As your Committee are fully aware that one of the most important elements in successful legislation is the obtaining the full sanction and support of public opinion in favour of the laws--and as this is most powerful and most enduring when based on careful investigation and accurate knowledge as the result, they venture still further to recommend the most extensive circulation during the recess, under the direct sanction of the Legislature, of an abstract of the evidence obtained by this inquiry, in a cheap and portable volume, as was done with the Poor Law Report, to which it would form the best auxiliary; the national cost of intoxication and its consequences being tenfold greater in amount than that of the poor-rates, and pauperism itself being indeed chiefly caused by habits of intemperance, of which it is but one out of many melancholy and fatal results. By 4th and 5th William IV., the preamble whereof recites _that much evil had arisen from the management of houses in which_ beer _and_ cider _are sold_, it was enacted that each beer-seller is to obtain his annual excise licence _only on condition_ of placing in the hands of the excise, _a certificate of good character signed by six rated inhabitants of his parish_ (none of whom must be brewers or maltsters), if in a town of 5,000 inhabitants; but the house to be one rated at 10_l._ a year. This Act also distinguishes between persons who sell liquor _to be drunk on the premises_, and those who sell it only to be drunk elsewhere. By a Treasury order, beer sold at, or under, 1½_d._ per quart, may be retailed without licence. It is well known that Lord Brougham was a warm advocate of the Beer Act in the first instance. He entirely changed his opinion. In 1839, he said in the Upper House:-- To what good was it that the Legislature should pass laws to punish crime, or that their lordships should occupy themselves in finding out modes of improving the morals of the people by giving them education? What could be the use of sowing a little seed here, and plucking up a weed there, if these beer-shops were to be continued that they might go on to sow the seeds of immorality broadcast over the land, germinating the most frightful produce that had ever been allowed to grow up in a civilised country, and, he was ashamed to add, under the fostering care of Parliament, and throwing its baleful influences over the whole community? Queen Victoria had scarcely ascended the throne before she was reminded that the evils of the drink traffic were upmost in the minds of many of her Majesty’s subjects. At a Conference held at Carnarvon, August 2, 1837, a congratulatory address to the Sovereign upon her accession was drawn up. It stated:--