Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/798

764 of Luton in Bedfordshire enforced the provisions of the "Prevention of Crime Act." The number of committals to jail from Luton and its vicinity was reduced from two hundred and fifty-seven in 1869 to sixty-six in 1874. The only fault of the experiment consists in the possibility that the thieves and roughs migrated, but this difficulty would be less serious had the experiment been tried in larger towns.

What little insight we can gain into the operation of the licensing laws is mainly due to the considerable differences with which they have been administered in different places. Such is the latitude of discretion given by the law that magistrates can often make very distinct experiments. A short time ago the magistrates of Glasgow intentionally and avowedly made the experiment of locking up in jail all the drunkards brought before them. When I last heard about this experiment it was on the point of failing, because the jails of Glasgow were all quite full, and still the drunkards were coming to the bar. In 1863 the Licensing Magistrates of Liverpool commenced a most interesting experiment, by declaring their intention to adopt "free licensing," that is, to grant licenses to any suitable persons who applied for them. The publicans' licenses were increased from sixteen hundred and seventy-four in 1862 to nineteen hundred and forty in 1866. The system was abandoned in this last year, owing to a change in the constitution of the Bench. None of the magistrates who advocated the change, we are told, ever recanted, but some who supported the change to a restrictive policy have been disappointed with the results. The teaching of this real experiment has been carefully discussed by Mr. S. G. Rathbone in a very able letter, published in the "Times" of the 12th of February, 1877, as also in his evidence before the Lords' Committee of Inquiry on Intemperance (questions 259-384, etc.). But, apart from his objections to the interpretation put upon the facts, the experiment was not continued sufficiently long, and the town in which it was tried is so unique in the annals of intemperance as to be ill-fitted for the purpose.

Much attention has been drawn recently to the merits of the so called Gothenburg scheme, the adoption of which has been so ably advocated by Mr. J. Chamberlain, M. P. Now, what is this advocacy but argument from a successful experiment? The municipal authorities of Gothenburg allowed a certain method of conducting the sale of liquor to be tried there, and the success was apparently so great that other Swedish towns are rapidly adopting the same plan. This is just the right procedure of trial and imitation. But, if Mr. Chamberlain means that, because the plan succeeds in Gothenburg, therefore the municipal authorities of English towns ought at once to be obliged to purchase and administer the public-houses, he goes much too far. All we ought to do is to try the system in a limited number of towns. Any one acquainted with the bright little Swedish seaport, and the orderly, polished lower-class population of Sweden, will be in no hurry