Now the same spirit which revealed in the Local Veto Bill and still shows itself in the County Council policy has been to a great extent responsible for the opposition encountered by the government’s Licensing Act. I do not say that this Act could not be fairly criticised upon other grounds. The terms accorded to the Trade are certainly high--in my view too high--and of the compensation granted too much seems likely (in the case of a tied house) to go to the brewer and too little to the publican. But that is not the ground chosen by the most vehement enemies of the measure. The ground explicitly chosen by them is that the publican is an enemy, a wicked man, whom we ought to punish for his misdeeds. If it were the case of any other trade, would anybody venture to deny that a man whose livelihood is taken away by the arbitrary act of the governing powers through no fault of his own is entitled, whatever be his strict legal position, to some measure of relief. To which the only answer vouchsafed by the teetotal faction consists in windy abuse of the publican as a “vampire.” I think that private monopoly in the Drink Trade is a great evil; so is private monopoly everywhere else. But to abuse the man who merely sells what the public demands and the community instructs him to supply is fanaticism and not statesmanship. Now if, leaving this foolish cult, whose voting power is by no means in proportion to the noise it makes, we ask ourselves what kind of temperance reform sensible reformers really want, we shall not find it difficult to answer. First and foremost then we want good liquour and especially good beer. Everyone who frequents public houses knows how hard this often is to obtain. Yet beer is our national drink, of which we ought to be proud. Properly manufactured it does no one any harm, though when made of chemical “substitutes” instead of sound malt and hops it is as noxious as any other adulterated concoction. Beer-drinking, within reasonable limits, and provided the beer be sound liquour, is a national habit which no wise ruler would attempt to suppress. For it is the best prophylactic against the inordinate consumption of cheap and bad spirits which really is a national curse in Scotland and elsewhere.