The Bill provided further for local option in the matter of granting new licenses, permitting a majority of voters in any licensing district to prohibit further grants; and introduced other changes of law in the interest of temperance, but not going to any extreme. When the measure went to the House of Lords it suffered there the same fate that had been meted out to the Education Bill of 1906. How serious an issue between the Commons and the Lords was raised by that occurrence is intimated in one passage of a speech made by the Liberal Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, in July, 1909. He was reviewing some of the significant incidents of recent political history, and when he came to the Licensing Bill there was more feeling in his remarks than he had shown before. "That," he said, "was a Bill, as you know, which was debated for weeks and for months and passed through the House of Commons with sustained and unexampled majorities. When it reached ‘another place,’ what was its fate? It was rejected without even any pretence of consideration of its details, it was rejected in pursuance of a preconcerted party resolution, it was rejected with every circumstance of contumely and contempt. I will not pause to dwell upon, certainly not to praise, the provisions of the Licensing Bill, which, I may say, was to some extent my own handiwork. But in regard to its rejection I will say that it has made two things—that rejection and the circumstances preceding, following, and attending it have made two things—abundantly plain. The first is that it has ruined the prospects of any really effective temperance reform on anything like a large and comprehensive scale during the lifetime of the present Parliament. I will say next the circumstances of that rejection have brought into greater prominence than ever before the fact that our constitutional system is not, or at least that it can be made not to be, the embodiment, but the caricature of a representative and responsible Government. And the question of the relations between the two Houses of Parliament must be for us Liberals, at any rate, as I described it at the time, the dominant issue in our programme." {13} The requirement of the Act of 1904 that compensation should be paid to every license-holder whose license was withdrawn for public reasons, put so narrow a limit on the reductions made, that the 138,011 licensed houses in England and Wales in 1904 had only been diminished by about 3000 in 1908; whereas the country demanded a great cutting down of the excessive number. ALCOHOL: A. D. 1908. Provisions of The Children Act for the Protection of Children. See (in this Volume) CHILDREN, UNDER THE LAW: AS DEPENDENTS, &C. ALCOHOL: A. D. 1909. Taxation of the Liquor Trade proposed in the Budget. See (in this Volume) ENGLAND: A. D. 1909 (APRIL-DECEMBER).