Here, at first sight, there would appear to be a slight increase of drunkenness; but if the reader could see the printed books of instructions given to the police for the last thirty or thirty-five years, he would find that a very much more stringent system of dealing with drunkards has been gradually established in Liverpool during that period. Unfortunately the table[303] does not go back farther than 1857; but a comparison of the police instructions in the years 1845, 1867, and 1878[304] reveals the fact that whilst formerly the solicitude of the authorities seems to have been on behalf of the drunkards as against the police (in fact, drunkards were “taken care of,” as in London), now the former meets with the consideration which he deserves, and instead of being “passed on” to his home, he is taken before a magistrate and fined. Here again, therefore, the statistics favour the view that drunkenness has diminished rather than that it has increased. But this is mere guess-work. What it does prove, however, is, that the vice which was formerly regarded as a pardonable failing has gradually become a petty criminal offence. And finally, in Birmingham, we have a very flattering picture, for— In 1866, the estimated population was 295,995. The arrests for drunkenness were only 1,357, or 0.45 per cent. And in 1877, the estimated population was 380,787, and the arrests for drunkenness, 3,727, or 0.9 per cent. But on inquiry, the author was informed by the Chief Constable (Major Bond) that “in September last year (1877) I put in force the first paragraph of section 12 of Act 1872, generally known as the ‘quiet drunkard,’ and summoned in a short time 320 persons for being drunk in our public streets; but I was eventually ordered by the Town Council not to carry out the provisions of that section.” This fact was, we believe, published at the time in the Birmingham papers; and without expressing any opinion upon the policy of arresting or not arresting drunken people at any particular stage of intoxication, we hope we have sufficiently proved that the value and significance of the statistics are absolutely nothing, unless all the concomitant circumstances in each case, extending over a long series of years, are regarded at the same time. The number of persons arrested or proceeded against depends largely upon the jurisdiction and mode of dealing with drunkards by the police, and upon the view taken by the inhabitants or the magistrates of what really constitutes a drunkard. In some places a man is allowed to go his way; in another, he is taken up and “booked;” and the smallest change in the mode of proceeding makes an incalculable difference in the published statistics of drunkenness. And finally, these statistics of apprehensions are misleading in another respect. It must not be supposed that because in Liverpool, for example, apparently three per cent. of