, 494 years at £150 per annum, £46,850 ; and numerous others ranging from £30,000 to 450,000.” In his evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons, in 1854, Mr. Alderman Wire, the secretary of the Licensed Victuallers’ Association, stated that the average value of the licensed property in London was estimated at six million; that was an average of less than £1,000 on each house. In 1897, Mr. E. N. Buxton, a partner of the large brewing firm, gave it as his opinion that the value |