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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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Reference :-

C.O. 882

9 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-

COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

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to auction an enormous number of new toddy licences, amounting, it is estimated, to thus more than about 1,600. Some 1,200 to 1,300 of these were sold right away, doubling the licensed premises in the Colony. In some areas the Governinent offered more than the people would buy, in spite of their assurance in debate that they would only sell a licence where an existing demand required one.

We respectfully submit that no such issue of licences should have taken place unless and until His Majesty's sanction had been given to the new law.

Such a proceeding has made any alteration in the scheme doubly difficult, and Without going has been denounced by the Press of Ceylon as a breach of faith." So far, it is clear that it is difficult to find an adequate defence for this action of the Government.

Accepting the declaration of the Government that they desire to control, and not to extend, the traffic, we have been quite unable to understand why this enormous number of licences should be issued so suddenly, and without adequate public announcement. The general public is said to have been unaware of the whole pro- ceeding until after it had become an accomplished fact.

(4) There is no maximum of licences to population fixed in the Bill. This most important matter of the number of licences is left in the absolute No revenue officer, we submit, ought to be discretion of an officer of revenue. entrusted with the duty of issuing licences. As we have indicated in the previous paragraph, these officers are apt to exaggerate the probable requirements of an

arca

In this country we carefully separate the duty of collecting revenue from the duty of issuing licences, and what is necessary here is doubly necessary in Ceylon.

(5) Then, under Section 15, the Government takes powers to distil spirits itself, and to establish Government distilleries.

This we regard as a most dangerous proposal. It will make the Government appear to the people as linked to the traffic, and opposition to it will appear to many of them as opposition to the Government. The traffic will appear before them as having Government sanction and approval, as it does in India, and so will obtain an additional attraction. Interests will grow up which will render future reforms more difficult, and grave abuses also are likely to arise.

The whole idea of establishing Government distilleries is repugnant to large masses of opinion in this country, and is very strongly opposed, many considering it as a breach of trust towards those whom we govern.

(6) The putting up of licences to public auction is, in our opinion, one of the worst possible ways of disposing of them, and for several reasons:-

Already,

(a) It encourages the formation of monopolies in given areas.

according to information which has reached us from Ceylon, the arrack renters have, directly and through their nominees, secured a large pro- portion of the new toddy licences, thus defeating one of the avowed objects of Government policy.

(b) The system compels the purchaser to push the sale in order to recoup himself, and judging by what arrack renters have done, the licence- If this holders encourage illicit sales in order to increase business. should prove to be the case with the new toddy taverns, the last state will indeed be worse than the first.

(c) Neither, under the plan of sale to the highest bidder, has the Government any quite satisfactory security that the licence-holder is a man of either substance or character. He is there merely to sell as much as he can, and has always the monopolist renter behind to defend him. Whereas an independent licence-holder, granted a licence after a public neces- sity had been proved, and in the absence of public protest, could be called upon to give securities for good behaviour, and would therefore be, of necessity, more careful in the conduct of his house than men are under the present system. There would thus be some effective check upon the production of drunkenness and upon illicit sales, a check which seems to be non-existent at the present time.

(7) No consultation of local opinion. This, in our opinion, is one of the most serious defects in the Bill.

The two officers upon whose report the Bill is more or less based were most emphatic in their denunciation of the idea of consulting local opinion before a licence was issued. They are thus quite out of touch with the trend of opinion on this subject.

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It is quite obvious that local option in the sense that the present Government has proposed for England and Scotland cannot yet be applied in Ceylon. But the suggestions of the Select Committee of the Legislative Council which considered the Bill in detail should be incorporated before the Bill becomes law.

For instance, they recommend:—

'That all recognised public bodies, such as municipal councils, local boards, planters' and other associations, should be consulted.'

Moreover, there are consultative or advisory committees in the Madras system,

on which this Bill is supposed to be based, and they are the one living element in the system for the protection of the public interest. The number and location of liquor shops are of far greater importance to the people in the area concerned than to an Yet the people Excise Commissioner who sells the licences to the highest bidder. have no power of self-protection in the Bill.

It may be argued that the Governor in Executive Council, under powers con- ferred by Section 31, subsection 2, paragraph (h) of this Bill, may make rules to carry out the recommendations of the Select Committee.

But we have already been told by Sir Hugh Clifford, on behalf of the Ceylon Government, when introducing the Bill, that local option could not be allowed, apparently in any form.

Thus the power, even if there, will not be used.

Therefore, we submit, with all respect, that it is necessary for this Bill to be sent back for further consideration and examination-for preference by an indepen- dent commission-with the view of including the amendments suggested and elimina- Unless and until this is done, in our ting the objectionable proposals referred to.

opinion the Bill is not deserving the sanction of the Secretary of State. On behalf of the Native Races and the Liquor Traffic United Committee.'

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That is signed by John Newton, Secretary. Mr. Newton is ill to-day and is unable to present it in person.

Sir HERBERT ROBERTS: I would ask Dr. H. M. Fernando, representing the Low Country Products Association of Ceylon, to make his statement.

Doctor FERNANDO: In approaching you to-day, I beg to state that I desire to represent the views of the Low Country Products Association of Ceylon-an Associa- tion of bona fide proprietary planters interested in the agricultural products of the Island. I have already forwarded to you a memorandum which sets out concisely the history of the excise reform movement in Ceylon, and the objections to the new policy we desire to urge. The remarks which I now have the privilege of making will be supplementary [to], and in continuation of, the views already expressed by me. With your permission I desire first to touch upon two important misconceptions which, unfortunately, have perplexed the unprejudiced consideration of this impor- tant question. It has been asserted by those who have spoken on behalf of the Government policy that the opposition has either been instigated or engineered by the arrack renters, whose profitable trade the new scheme is calculated to extinguish. In answer to this I have to draw your attention to the fact that every speaker who has publicly criticised the Government excise scheme has applauded the proposal to do away with the renter and has definitely condemned the system of arrack farms which has hitherto been in vogue. But this is not all. During the last two years the local Government, whilst openly condemning the renters and their practices, have granted them certain concessions either detrimental to the cause of temperance or to the interests of the public. For instance, last year, on the recommendation of one Two other of the Excise Commissioners, the arrack farmer of the District of Kurunegala was granted six additional arrack licences for an augmentation of his rent. renters were granted licences which enabled them to distil a spurious spirit out of imported palm sugar to be sold as Ceylon arrack-a practice hitherto unknown in the Island. All these concessions were granted privately and were brought to the notice of the public for the first time by the critics of the Government policy, and by them alone. More recently still, after the Government sold the toddy shops, with the special object of separating the toddy from the arrack vend, the discovery that this object had been defeated, and that the great majority of the shops had been purchased by the agents of the renters, was publicly proclaimed by Mr. James Pieris, the gentleman who occupied the chair at the recent public meeting in Colombo. If, then, it is contended that the opposition to the Government policy is due to the renters, you are confronted with this anomalous situation. The local

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