Abstract
Publicans' pressure for relaxing licensing control, & the free-trade campaign that culminated in the Beer Act had different roots, but both rejected magisterial discretion & shared a commitment to an adjudicatory model with strong "rule of law" values. Subsequent inquiries suggested that for adjudication to replace discretion successfully, freedom to trade should be restricted to the respectable, & that the "rule of law" required modern policing & modern courts. Licensing reforms thus illustrate a shift to modernity which served the interests of both the victuallers who defended their "property" & the free-traders who denied it. Adapted from the source document.