A plea for temperance legislation : Lord Peel's proposals for Scotland / by D.M. Ross.

  • David Morison Ross
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A plea for temperance legislation : Lord Peel's proposals for Scotland / by D.M. Ross. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    another small northern town a new license was granted in 1897 to a small house valued at ^3500. On receipt of the license the owner immediately sold the house for ^24,500.”^ The remarks of the chairman of a licensing bench in 1898, quoted by Messrs. Rowntree and Sherwell, are instructive : “ As I ventured to point out last year, by the steady limitation of the number of licenses, a monopoly has been established which causes such licenses to become of very substantial value indeed. I suppose that each license now applied for [there were 20 applications] may be worth over ^5000, or, in other words, the Bench to-day is to be asked to grant licenses worth ^100,000; that is to say, to make a present of ^100,000 to certain parties, for whose claim in preference to others there is no valid reason.” ^ In view of such facts—and the illustrations might be indefinitely multiplied—it is natural to ask how a system involving such a spendthrift abuse of public rights could ever have come into existence. It is difficult to believe that sane legislators could have deliberately devised a method of licensing under which license-holders receive for nothing such valuable gifts from the ^ Messrs. Rowntree and Sherwell, Public Interests or Ti'iide Aggrandisement^ p. 53. 2 Id., p. 54.
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