Licenses are granted by the local licensing justices or magistrates' court.
Independence is further curtailed by other state boards semi-independent of the city - the police commission of three members from 1885 to 1906, and in 1906 a single police commissioner, appointed by the governor, a licensing board of three members, appointed by the governor; the transit commission, &c. There are, further, county offices (Suffolk county comprises only Boston, Chelsea, Revere and Winthrop), generally independent of the city, though the latter pays practically all the bills.
But, influenced by medical views and by the almost insuperable difficulty of enforcing any drastic import veto in the face of Formosa's large communications by junk with China, the Japanese finally adopted the middle course of licensing the preparation and sale of the drug, and limiting its use to persons in receipt of medical sanction.
The failure of the government in Ireland (where the only success was Mr Birrell's introduction of the Universities Bill in April 1908), their internal divisions as regards socialistic legislation, their variance from the views of the selfgoverning colonies on Imperial administration, the admission after the general election that the alleged "slavery" of the Chinese in the Transvaal was, in Mr Winston Churchill's phrase, a "terminological inexactitude," and the introduction of extreme measures such as the Licensing Bill of 1908, offered excellent opportunities of electioneering attack.
In some of the states the licensing of preachers, which was formerly left to the voluntary associations of ministers in the different localities, has been made a function of the state conferences.
