Tne operation of the last-mentioned statute was limited to the end of the next session of parliament, in the course of which a statute (4 Jac. I. c. 4) was passed, imposing a penalty upon persons selling beer or ale to unlicensed alehouse-keepers; and by another statute (4 Jac. I. c. 5) of the same parliament, it was enacted that every person convicted, upon the view of a magistrate, of remaining drinking or tippling in an alehouse, should pay a penalty of 3s. 4d. for each offence, and in default of payment be placed in the stocks for four hours." The latter statute further directs that " all offences relating to ale houses shall be diligently presented and • inquired of before justices of assize, and justices of the peace, and corporate magis trates; and that all constables, ale-conners [Ann-CoNNEa], and other officers, in their official oaths shall be charged to present such offences within their respective ju risdictions." The next legislative notice of alehouses is in the 7 Jac. I. c. 10, which, after re citing that "notwithstanding former laws, the vice of excessive drinking and drunk enness did more and more abound," enacts, as an additional punishment upon ale house-keepers offending against former statutes, that, " for the space of three years, they should be utterly disabled from keeping an alehouse." The 21 Jac. I. c. 7, declares that the above-mentioned statutes, having been found by experience to be good and necessary laws, shall, with some additions to the penalties, and other trifling altera tions, be put in due execution, and con tinue for ever.
A short statute was passed soon after the accession of Charles I. (1 Car. I. c. 4), which supplied an accidental omission in the statutes of James ; and a second (3 Car. I. c. 3) facilitates the recovery of the 208. penalty imposed by the statute of Edward VI., and provides an additional punishment, by imprisonment, for a second and third offence. At this point all legis lative interference for the regulation and restri ;don of alehouses was suspended for more than a century.
The circumstances which led to the passing of the above-mentioned statutes in the early part of the reign of James I., and the precise nature of the evils alluded to in such strong language in the pre ambles, are not described by any contem poraneous writers. It appears, however, from the Journals, that these statutes gave rise to much discussion in both houses of parliament, and were not passed without considerable opposition. These laws never appear to have produced the full advantage which was expected. During the reign of Charles I. the com plaints against alehouses were loud and frequent. In the year 1635 we find the Lord Keeper Coventry, in his charge to the judges in the Star Chamber previously to the circuits, inveighing in strong terms against them. (Howell's State Dials, vol. au. p. 835.) He says, " I account alehouses and tippling-houses the greatest pests in the kingdom. I give it you in charge to take a course that none be per mitted unless they be licensed ; and, for the licensed alehouses, let them be but a few, and in fit places ; if they be in pri vate corners and ill places, they become the dens of thieves—they are the public stages of drunkenness and disorder ; in market-towns, or in great places or roads, where travellers come, they are neces sary." He goes on to recommend it to the judges to " let care be taken in the choice of alehouse-keepers, that it be not appointed to be the livelihood of a great family ; one or two is enough to draw drink and serve the people in an alehouse; but if six, eight, ten, or twelve must be maintained by alehouse-keeping, it cannot choose but be an exceeding disorder, and the family, by this means, is unfit for any other good work or employment. In
many places they swarm by default of the justices of the peace, that set up too many ; but if the justices will not your charge herein, certify their default and names, and I assure you they shall be discharged. I once did discharge two justices for setting up one alehouse, and shall be glad to do the like again upon the same occasion." During the Commonwealth, the com plaints against alehouses still continued, and were of precisely the same nature as those which are recited in the statutes of James I. At the London sessions, in August, 1654, the court made an order for the regulation of licences, in which it is stated that the " number of alehouses in the city were great and unnecessary, whereby lewd and idle people were har boured, felonies were plotted and con trived, and disorders and disturbances of the public peace promoted. Among seve ral rules directed by the court on this occasion for the removal of the evil, it was ordered that "no new licences shall be granted for two years." ' During the reign of Charles II. the subject of alehouses was not brought in any shape under the consideration of the legislature ; and no notice is taken by writers of that period of any peculiar inconveniences sustained from them, though in 1682 it was ordered by the court, at the London sessions, that no license should in future be granted to alehouse-keepers who frequented conven tides. Locke, in his Second Letter on Toleration,' published in 1690, alludes to their having been driven to take the sacrament for the sake of their places, or " to obtain licences to sell ale." The next act of parliament on the sub ject passed in the year 1729, when the statute 2 Geo. II. c. 28, § 11, after reciting that "inconveniences had arisen in con sequence of licences being granted to ale house-keepers by justices living at a dis tance, and therefore not truly informed of the occasion or want of alehouses in the neighbourhood, or the characters of those who apply for licences, enacts that " no licence shall in future be granted but at a general meeting of the magis trates acting in the division in which the applicant dwells." At this period the sale of spirituous liquors had become common ; and in the statute which we have just mentioned a clause is con tained, placing the keepers of liquor or brandy-shops under the same regulations as to licences as alehouse-keepers. The eagerness with which spirits were con sumed at this period by the lower orders of the people in England, and especially in London and other large towns, appears to have resembled rather the brutal in temperance of a tribe of savages than the habits of a civilized nation. Various evasions of the provisions of the licensing acts were readily suggested to meet this inordinate demand ; and in 1733 it became necessary to enforce, by penalty, the dis continuance of the practice of " hawking spirits about the streets in wheelbarrows, and of exposing them for sale on bulks, sheds, or stalls." (See 6 Geo. II. c. 11.) From this time alehouses became the shops for spirits, as well as for ale and beer ; in consequence of which their due regulation became a subject of much greater difficulty than formerly ; and this difficulty was increased by the growing importance of a large consumption of these articles to the revenue. Besides this, all regulations for the prevention of evils in the management of alehouses were now embarrassed by the arrange ments which had become necessary for the facility and certainty of collecting the Excise duties.