And this brings us once more to the subject of drink legislation. There has been an infinite amount of law-making on the subject of intemperance, but the law-breaking has been equally unlimited. Of all the Acts that have been passed in England, the only one that has produced any visible effect was that of 1872, which reduced the time allowed for the sale of intoxicating drinks about four hours, namely, from twenty-one to an average of seventeen in the twenty-four. It also increased the penalties for the infringement of the law by publicans, for one of its clauses enacted that “any licensed person” who permitted drunkenness, or any violent, quarelsome, or riotous conduct to take place on his premises, or who sells any intoxicating liquor to a drunken person, shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding £10 for the first offence, and not exceeding £20 for any subsequent offence, and any conviction under the section shall be recorded on the license of the person convicted, unless the magistrate or justices shall otherwise direct.[385] Here it will be seen that two principles were recognised by the Legislature: first, that the opportunities for obtaining drink might, on the score of public policy, be curtailed with advantage, and secondly (as in the United States), that the sober but mercenary publican who supplies the drink is violating the law even more than the miserable drunkard who consumes it. But now let us look at the results which have been obtained from this Act. It was passed in 1872, and for the five years ending 1877 the convictions for drunkenness in Liverpool amounted altogether to 90,339, whilst the whole number of publicans who were convicted for supplying drink contrary to law during the same years was 289, being rather less than one-half of those against whom information was laid by the police.[386] And in London the state of affairs is equally deplorable. In the report of the metropolitan police for 1876, we find the statement that, whilst 32,328 persons were arrested for drunkenness in that year, the convictions against drink-houses amounted to 186. The question which naturally suggests itself when one reads these figures is, where do all those drunken men get the liquor which brings them within the pale of the law? It is right to add that the London report states that the Act of 1872 has enabled the police to close a great number of objectionable houses; still the figures speak for themselves.