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As regards Newman's opinions on one of the national questions which so closely concern us to-day—the Drink Traffic—they are very clearly and definitely stated in an article he wrote in the year 1877, and which appeared in Fraser's Magazine, in re Sir Wilfrid Lawson's Bill.
Here again decentralization was the key-note, as he firmly believed, of the remedy.
"The palace-like jails which now disgrace our civilization, and cause expenses so vast, are chiefly the fruit of this pernicious trade…. What shadow of reason is there for doubting that such sales as are necessary… will be far more sagaciously managed by a Local Board which the ratepayers elect for this sole purpose, than either by magistrates… or by an irresponsible and multitudinous Committee of Parliament? Finally, a Board elected for this one duty is immeasurably better than the Town Councils, who are distracted by an immensity of other business….
"Such a Board should have full power to frame its own restrictions, so as to prevent the fraud of wine merchants or chemists degenerating into spirit shops….
"To secure sufficient responsibility, no Board should be numerous: five or seven persons may be a full maximum, and no Board should have a vast constituency. Therefore our greatest towns ought to be divided into areas with suitable numbers, and have Boards separately independent. With a few such precautions, the system of elective Licensing Boards, which can impose despotically their own conditions on the licences, but without power to bind their successors in the next year, appears to be a complete solution of the problem…."
He adds, that to Sir Wilfrid Lawson "is due more largely than to any other public man the arousing of the nation" in the matter of the Drink Traffic, "To him our thanks and our honour will be equally paid, though the name of another mover be on the victorious Bill"—whatever it may be.
"Noble efforts for a good cause are never thrown away, are never ineffectual, even when the success does not come in the exact form for which its champion was contending. It may hereafter be said: 'Other men sowed—we reap the fruit of their labours.'"
I quote now from the letter to Anna Swanwick, in which he refers to this question in 1887:—
"Unless at a very early day the causes of Un-Employ be removed, we must calculate on frightful disorder. Evidently two measures are indispensable.