namely, on Sunday, 14th April, an attempt was made to storm a closed drinking saloon by a band of men “already half intoxicated and clamouring for more liquor.” Before the police could interfere considerable damage was done to the premises, and when the ringleaders were brought before the magistrates, “they were recognised as members of a dissolute gang who infest the neighbourhood, and who more than once before had disturbed the public peace.”[337] Some of them were deservedly imprisoned; and we venture to say, without fear of contradiction, notwithstanding our bad reputation in that respect, that such an event would not have occurred in England as it did there, on Sunday, during the hours of divine service. But a careful perusal of the newspapers, which, after all, give one a very fair estimate of the moral condition of the United States, shows beyond a doubt that alcoholic drinks are a less fruitful source of crime and misery there than with us in England. For example, in the Boston papers, under the head of “criminal matters,” we find men indicted for such crimes as embezzlement, passing counterfeit coin, gambling, and even highway robbery, but drink and drunkenness are hardly ever mentioned. That they exist we shall show later on, and the papers give accounts of temperance unions, at which it is proposed to establish halls, gymnasiums, and reading-rooms as “antidotes to the drinking saloon.” And this is in Boston, the “hub of the universe.” The same applies to the Philadelphia journals, and there, by the way, they are agitating for a change in the fiscal regulations of the excise, in order to enable the Americans to export grain to England in its most highly concentrated form, namely, distilled spirits. Congress, they think, should allow a drawback on spirits which are exported, in which case “the liquor trade in our own city” (Philadelphia) “would undoubtedly engage largely in the traffic.” We cannot help thinking that the whole thing is the notion of some Yankee humorist who intends to visit England, and would like to rouse from his long rest a real specimen of the English protectionist of the old school, to see whether he bore any resemblance to men of the present day!