In what other Cases has Compensation been Given?

But against these plain common-sense arguments, the liquor trafficker sets the fact that in a number of what he calls parallel cases compensation has been given by the State to the person deprived of some privilege or advantage previously enjoyed under State sanction. Such cases as the disestablishment of the Protestant State Church of Ireland, when the clergy, whose livings were taken from them, received compensation for their loss. Officers in the army also, who had, according to a well-established custom, purchased their commissions, were compensated when the system was abolished. So, also, when the owner of tolls or markets, bridges or ferries, was by law deprived of his right to charge, then he, in many cases, was compensated. And finally, the slaveholder, when slavery was abolished, was awarded twenty millions for the loss of his property in human flesh. But the answer to these cases is that in every one of them the party compensated did lose something that had been his; he had either a life, a freehold, an hereditary or perpetual interest. The State took this from them. In the liquor trafficker's case, his interest is only for a single year, and when that has expired he has nothing more, not even, as the law has repeatedly decided, so much as a right of renewal for another single year. When the renewal is refused, the State takes nothing from the previous licensee; why should it compensate him?