So, what part did the Beer Act 1830 play in the temperance reformation? Since the Alehouse Act 1552, sellers of intoxicating drinks required a licence granted by a local magistrate and, from 1808 onwards, sellers of beer had further required an excise licence in order to ply their trade.326 The Estcourt Act 1828 began to loosen some restrictions; it scrapped certain eighteenth century statutory provisions
323 Ibid., pp.1-2. 324 Ibid., p.28.
325 It should be noted that Critcher has argued that the gin panics equate to the more
generalised concept of moral regulation as formulated by Corrigan and Sayer. But, the more discursively-oriented and social movement-focused theory of Alan Hunt has never been applied to the gin panics. See: Critcher, „Drunken Antics‟.
326 See: Jennings, Paul, „Liquor Licensing and the Local Historian: Inns and Alehouses 1753-
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including the requirement for licence applicants to provide character references and recognisance or surety of ten pounds against disorder on their premises.327 The Beer Act 1830, however, vastly accelerated this liberalising trend by enabling people to sell beer, ale or cider without magisterial permission, requiring only that beer-sellers possess the excise licence (which was obtainable upon the payment of a fixed fee). The legislation was partially motivated by free trade logic. At the time, persistent references were made to the need to tackle monopolies, which breweries had reportedly established in particular areas.328 It was not believed that the existing system was equipped to tackle this problem; there was a degree of hostility to the “arbitrary and injurious power” of local magistrates.329
The concentration of licensing power in the hands of magistrates led to widespread fears of corruption and
Anderson argues that, in light of this, the Beer Act 1830 should be understood as enacting a desire to replace the murky procedures of magisterial discretion with a more transparent, rule-based system.330 The Act would, therefore, simultaneously strike a blow against commercial monopolies and for rational governance.
There were also other potential motives behind the Beer Act 1830. Nicholls notes that Wellington‟s Government were facing a general election and increasing the availability of beer may have been seen as a vote-winner.331 Whether electioneering was a motivation or not, the reform was certainly advocated with reference to free trade ideas as well as older, eighteenth century conceptions of the drink problem. Consistent with the views of their Georgian predecessors as well as
327 Ibid.
328 For example, see: Probus, „Sale of Beer Bill: To the Editor of The Times’, The Times, 21
June 1830.
329 Mr Western MP, „Sale of Beer Bill‟, Morning Chronicle, 22 May 1830.
330 Anderson, Stuart, „Discretion and the Rule of Law: The Licensing of Drink in England,
c.1817-40‟, (2002) Journal of Legal History Vol. 23 (1), pp.45-59.
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their temperance contemporaries, many people continued to view alcoholic spirits as the real problem. During Parliamentary debates of the legislation in 1830, the MP for Shrewsbury, Mr Slaney, argued that “all disorder and immorality consequent on tippling arose from the drinking of spirits, and not from the drinking of beer”.332
As in Hogarth‟s day, beer was still commonly perceived in a morally neutral or positive light; a letter in The Times expressed the view that beer was a normal commodity and so asked why its sale “should not be as free as the sale of bread and cheese, or bacon?”333
Legislative attempts to liberalise the trade in beer were therefore positioned as attempts to reduce the consumption of alcoholic spirits. As Slaney describes, the debate was largely concerned with “a healthful nutricious [sic] beverage and demoralising and destructive spirituous liquors”.334
However, the belief that beer consumption was harmless was not universal. The MP for Reading, Mr Monck, argued that the existence of a licensing system shows that common law pronounces “public houses to be public nuisances”335
which “ought not to be erected in low, retired, and improper situations”.336
Monck believed that the Beer Bill threatened this state of affairs by carrying “the principle of
competition to a new and indefinite extent”.337
Sir T. Gooch gave some support to Mr Monck, stating that “he was a friend to free trade in beer, but he thought the
magistrates ought to have some control over the licences”.338
Reservations were not restricted to Parliament; the Hampshire Telegraph reported on a public meeting in Newport at which it was agreed that the indiscriminate sale of beer would “be
332 „Sale of Beer Bill‟, Hull Packet and Humber Mercury, 25 May 1830.
333 Probus, „Sale of Beer Bill: To the Editor of The Times’, The Times, 21 June 1830. 334 „Sale of Beer Bill‟, Morning Chronicle, 22 May 1830.
335 „Sale of Beer Bill‟, Hull Packet and Humber Mercury, 25 May 1830. 336„Sale of Beer Bill‟, Morning Chronicle, 22 May 1830.
337 „Sale of Beer Bill‟, Hull Packet and Humber Mercury, 25 May 1830. 338 Ibid.
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productive of serious evil to the morality and good order of society”.339
During 1830 a number of anti-Beer Bill petitions were presented to Parliament. Although many petitions came from licensed victuallers, who feared that the freeing up of the beer trade would threaten their livelihoods,340 a petition from the Vicar and Church- Wardens of Isleworth expressed non-pecuniary worries about the “most ruinous effects” the Bill may have.341
Although Monck and those at the Newport meeting are not reported as raising objections to moderate use and properly regulated sale of beer, they do highlight the potential problems which beer may produce.
Many people soon came to agree with the Vicar of Isleworth‟s concerns, mainly as the Beer Act was frequently seen as worsening the very problem it sought to solve. After this legislation came into effect, there was a large increase in the number of premises selling beer342 and significant decreases in the price of their product.343 This was not unexpected; but when it became apparent that the consumption of spirits was not significantly reduced344 and that arrests for
drunkenness were rising,345 the fears of the moralist “who trembles lest our streets should become too narrow for a staggering population” appeared to have been realised.346 In Parliament in 1839, Mr Pakington referred to “the evils which had resulted from the beer act of 1830”.347
In the same year, a group of Watford magistrates petitioned Parliament calling for a clampdown on beer-houses,
339 „To the Printer of the Hampshire Telegraph‟, Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle,
26 April 1830.
340 See: „Imperial Parliament‟, Morning Chronicle, 27 April 1830. 341 „House of Commons‟, Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 8 May 1830. 342 Harrison, Drink and the Victorians, pp..64-86.
343 „Postscript‟, Bristol Mercury, 28 June 1830; „London‟, Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex
Chronicle, 4 October 1830.
344 Harrison, Drink and the Victorians, pp.81-86. 345 Wilson, Alcohol and the Nation, pp.99-101;
346 „The New Beer Bill‟, Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, 25 October 1830. 347 „The Parliament‟, The Examiner, 24 March 1839.
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describing them as those “schools of vice” which have “corrupted” and “seduced” young people into “riotous debauchery”.348
It became commonplace to echo these sentiments by referring to “the evils of the Beer Act”, a phrase which featured in the Newcastle Courant in 1850,349 The Era in 1857, and was used by prohibitionist Dawson Burns as late as 1908.350 The Beer Act 1830 thus provided a focus for critical social commentaries for some years to come, and, for many people, its very name became synonymous with legislative failure and moral bankruptcy.
Nowhere was criticism of the Act stronger than in the ranks of the
prohibitionist UK Alliance. Harrison reports that in the 1860s the Alliance, Britain‟s largest temperance society, had three principal aims: the restoration of beer shops to magistrates‟ control, opposition to Gladstone‟s attempts to open up the wine trade, and opposition to the free licensing policy of the Liverpool magistrates.351 All of the UK Alliance‟s aims relate either to the Beer Act 1830 or the related free trade model of alcohol governance. Interestingly, advocates of free trade were not disheartened by the Beer Act 1830‟s apparent lack of success and blamed these eventualities on a surfeit of regulations. A letter in The Times in 1860 claimed the statute failed because beer-houses could not compete equally with public houses, which could stay open for longer hours and sell wine and spirits as well as beer.352 This letter was prompted by Gladstone‟s contemporaneous attempts to liberalise the wine trade by reducing duties and encouraging imports. Gladstone, like free traders before him, was motivated by the idea that competition would improve the quality and price of drinks, and so in turn reduce the dangers of adulteration and provide an alternative
348 „Repeal of the Beer Act‟, The Era, 3 February 1839.
349 „The Lords‟ Committee on the Beer Act‟, Newcastle Courant, 21 June 1850. 350 Burns, Dawson, „The Licensing Bill‟, The Times, 1 May 1908.
351 Harrison, Drink and the Victorians, p.348.
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to spirit-drinking.353 This mixture of free trade and anti-spirit/pro-beer ideas thus formed a potent and lasting cocktail. Also, the historical legacy of the Beer Act 1830 clearly structured debates about alcohol for several decades.
It must be remembered that attitudes to drink were hardening several years before the Beer Bill was first debated in Parliament. But, from 1830 onwards, these changing attitudes were increasingly expressed in reference to the Beer Act 1830. The Act did not engender a fundamentally novel discourse of anti-alcohol sentiment. It did, however, create a public discursive arena in which the potentially negative effects of beer-drinking and the need for proper regulation were stressed. Both the traditional idea of beer as healthy and harmless, plus the conception of spirits as somehow different and more malevolent, was challenged. As a piece in the Derby Mercury argued, beer was not just a nutritious beverage but potentially a “moral poison” also.354
By the time legislative amendments were debated in Parliament in 1839, Mr Warburton was able to make a case that beer is an intoxicating drink and should be subjected to the exact same regulations as wine or gin.355