ial reform over the hasty bar-drinking, while standing. The
worst intoxication of this city is with the Irish and American
bar-drinkers, not the German frequenters of gardens.

LIQUOR LAWS.

In regard to legislation, it seems to me that our New York License laws
of 1866 were, with a few improvements, a very "happy medium" in
law-making. The ground was tacitly taken, in that code, that it
subserved the general interests of morality to keep one day free from
riotous or public drinking, and allow the majority of the community to
spend it in rest and worship; and, inasmuch as that day was one of
especial temptation to the working-classes, they were to be treated to a
certain degree like minors, and liquor was to be refused to them on it.
Under this law, also, minors and apprentices, on weekdays, were
forbidden to be supplied with intoxicating drinks, and the liquor-shops
were closed at certain hours of the night. Very properly, also, these
sellers of intoxicating beverages, making enormous profits, and costing
the community immensely in the expenses of crime occasioned by their
trade, were heavily taxed, and paid to the city over a million dollars
annually in fees, licenses, and fines. The effects of the law were
admirable, in the diminution of cases of arrest and crime on the Sunday,
and the checking of the ravages of intoxication.

But it was always apparent to the writer that, with the peculiar
constitution of the population of this city, it could not be sustained,
unless concessions were made to the prejudices and habits of certain
nationalities among our citizens. Our reformers, however, as a class,
are exceedingly adverse to concessions; they look at questions of habits
as absolute questions of right and wrong, and they will permit no
half-way or medium ground. But legislation is always a matter of
concession. We cannot make laws for human nature as it ought to be, but
as it is. If we do not get the absolutely best law passed, we must
content ourselves with the medium best. If our Temperance Reformers had
permitted a clause in the law, excepting the drinking in gardens, or of
lager-beer, from the restrictions of the License Law, we should not,
indeed, have had so good a state of things as we had for a few years,
under the old law, but we might have had it permanently. Now, we have
nearly lost all control over drinking, and the Sunday orgies and crimes
will apparently renew themselves wit