payment of the proper dues from the excise authorities, but they had no power to withhold it from persons authorized by the justices. And that was still the system in 1910. _Licensing since 1828._--There was no change in the form of the British licensing system between the consolidation of the law in 1825-1828 and the time (1910) at which we write; but there were a great many changes in administrative detail and some changes in principle. Only the most important can be mentioned. In 1830 a bold experiment was tried in exempting the sale of beer from the requirement of a justice's licence. Any householder rated to the parish was entitled, under a bond with sureties, to take out an excise licence for the sale of beer for consumption on or off the premises. This measure, which applied to England and was commonly known as the Duke of Wellington's Act, had two objects; one was to encourage the consumption of beer in the hope of weaning the people from spirits; the other was to counteract the practice of "tieing" public-houses to breweries by creating free ones. With regard to the first, it was believed that spirit-drinking was increasing again at the time and was doing a great deal of harm. The reason appears to have been a great rise in the returns of consumption, which followed a lowering of the duty on spirits from 11s. 8¼d. to 7s. a gallon in 1825. The latter step was taken because of the prevalence of illicit distillation. In 1823 the duty had been lowered for the same reason in Scotland from 6s. 2d. and in Ireland from 5s. 7d. to a uniform rate of 2s. 4¾d. a gallon, with so much success in turning the trade from illegal to legal channels that a similar change was thought advisable in England, as stated. The legal or apparent consumption rose at once from 7 to nearly 13 million gallons; but it is doubtful if there was much or any real increase. According to an official statement, more than half the spirits consumed in 1820 were illicit. The facts are of much interest in showing what had already been shown in the 18th century, that the liquor trade will not bear unlimited taxation; the traffic is driven underground. It is highly probable that this accounts for part of the great fall in consumption which followed the raising of the spirit duty from 11s. to 14s. 9d. under Mr Lloyd George's Budget in 1909. With regard to "tied" houses, this is the original form of public-house. When beer was first brewed for sale a "tap" for retail purposes was attached to the brewery, and public-houses may still be found bearing the name "The Brewery Tap." At the beginning of the 19th century complaints were made of the increasing number of houses owned or controlled by breweries and of the dependence of the licence-holders, and in 1817 a Select Committee inquired into the subject. The Beerhouse Act does not appear to have checked the practice or to have diminished the consumption of spirits; but it led to a great increase in the number of beer-houses.