"The following is from a newspaper report of a speech by Judge Rentoul, delivered in the Guildhall, Cambridge, on the 15th of October, 1907. He happened to be one of the judges of the chief criminal courts of this country, and he said to them on that platform that 90 per cent. of the cases that came to the Central Criminal Court of England came directly through drink. The late Lord Brampton, formerly Sir Henry Hawkins, perhaps the greatest criminal judge during the past century, had also put the figures at 90 per cent. Lord Coleridge, speaking at one Assizes, said, ‘Every single case in my present list comes from the use of strong drink.’ ‘If it were not,’ said his Honour, ‘for alcohol, three fourths of our criminal courts would be closed in this country and closed forever.’" _H. A. Giles, Opium and Alcohol in China (Nineteenth Century, December, 1907)._ ALCOHOL: A. D. 1908. Passage of a new Licensing Bill by the Commons and its rejection by the Lords. Nothing contributed more to the defeat of the Conservative Ministry in the British Parliamentary elections of 1905 than the moral repugnance of the country to the Licensing Bill of 1904 (described above); and the Liberal Government came to power with no commission from the people more positive than was in the demand for an amendment of that law. In 1908 it brought into Parliament and passed through the House of Commons a Bill which answered the demand, asserting the right and the need and the power in Government to put limitations on the granting of licenses for the sale of intoxicating liquors, without treating them as vested interests under a sacred guard. The limitation, in fact, was made definite and mandatory by the first provision of the Bill, which declared; "Licensing justices shall, in accordance with this Act, reduce the number of on-licenses in their district so that at the end of a period of fourteen years from the fifth day of April nineteen hundred and nine the number of those licenses in any rural parish or urban area in their district shall not exceed the scale set out in the First Schedule to this Act as applied to that parish or area under the provisions of that schedule." The schedule referred to was as follows: Persons per acre. 2 or less Exceeding 2 but not exceeding 25 Exceeding 25 but not exceeding 50 Exceeding 50 but not exceeding 75 Exceeding 75 but not exceeding 100 Exceeding 100 but not exceeding 200 Exceeding 200 Number of on-licenses. 1 to 400 persons or part of 400 1 to 500 persons or part of 500 1 to 600 persons or part of 600 1 to 700 persons or part of 700 1 to 800 persons or part of 800 1 to 900 persons or part of 900 1 to 1,000 persons or part of 1,000