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CHAPTER III

REGULATION AND SUPPRESSION

WE come now to the most remarkable episode in the whole history of public-house licensing in England, the sudden and almost universal adoption by county and borough benches of a policy of restriction and regulation, lasting, in a systematic and self-conscious form, only for half a dozen years, but surviving in most of the counties as an ideal, and to some extent as a governing principle, right down to the adoption of Free Trade in Beer by the Parliament of 1830. This episode, which has, so far as we know, never been described,' included the deliberate and systematic adoption, by benches of magistrates in different parts of the country, of such modern devices as Early Closing, Sunday

1 We have found no mention of it in the voluminous literature of the temperance movement, so far as we have examined it; and we are not aware of any case in which it has been cited in the various Parliamentary inquiries from 1817 to 1900.

Closing, the Refusal of New Licences, the Withdrawal of Licences from badly conducted houses, the peremptory closing of a proportion of houses in a district over-supplied with licences, and in some remarkable instances, even the establishment of a system of Local Option or Local Veto, both as regards the opening of new public-houses and the closing of those already in existence, all without the slightest idea of compensation. As this reform movement was not only important in itself, but is of special interest in our own day, we propose, principally by means of extracts from contemporary sources, to describe it at some length.

We have elsewhere1 described the powerful movement for the reformation of the manners and morals of the lower orders which was inaugurated by Zouch and Wilberforce in 1786-87, cordially endorsed by the pious king, and supported by the whole governing class. This movement came, as we pointed out, from several distinct but converging currents of public opinion-the new-found Evangelical zeal for saving men's souls, the growing dislike of the propertied class of the insecurity of life and property, the alarm both of the financier and the ratepayer at the increasing burden of the poor

1 See Appendix, pp. 137-151.

rate, and last but not, we think, least, the halfconscious desire of the rising class of industrial capitalists to drive the manual workers out of the alehouse and gin-shop into the factory and workshop. Such being the influences at work, it is not surprising that the most signal and durable manifestation of the movement should have been a strenuous attempt to restrict the temptations to, and the opportunities for, licentious conduct, disorderly gatherings, wasteful expenditure and idle hours, which an unlimited supply of unregulated public-houses afforded to the lower orders.1

The first indication of the movement came from the heart of the new manufacturing districts. The high earnings of certain classes of

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1 “That many (alehouses) are opened without any licence at all; that many are improperly licensed, being more in number than are necessary; and being in situations very dangerous and remote from the public eye; and that very many of those which are licensed are irregularly conducted, are facts which no one will venture to contradict" (Narrative of Proceedings tending towards a National Reformation, 1787, p. 5).

2 Individual magistrates up and down the country had for some time been suggesting the propriety of restriction. Thus, in a pamphlet entitled Thoughts on the Great Circumspection necessary in Licensing Public Houses, a country Justice of 1777 earnestly exhorts his brother magistrates not to licence any but absolutely necessary alehouses, to make "the most strict and impartial inquisition" into their conduct, and "to exercise with unremitting vigour the power entrusted with them," and "to lay the axe to the root of an enormous and growing evil" (see Monthly Review, Nov. 1777, vol. lvii. p. 408).

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operatives in the new textile and iron manufactures had led to a pandemonium of hard drinking and brutal amusements. We find the Lancashire Justices in Quarter Sessions in 1782 giving public notice that, "whereas divers innkeepers within the said county have for some time past made a common practice of suffering great numbers of ill-disposed persons to assemble at their houses and fight cocks, to the great impoverishing of themselves and their families, and to the great encouragement of vice, . in future no licences will be granted to any... who shall encourage, connive at, or suffer the fighting of cocks at or in their houses, outhouses, or grounds, and that the magistrates determined to prosecute and punish all such persons."1 Presently, fiscal changes gave a great stimulus to the drinking habits of the new manufacturing population. The manufacture of British spirits, which had remained for five-andtwenty years at a relatively low level, and had even drooped under the heavy war taxes of 1780-85, suddenly bounded up in 1785, on the reduction of the duty, and rose to double its accustomed amount.2 It is not without

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1 Lancashire Quarter Sessions, Easter 1782 (see Manchester Mercury, 28th May 1782).

2 See the statistics in Appendix No. 19 of First Report of Commissioners of Inland Revenue, 1857.

significance that, in 1786, the West Riding Justices found themselves driven to consider seriously the condition of the county, and that they incorporated in their general scheme of reforms of "police" strict rules with regard to licensing. A general reduction in the number of publichouses was, they stated, eminently desirable. In the meantime, they gave notice that all publicans offending against the law would have their licences withdrawn and their recognisances estreated.1 That this was no empty threat was proved at the next Brewster Sessions at Barnsley, where "the licences of several alehouse-keepers were stopped, who had entertained tipplers, particularly on Sundays, and encouraged cockings, bull-baitings, bear-baitings, etc." The Royal Proclamation against vice and immorality, issued at the instance of Wilberforce early in 1787, and sent by the Home Secretary to every bench of magistrates, set going a national movement in the same direction. Throughout the next two or three years we find recorded in every provincial newspaper from one end of the kingdom to the other the repeated discussions and elaborate resolutions of the county Justices as to the evils which neglect had produced, and the

1 West Riding Quarter Sessions, Easter 1786 (see Leeds Intelligencer, 16th May 1786).

2 Leeds Intelligencer, 19th September 1786.

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