qualities, nor to be in any degree prejudicial to the health of the consumer. For this breach of the law Messrs. Meux's & Co. were prosecuted, and on conviction paid a penalty of £. 100, with forfeiture also of their dray and horses. Mr. Wheeler further stated, that that establishment has since passed into other hands. The absence of all other evidence against the eleven great breweries on this head, together with the inducements for disclosure and detection held out, by the very heavy penalties annexed to this species of offence, viz. (£.500, half of which are given to the informer) induce them to believe that this charge, so far as it was intended to be pointed against the eleven great breweries, is, with the above single exception, unfounded; and that their beer has been, and as now brewed, is composed of malt and hops, legal colouring and finings only. But Your Committee must, in justice to the Petitioners, state, that they do find, both from the excise returns and from the seizing officers, that drugs of a very nauseous, and some of a very pernicious quality, are still vended by persons as a trade, and bought by the lesser brewers and by the publicans; by both of them infused into their vats, and mixed in their barrels respectively, and in that state retailed to the Public. That this practice is not confined to the Metropolis, but extends into the country; and that travellers from London houses have been known to possess and offer cards, containing a list of articles, together with instructions adapted to the adulteration of beer. It is evident that the use of such articles, by the lesser brewers and publicans, as have been exhibited before Your Committee, together with the practice of table beer with strong beer, must have a tendency to bring the general beverage of the eleven great breweries also into a degree of discredit; to excite a distrust in the minds of the Public, and strongly to induce them to lay their complaints before the Legislature, without being able to point out distinctly the real authors of their grievance. Your Committee have also received the most conclusive and satisfactory evidence from four of the principal brewers, who, having expressed themselves most willing to submit to any course of examination which Your Committee might think proper to adopt, did, in the most unequideleterious or unlawful any vocal and distinct terms, deny the use of ingredients in their respective breweries, or any knowledge or belief of such practices in any other of the eleven great breweries. Your Committee cannot suggest any other particular mode of preventing the use of deleterious or unlawful ingredients, than the following, viz. the strict execution of the 56th Geo. S, with regard to exacting the fullest penalties and forfeitures on those who thus endanger the health of the consumer; and the publication of every conviction (when the articles used shall have been proved to have been noxious) within the parish wherein any person guilty of such an offence shall carry on his trade; and in addition to this, a vigilant exercise of the sound discretion reposed in Magistrates, to be exercised by them, in refusing licences to every victualler who shall have been convicted of any such practices. B The The last head of complaint of the Petitioners, in which is indeed included others of a collateral nature, is, the allegation of the existence. of a monopoly in various parts of the kingdom, and particularly in the Metropolis, by the eleven great breweries, and to which either the supposed unfairness of price, the use of unlawful ingredients, the alleged inferior quality of beer, and a combination to fix the price, have been ascribed. Your Committee, on this head of the petition, feel themselves called upon to revert to the investment of very large capitals in the purchase of licensed houses by brewers, and the consequent continued decrease of free houses, both in the Metropolis and in the country, and in which practice that which the Petitioners term monopoly, may be said chiefly to consist; and it is clear, that though the present number of free houses in the bills of mortality may still be sufficient to check, in some degree, such monopoly as may now exist; yet an extension of the present practice cannot but ultimately effect the full establishment of it, when at most the only competitors in the trade will be the proprietors of these houses. When this state of things shall arrive, the meetings of brewers to fix and lower prices, (and which is not disguised by them, but declared to be necessary,) will no longer be as unprejudicial as it is now stated to be, but may be and probably will be used as means of demanding such an unfair price from the Public as they may be compelled to submit to. It is true, that price and not quantity is, the subject of their present determinations and meetings, and that a competition in quality is more effectual than any competition in reasonableness of price; but an absorption of all or a greater proportion of free houses, may enable the successors of the present trades to their practice, and totally adverse to their inclinations and intentions. Your Committee, however, cannot entertain a doubt but that it is an object of anxious consideration to the brewers to prevent any variation from the prices fixed at their general meetings; and the same has been evinced in one instance (a solitary one, Your Committee are bound to observe,) in which a pecuniary consideration was offered by an agent of a brewer to a victualler, to induce him to abandon a practice which he had adopted, of selling porter at a reduced price. བསལཔ པ appear that Your Committee, owing to the late period of the Session, were not enabled to examine, at any great length, into the state of the breweries in the country, but, from the inquiries they did make, it does the abuse of the licensing system is in progress there, and producing still more injurious effects than any of which evidence has been adduced, as affecting the Metropolis. In the small town of Chertsey it had become most obnoxious to the inhabitants, and, but for the exertions of a noble Lord, a Magistrate of the county of Surrey, who gave his evidence to the Committee, would have remained without any correction whatever. A partial correction was however effected by the establishment of one free house; and the competition of that free house, together with a coffee-house, did, in a degree, produce a supply of better beer to the community. It is worthy of notice, that the full establishment of that free house did not take place until some of the principal Nobility and Gentry appeared on the licensing day, and supported the grant of the licence. It further appears ! appears to Your Committee, that, in some districts, not only brewers become the purchasers of licensed houses, but maltsters and spirit merchants also; that the brewers bind their proprietory houses to the spirit merchant, who, in return, performs the same service for the brewers; that the liquor then becomes inferior; private families supply themselves from their own breweries; smaller societies brew from molasses in tea kettles; but the poor who have none of these resources, must be content with such liquor as is retailed at the licensed houses, whatever may be the quality, the price, or the measure. This system of purchasing licensed houses, appears to be condemned by two of the principal brewers, who must be supposed best to know its evil tendency and effects, not only as against the Public, but as against the prosperity of their own trade. Mr. Barclay expressly condemns it, and states, that it is now increasing; and that a brewery supported by purchased public houses, must deteriorate the quality of their beer; Mr. Martineau is of the same opinion. Your Committee, on the difficult question of applying a proper and temperate remedy to this evil, and avoiding as much as possible proposing any measure by which that species of property which the Legislature has, by its attention not having been called to the subject, permitted to arrive at its present magnitude, beg leave to suggest, that it may be fit to enact some prospective law, which, at a given period of time, shall direct the Magistrates to refuse licences to such houses as shall, on due inquiry, appear to them, by any new contract, purchase or mortgage, to have become, in substances the pronar af, at kryg and until some regulation leave to submit to the House, that they entirely concur in that part of the Report of the Police Committee, which earnestly calls on "the "Magistrates in the Country, to lend their aid to break down a "confederacy, which is so injurious to the interests of the Poor and middling Classes of the Community." 3 June 1818. |