Newman's words about this come with startling appositeness to-day, when we are all eager as regards the pros and cons of the new Licensing Act, and when all the publicans in the country are watching anxiously in fear of the ruin it may spell for themselves. Thirty years ago Francis Newman flung these words broadcast into the country:-- "Parliament ignominiously sits on the beer barrel. The thirty-three millions a year" (which was the revenue in 1877 derived from "complicity with distillers and brewers"), "are to every Ministry like the proverbial wolf which the woodsman holds by the ears. To keep him is difficult, to let him go is dangerous. Their position is becoming worse than embarrassing when the best _men_ of every class, and _all the women_ who see the public miseries, condemn the deadly policy of bartering national morality for payments to the exchequer.... The mode in which those in power fight to retain the public immoralities proclaims the quality of their motives. As one example out of several, see with what tenacity the Sunday sale of intoxicating drink in Ireland is kept up, after it is visible that Ireland disapproves, and after the English Parliament has voted with Ireland. _Trickery_ is here the only right word; but _trickery_ cannot in the long run support any cause. In this matter, as in several others, national indignation is ripening. Many old ways will have to be reversed, among which the treatment of the drink traffic has quite a leading place." He then goes on to treat in detail of the pros and cons of Sir Wilfrid Lawson's Bill, and its principle of Popular Local Control; also of those of Mr. Joseph Cowen's Bill on the same subject, both belonging to the year in which he wrote his article on "Local Control of the Drink Traffic." And he proceeds to consider the two alternatives: the Permissive Popular Veto, and the Popular Control by an unfettered Licensing Board. Later on Newman propounds his own opinion as to where the true remedy lies for the shocking state of public morality in connection with the drink traffic. Almost invariably his remedies for social evils are based on specialization. In this case he advises Licensing Boards in large towns. He urges that each Board should have full power to frame its own restrictions, that "no Board should be numerous: _five_ or _seven_ persons may be a full maximum"; that each Board should be elective, "without power to bind their successors in the next year." "What shadow of reason," he asks, "is there for doubting that such sales as are necessary and inevitable will be far more sagaciously managed by a Local Board, which the ratepayers elect _for this sole purpose_, than either by magistrates who are irresponsible and do not suffer sensibly from the public vice, or by an _irresponsible_ or _multitudinous_ Committee of Parliament? Finally, a Board elected for this one duty is immeasurably better than the Town Councils, who are distracted by an immensity of other business."