cholera began to be developed, checked its mortality. By conducting surface water and offensive street accumulations under ground, the uniform good health of the City is unquestionably maintained. To the unceasing vigilance of officers charged with various duties. appertaining to the Internal Health Department, perfect cleanliness, in the midst of a very compact population, is measurably secured. In Boston there are sixty-eight miles of common sewers. A fraction over twenty-eight miles were constructed since 1848, varying in width from twenty inches to six feet. The sum total of cost, in round numbers, of the whole, has been four hundred and seventy thousand, five hundred dollars. Stagnant fluids suffered to remain evaporating in gutters, are considered destructive agents, poisoning the air, pent up between high walls, and have always been regarded as immediate causes of disease. The Superintendent of drains and sewers, by patient personal attention, has become thoroughly acquainted with his department. A map of the sewers, pipes, conduitstheir exact distance from each other, relative position and depth, when finished, must be exceedingly valuable, hereafter, in conducting street repairs, mending outbreaks and other damages. BURIAL OF THE DEAD. Burials within the City are not to be continued after April, without special permission, under peculiar circumstances, and then but temporarily. Masses of decomposing animal remains in tombs and under churches, cannot remain there with impunity in the heart of a City. An interdiction of intermural burials, is the first sanitary law that should be rigidly observed. A suitable cemetery, however, ought to be found in the environs. A tract of fifty-five acres, approached by two railroads, at Readville, of a gravelly, dry soil, having an undulating surface, belonging to the City, could be set apart for a burial field with little or no preparation. Trees, shrubbery and flowers, finely cultivated, are giving a pleasant aspect to all the burying yards. Statuary, suitably placed among the sepulchral monuments, also contributes to relieve them of their sombre appearance. Defective masonry in the range of aboveground tombs on Washington street, combined with the action of ice in winter, allowing mephitic exhalations to escape, offensive to the residents of the vicinity, indicates that they should be taken down and sunk below the sidewalk, and an iron fence substituted for the gloomy stone wall in front. By this alteration, equivalent to giving a third spacious square to that pleasant part of the City, would add immensely to the cheerful appearance, health and comfort of those who dwell in that neighborhood. SECURITY AGAINST INFECTIOUS DISEASE. An existing regulation that ought invariably to be complied with to the letter, insists upon the vaccination of every child, as a prerequisite for entering the public schools. That no parent may plead inability to secure the family against a dreadful scourge, the operation is free to all applicants. A central office fails to accommodate the poor at distant points. They ask that a physician may be appointed in each ward, for that gratuitous service, to be compensated by the City. The wonder is that it has not been attended to before. SCHOOLS. About one-fifth of the whole sum annually raised by direct taxation goes for the support of the schools. To this no strong objections are raised; still, as the expense is certainly on the increase, it is becoming an anxious question, how bounds shall be fixed to this great disbursement of money. One plan, alone, suggests itself and that is plainly this, viz: put up cheaper school houses. By the impulses of trade, precincts formerly in the exclusive occupancy of families, are now the focus of mercantile bustle. Costly school houses, by these domestic revolutions, are without tenants, and subsequently sold at half price. In contemplation of future changes of this kind, build accordingly. It must come to this, and the sooner the better. A High School for Girls is to be organized by the School Committee; but its equipment will probably be deferred till the public library is transferred from Mason street. ENFORCEMENT OF THE LIQUOR LAW. Under a series of perplexing difficulties, the police have placed before the Grand Jury, in six months, four hundred and fifty-five violations of this law. A more vexatious service is rarely undertaken, since obliging witnesses to speak the truth is quite beyond the ability of public functionaries. An unrelaxing pressure of criminal cases, together with the proverbial failure to prove, in all instances, the infraction, where it was believed not a shade of doubt would be raised, has stood in the way of an indictment. Very ardent friends of the law have often made confidential complaints against offenders, but fled on the slightest intimation of being wanted as evidence, quite beyond the reach of a subpoena. Yet strange as it is true, they are loudest in their denunciations against the mayor for not enforcing the penalties of an outraged law. Those familiar with the workings of self-interest in these prosecutions, to evade the penalties of a conviction, represent that there is a fearful amount of hypocrisy, misrepresentation, and wilful perjuries committed, indicative of a state of demoralization so truly painful, as to lead many of the staunchest friends of temperance to lament that the attempted suppression of a vice destructive to reputation and the body, should sometimes peril the soul by sins of a darker hue. When presentments are sent to the Municipal Court, which is always overtasked with a plethoric docket, the prosecuting powers have repeatedly had the extreme mortification of having no heed given to them whatever, on account of the pressing nature of cases of another description. By long delays, evidence selected with discrimination gradually wastes away by removals and death. Again, through the obstinate perversity of witnesses, cases break down when least expected. Thus the City fails to accomplish all that has been undertaken, through the inability of a tribunal created by the Commonwealth for the County of Suffolk, to take cognizance of presentments by the Grand Jury. A wholesome temperance sentiment pervades this community; leading men give to it their influence and example. Health, morals, human happiness, and intellectual progress are promoted by simply conforming to a physiological law, which nature impressed upon every animal but man. Left to the exercise of his own erring judgment, less powerful than instinct in the races below him, he first yields, and then falls a victim to a vice he abhors. An experienced member of the bar asserts that it is a serious evil that delays and confusion characterise the Municipal Court. A formidable list of cases are usually awaiting trial; this is injustice at the fountain head. The accused suffer by procrastination, and, waiting till hope deferred makes the heart sick, is represented to be no unfrequent occurrence. Procuring judgment in civil suits, also, demonstrates a necessity for remodelling some of the courts. Having briefly shown why violators are not punished, if the City Council wish to uphold and sustain the dignity of that law, a petition must be sent to the legislature for the organization of a new court, to meet the exigency. With three Judges, authorised to hold monthly terms, and two courts in session the same day, losses of time now deplored would not occur. The anomalous feature of having three presiding Judges from the country alternately, with vastly more demanded of them than they can ever do in the Municipal Court, is a sufficient apology for asking for a tribunal adequate to the labors imposed upon it in the County of Suffolk. LITIGATION WITH CITIZENS. Juries bring in surprising verdicts against the City. Keep out of the law if a citizen is the antagonist. When claims are pressed for damages, and no settlement can be satisfactorily accomplished by a committee, place the matter with competent referees, and abide their judgment. Boston has lost thousands of dollars by contending, that might have been settled for hundreds. E |