The Law and the Poor

by Sir Edward Abbott Parry

If the licensing bench, and especially the teetotal portion of it, could once arrive as far in their studies of the subject as Socrates had done, and could comprehend the zoological fact that man was a mammal with a thirst, they would be on the road to enlightenment, temperance, and reform.

Of course Socrates knew all that the puritans know and a lot more about the rational satisfaction of love and hunger and thirst and the irrational and concupiscent desires that are attached to all natural appetites, but in dealing with the law of licensing in reference to the poor these considerations are not really important. What is wanted is equality. Grant to the poor the same reasonable facilities of enjoyment that you grant to the rich, and leave it to public opinion to see that they are not abused.

It is a grave disaster that the granting and regulation of licenses should have fallen into the hands it has. Mr. Balfour’s observation “that among all the social evils which meet us in every walk of life, every sphere of activity, the greatest of all evils is the evil of intemperance” is useful as a peroration to any platform speech on the subject, but only makes the judicious grieve that with the opportunity to do exactly as he liked and the ability to draft useful legislation, Mr. Balfour did nothing whatever to improve matters and diminish the evil of which he was so sensible.

Section 4 of his Act does indeed enable the magistrates to grant new licenses and to make their own conditions as to the payments to be made by the licensee, the tenure of the license, and any other matters “as they think proper in the interests of the public.” Under this section if there were a licensing bench containing a working majority of friends of the people, men who had no social or political interest whatever either in breweries or teetotallers, it would seem that almost any experiment in model public houses could be made under any regulations that the bench chose to impose on the licensee. Mr. Balfour was perfectly right in telling us that “love of temperance is the polite name for hatred of the publican”; but what is the right name for love of the brewer? The fact is that with these two warring political factions in the field the ideal public house is not for this generation. No use will ever be made of Section 4 under present conditions, because whoever applied for a license, and however noble and beautiful the licensed premises were to be, however ideal the provision of food, entertainment and drink, and whatever the guarantees of good management, the combined opposition of the puritans and the brewers would always strive to defeat or destroy any effort to give the poorer classes pure beer in pure surroundings.

The first step you have to take is to convince the unenlightened puritan that the Alehouse is, or ought to be, as worthy a public house as the church or the school. This might be done by means of thoughtfully prepared text books of English literature. There is no great English book from the Bible downwards that has not incidental good and holy things to tell you of “The Inn.” What an appetising volume could be written of the inns and innkeepers of Charles Dickens. How he revelled in their outward appearance and the inward soul of welcome which he found there. How he rejoiced in his sane English way over “The Maypole,” “with its overhanging stories, drowsy little panes of glass and front bulging out and projecting over the pathway,” and honest John Willet, the burly, large-headed man with a fat face, intended by providence and nature for licensed victualling. Could we have met Mrs. Lupin anywhere else than beneath the sign of that “certain Dragon who swung and creaked complainingly before the village alehouse door”? Could Mark Tapley have acquired his saintly outlook on life anywhere but at “The Blue Dragon,” and are we not full of joy to find him returning there to live happily ever afterwards under the “wery new, conwivial, and expressive” sign of “The Jolly Tapley”? How pleasant it is to assist Crummles and Nicholas over their bowl of punch and the beefsteak-pudding in the inn on the Portsmouth Road. Pickwick is a cyclopædia of inns, each with its own human character, good, bad and indifferent. Who has not stayed at a “Peacock” with a “mantelshelf ornamented with a wooden inkstand, containing one stump of a pen and half a wafer: a road book and directory: a county history minus the cover: and the mortal remains of a trout in a glass coffin”?

One could run on in pleasant remembrances of these beautiful and delightful places by the hour, but one imagines that even the most hardened political teetotaller must really know all about them, and perhaps in his dreams strolls into “The Marquis of Granby” and sips his glass of reeking hot pine-apple rum and water with a slice of lemon in it, and awakens to the horrible imagination that his astral body has wandered instinctively into a manifestation of his master and leader, the incomparable Stiggins.

One very noticeable matter about any old-world book in which inns are faithfully pictured is that in former days there was a real race of English innkeepers, independent licensed victuallers, not mere brewers’ managers. There are still a few remaining with us who keep up the old traditions, but the political forces of brewers and teetotallers have squeezed this excellent race of public servants almost wholly out of existence. You remember the Six-Jolly-Fellowship-Porters whose bar was “a bar to soften the human breast” with its “corpulent little casks and cordial bottles radiant with fictitious grapes in bunches and lemons in nets and biscuits in baskets, and polite beer-pulls that made low bows when customers were served with beer.” How could there have been such an ideal haven for the weary porters but for the sole proprietor and manager, Miss Abbey Potterson, whose dignity and firmness were a tradition of the riverside?

And then the dressing down she gave Rogue Riderhood.

“But you know, Miss Potterson,” this was suggested very meekly though, “if I behave myself you can’t help serving me, miss.”

“Can’t I!” said Abbey with infinite expression.