THE LICENSING ACT. 1872, WITH EXPLANATORY INTRODUCTION AND NOTES; AN APPENDIX, CONTAINING THE UNREPEALED CLAUSES OF PREVIOUS LICENSING ACTS; AND AN INDE X. BY W. A. HOLDSWORTH, ESQ. OF GRAY'S INN, BARRISTER-AT-LAW. PREFACE. THE Licensing Act, 1872, cannot be called a large and comprehensive measure. No doubt it effects considerable alterations in the law; but it deals with its subject in a fragmentary way. Based upon compromise, and framed chiefly with a view to avoid parliamentary rocks and shoals, it bears abundant traces of the imperfection to which legislation of this kind is liable. Considering the number of Acts dealing with the licensing system which were already in existence, nothing could have been more obviously desirable than that the new statute should have been one of consolidation as well as amendment. The opportunity for reducing the whole of the law into one Act has, however, not been taken. Parts of the old Acts have been repealed, while other parts have been left in operation; and as most of these Acts repealed portions of those which had gone before, it is by no means easy to say what statutes or clauses of statutes are still in force. Incomplete as the Licensing Act of 1872 is-dealing as it does only with bits of the subject—it is clear that, unless it is read in connection with such portions of other Acts as are yet unrepealed, its perusal, even if not actually misleading, would convey a most imperfect acquaintance with the matter in hand. We have, therefore, not contented ourselves with prefacing the Act by an explanatory introduction, and writing notes on such of its clauses as seem to require elucidation, but we have collected in the Appendix the clauses of previous statutes which appear, after careful examination, to be still in force; and we have, in our notes, added references to such of their provisions as require to be read in connection with the Act of 1872, or relate to parts of the subject on which that Act is silent. By the compilation of a very full and minute Index, not only to the principal Act, but to those in the Appendix, we hope to have rendered it tolerably easy for any one to thread his way through the maze of legislation, and to ascertain with facility what are the provisions in operation on any point in which he may be interested. 6, BRICK COURT, Temple, AUGUST 6, 1872. Prohibition of Sale of Intoxicating Liquors without License Occupier of Unlicensed Premises liable for Sale of Liquor. Seller liable for Drinking on Premises contrary to License. Evasion of Law as to Drinking on Premises contrary to License. 41 Penalty on Adulteration of Intoxicating Liquor Possession of Adulterated Liquor or Deleterious Ingredients |