ri2 A FARMER'S YEAR 



overtook the Liberal party when it made a platfortii plank of Local 

 Option. Looking at this scheme from a practical and not a politi- 

 cal point of view, I think, however, that it deserved to fail, because, 

 as it seems to me, it would foster the very thing which I consider 

 such an evil— the indirect endowment of public-houses. It is 

 not to be expected that any town in England would vote for the 

 closing of all drinking places within its limits, as sometimes 

 happens in America, nor will most people consider it desirable that 

 this should be done. Therefore it is probable that what might 

 happen is that a certain proportion of the houses would be 

 penalised by a popular vote, while the value of others which 

 escaped would be enormously enhanced. Nobody can be more 

 convinced than I am that there are fiir too many public-houses ; 

 in Bungay, for instance— I think that I once reckoned in the 

 course of a disputed licensing case— there is a liquor shop of one 

 kind or another for every loo of the total population. Yet as the 

 people love to have it so, it seems impossible to escape the evil. 

 Now, to make matters worse, the houses, or rather the licenses, 

 have been bought up by the brewers and turned into a close 

 monopoly. 



Under these circumstances, I suggest that as the first appears 

 to be beyond remedy, the second ill, at any rate, might be com- 

 bated by empowering the magistrates to grant a license to sell 

 liquors under strict police supervision to any and every respectable 

 man who chooses to apply for it. The effect of this would 

 be that the brewers could not buy up an unlimited number of 

 licenses ; that the holders of licenses would be at liberty to supply 

 sound liquor, which in some instances, at any rate, is not now 

 the case, and that, as I believe, for the most part, the number of 

 liquor shops would not, in fact, be increased, since in the majority 

 of towns and villages there are already as many as can possibly 

 earn a livelihood. 



I have no doubt that many objections can be urged against 

 such a plan, but at least this may be said in its favour, that it 

 would tend to foster the sale of honest beer made from malt and 



