While a proper opportunity must always be given for the prosecution of public work, and while no unnecessary delays should be permitted in its completion, this does not mean that entire streets and avenues are to be delivered over to the exclusive use of public and private contractors; that for miles the stores and shops in the most prominent of our thoroughfares are to be practically shut out from business; that our citizens are to be denied any but the most difficult access to their homes; that in some cases traffic between the various points of our city be made impossible, and in all cases difficult and dangerous, and that the health of the entire community should be imperilled and injuriously affected by open trenches, wherever the people may turn. Such a condition of the streets as we are now compelled to endure may result from gross inefficiency. It can be attributed to only one other cause, and that is, gross corruption. It should be treated as a criminal disregard of the public comfort and safety, and any administration responsible therefor must stand discredited before the community. The flagrant violations of the principles of Home Rule by the Republican majorities in recent Legislatures have challenged the attention and excited the indignation of our citizens. The usurpation of the rights of our municipality and its people has become such an intolerable wrong that it cannot be too strongly rebuked. A cosmopolitan constituency, exceeding the population of the United States at the time of the adoption of the federal Constitution, should not be required to protest against such interference with its purely domestic concerns as attempts to dictate even its harmless customs, habits and pursuits. And yet, again and again we have been subject to legislation conceived either in ignorance of, or contempt for, the wishes and sentiments of our people, and enacted as a revenge upon our politics or an assault upon our revenues. In the Raines Liquor Law we have an example of a class of legislation utterly without public sanction. It was imposed upon our citizens against their vigorous and united protest. It has failed to secure a single one of the advantages urged in justification of its enactment. It has only succeeded, by dispensing with local supervision and control, in removing the salutary restraints which heretofore protected the reputable dealer from the open rivalry of the divekeeper. It employs the spy, and necessitates methods which can never be approved by men who believe in the Democratic theory of government. I favour its prompt repeal.