taverns or shops, where spirituous liquors are retailed
in drams or in the form of grog. In eight or ten con-
siderable streets, one fourth part of the whole num-
ber of houses are taverns and groceries, or, in other
words, dram-shops. The number of taverns is unlimit
ited by law. By the city charter, the power of granting
licenses is vested in the mayor, who is the sole judge
of the propriety of granting them, or of their number.
Thirty shillings are paid for each license, four fifths
of which sum goes into the city treasury, and the
residue to the mayor. While a revenue is derived to
the corporation from these licenses, it is not to be
expected that there will be much solicitude to lessen
their number, or to examine minutely into the merits
of the applicants for them. Some regulations ought
to be adopted for the reformation of the police in this
respect. Grocers ought to be strictly prohibited from
retailing liquors in drams. The number of taverns
ought to be greatly diminished. Licenses should not
be granted but to persons who are recommended by
five known and respectable citizens, and under much
larger penalties than at present, to enforce their obser-
vance of the laws.* * In the town of Boston

there are fifty taverns, or persons, licensed to
retail liquors in small quantities. Three or four times that number, one
would imagine, would be more than sufficient for this city. At present, the temptation to
the indigent and labouring classes of the people to
indulge in drink is so powerful, and the gratification
so easy, at every turn of the street, that the greater
number spend a large portion of their time and earn-
ings in repeated indulgences of this depraved appe-
tite, during the day, and return to their families in a
state of partial or complete intoxication. The per-
nicious consequences of such habits, to the individual
and to society, are too striking to need any elaborate
description, to enforce the propriety of adopting every
suitable means of legislative and municipal regula-
tion, for their prevention.

A further source of vice and criminality is to be
found in the horse-races which regularly take place