following from Federal restrictions passed in the interests of conserving foodstuffs and generally prohibiting the importation, transportation, or sale of liquor in any Province where a local statute prohibited the sale of liquor. Much difficulty was encountered in preventing evasions of the Prohibition Act, and this, together with the cessation of war and the general relaxation from the strain of wartime anxiety, paved the way for a further referendum in an effort to remedy the abuses which had manifested themselves. The exact question balloted upon in 1920 marked departures from both prohibitory enactments and licensing provisions, reading:

Which do you prefer:

(1) The present Prohibition Act?

or

(2) An Act to provide for Government Control and Sale in sealed packages of spirituous and Malt Liquors?

and by a decisive majority the Prohibition Act was abandoned.'

In the Spring of 1921 the Legislature of British Columbia was called upon to devise a workable measure to give expression to the mandate for Government Control. This bill, entitled “An Act to provide for Government Control and Sale of Alcoholic Liquors" and finally passed with the short title of the "Government Liquor Act", was not deemed to be a party measure, and was intended to implement the vote of the people. In its scope it was clearly within the terms of the British North America Act, that is to say within the competence of the Provincial Legislature, and though incorporating many of the provisions of the Prohibition Act, it did not purport to do more than to control and carry on the liquor business, and rested on the powers delegated to the Province by the British North America Act.

The admitted policy of the Act was the control rather than the suppression of the liquor traffic, and though it set up a monopoly to the virtual exclusion of private trading, this was

1 In the United States, as a war measure, the distilling of whisky had been stopped by Congress in 1917, and the brewing of beer by Presidential edict in 1918. It is interesting to note that the identical issues which were being publicly raised contemporaneously in the United States and Canada resulted during this year (1920) in the eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution in the United States, and the introduction of Government Control in British Columbia, Quebec, and the Yukon Territory.

a matter in which Parliament could not be gainsaid. Though the act was subsequently assailed on the grounds that it was an encroachment by the Government upon the Federal field of trade and commerce, the attacks upon its constitutionality were successfully resisted in the Court of Appeal. Opponents of the measure endeavored to show that the act was passed with the direct intention of obtaining revenue, and the declared arrangement for the division of profits lent some color to these assertions, but such revenue as accrued was deemed to be only incidental to the general purpose of the act, and such as would arise from the conduct of the business within the recognized procedure of ordinary dealing.

As in the case of the Central Control Board in Great Britain, the act set up a new Government Department. A Board was appointed to accomplish this purpose, charged with the administration of the act in all its particulars and with ample and exclusive powers of purchase and sale, and authority to acquire suitable warehouses and store premises for conducting a retail business with the public. In short, by requiring a report to the Board of all liquor privately held at the time the act became effective, the measure aimed to transfer to the Province at one stroke the entire liquor business other than the manufacture or export of liquor conducted under federal licence.

It is unnecessary to hamper this article by a recital in detail of the machinery and organization of the Board's business, all of which can be readily followed in the printed official reports. The procedure to give effect to the act was clearly governed by the administrative and trading features which it embodied, and the early regulations issued by the Board provided for the necessary official seals, forms of licences and permits, determined the hours of sale at the Government Liquor Stores, and establishment of a suitable personnel for the business.

Some opposition developed to the taxation of liquor, which was still allowed to be privately imported and possession declared upon arrival, but a test case resulting in a favorable decision for the Board served to remove all doubt on this point, and whatever obstacles the Board was destined to meet with later could not in fairness be attributed to imperfections in the act.

The referendum had established as a condition precedent to the sale of liquor, that an official seal be on every package and from this basic principle trading and administrative features alike required to be built up. How directly the whole machinery has come to depend upon the fulfilment of this condition will be gauged from an examination of the more salient features of the Control system.

Fundamentally it would appear questionable if the full purport of the phraseology used in the referendum question was really grasped, and whether the words "in sealed packages" intended the use of an official seal or merely referred to the trade labels as an identification and assurance to the public against spurious liquor. Be that as it may, the official seal attached by the Board to each bottle may be said to furnish the sole authority for purchase, sale and retention of the liquor pending consumption, and as a matter of identification the Board's official seals alone determine the lawful possession of liquor whether purchased at a Government Store or imported legally and submitted for sealing, and as such entirely determined the guilt or innocence of the party in possession.

As a corollary to the identification of liquor by a seal, provision was made for the identification of the purchaser by a permit, the issuance of which would be conditional upon a written application accepting fully the regulations governing its use. As a patron of the Government Stores, in possession of a permit entitling him to purchase liquor for "beverage, medicinal or culinary purposes", the holder may well have experienced that sense of the liberty of the subject which in the previous four years had been somewhat curtailed; in reality, however, the permit card-indexed his every action. A written application attested his citizenship, address and occupation; compulsory presentation of his permit with each purchase identified him to the vendor; indorsement of his purchase on the back of the permit enumerated the quantities from time to time obtained; while the order form which he signed in the store afforded a permanent record of his purchases in the office of the Board. In this respect some considerable analogy is offered with the (Bratt) Stockholm system and the use of the "motbok" which covers domestic

consumption in Sweden; but theoretically, the permit system, free from all discrepancies, omissions, and irregularities, is little else than an expansion of the licensing system from the former liquor dealer or retailer to the individual, with sufficient limitations and regulatory restrictions to ensure opportunity for enforcement of the conditions under which it may be used.

The method of purchase and possession of liquor having thus been provided for, there remained the perplexing and contentious question of where such liquor should be consumed.

Prohibitory measures of preceding years had been brought about more by an anti-saloon agitation than by the less popular but more exacting demand for a "bone dry" Province. The attitude of the whole North American continent toward the consumption of liquor in public had been one of hostility to the open bar, and this had engendered a sense of apprehension lest the sale of liquor, even under the control of the Government, should prove to be the first step towards a return of drinking in public. The urgency of dispelling any such belief, and of devising adequate substitution for the open places, was clearly of primary importance in restoring the personal use of liquor, and resulted in a general and somewhat sweeping definition of a "public place"-namely "any place, building, or passenger conveyance to which the public resort, or to which the public have access wherein drinking was entirely prohibited, the intention plainly being to outlaw drinking in any manner calculated to offend public sentiment.

It is important to notice the trend of thought interpreted by this provision: it formed the exact antithesis to the public house and confined drinking to the home or the registered guest room of a hotel, the only elasticity afforded this rigorous banishment of public drinking being discretionary powers conferred upon the Board to issue special permits for gatherings of a public

nature.

In its conception this measure was the bulwark against the return of the barroom, but its limitations incited other transgressions associated with drinking in private-against that very decency which it aimed to inspire, and subsequent modifications resulting in its expansion into the broader field of licensing

were plainly the outcome of this rigorous effort to efface the consumption of liquor in public.

The act in other respects did not differ materially from the old licensing system, save that the trade was confined entirely to one firm (the Government) and the sale restricted to the retail vending of liquor in sealed packages only. The regulatory provisions governing hours of sale, quantities obtainable, and other matters incidental to the business being vested in the Board, and the penalties of varying severity, interdiction of habitual offenders, cancellation of rights, forfeiture of liquor and confiscation when illegally possessed, were perhaps more numerously distributed through the system of individual licensing, and where previous Federal legislation had been content to attack drunkenness only when associated with disorderly conduct, this act endeavored to inhibit public drinking by creating the new offence of "drunkenness in a public place", and thus brought within the scope of enforcement a more practical opportunity of effacing the objectionable publicity which intemperance occasions.

The economic features of the act, the profits derived and their distribution between the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the use of the Public Service and the municipalities, schools and hospitals, together with the monies accruing from the sale of permits and licenses, provided for a simple and businesslike handling of the traffic with an equitable participation therein by all municipally controlled portions of the Province. A general revenue of considerable magnitude was assured from the operations of the Board, when freed from competition, and limited as to loss only, from such curable causes as fire or pilfering, or by repeal of the statute, against which provision was made by a Reserve Fund, taking precedence of all other division of profits. It may be argued that the creation and distribution of profits is a matter which to some extent has tended to overshadow the real purpose of the act, and if such is the case it may be largely attributed to the widespread depression of the post-war years. Law enforcement rested with the municipal police, though where proper enforcement by them appeared lacking, the Board was empowered to police the municipalities in respect of liquor