it or not," we never heard of such doings, nor can we credit them. English ladies, though they courteously taste wine when requested at dinner, yet often do not exhaust the small well-reserved dose of a third of a glass, and perhaps decline taking any after; and for the most part they are in effect as abstinent as if they were Teetotallers. We admit that even as respects wine, which cannot be fairly classed with ardent spirits, more might be done in the way of good example; but, practically speaking, we do not think that in well-ordered English society there is any reason to impute general excess. The difference in the two cases is broad and palpable. Very few gentlemen taste wine, or any inebriating beverage, except at dinner, with possibly a glass at luncheon; whereas what are called the operative classes will, in a large number of instances, drink at any hour from morning to night, if strong potions be offered them, restrained only by fear of becoming unfit for their employments. It is very rare for an artisan or workman to refuse, when offered, beer or spirits; nor is it an answer to say, Because he seldom gets a feast;" for a gentleman's porter will take his potations in the morning; and livery-servants are constantly seen drinking in the streets, or running into publichouses, though their master or mistress has fasted much longer, and probably after less substantial eatables and drinkables.

We will now copy Mr. Dunlop's highly important state

ments:

"It is now towards nine years since the author (to whose lot it fell, under Providence, first to propose temperance association to the inhabitants of North Britain,) suggested the absolute necessity of coupling anti-usage regulations with the obligation to abstinence from liquor; and in this opinion, and in CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 23.

operations founded upon it, he has persevered till the present date. He argued, that temperance association, in the peculiar circumstances of the Scotch, could only be placed on a truly solid foundation by working with this double power. And after abundance of labour and expense, he hopes that he has now demonstrated that the same must be said of the English and Irish. He prophesied, that after the first flush of the anti-spirit regulation, the usages would supervene and swamp the Societies; and with a sorrowful mind he has for some time perceived, that what he predicted has proved but too true. The fact is, that men rushed without thought into Temperance Societies, during the first years of their institution; and greatly ignorant or forgetful of all the imperative usages they would require to break, if they continued to adhere to their abstinence engagement. Their desire was to be quit of ardent spirits, and all its temptations; and the intention was most commendable; but, alas! they were neither aware of the drinking usages, nor of their energy multiplicity and universality of the and efficiency."

"When a gentleman asks a labourer, farmer, servant, or mechanic, to join an Abstinence Society, he in his ignorance believes that he merely requires this individual to give up liquor; but he, in fact, asks him to go in the face of usages which are in general much more difficult to break through than any desire of strong drink would be. He, therefore, asks a great deal more from the working man than the mere disuse of liquor; for the new Temperance usual beverage, but, in the course of a member must not only refrain from his week, has perhaps to reverse twenty rules and customs of drinking, as imperative as the maxims of a Turkish still sustaining his own series of wine seraglio; while the said gentleman, by courtesies, maintains the very system which the working man finds so much difficulty in combating.

"The general want of acquaintance with this subject among the upper ranks, is extremely remarkable; and those intelligent men in the industrious classes who know their own usages, are little aware of their prevalence in other professions, and have never been led to generalize upon the subject, and take an extensive view of the bearings and pressure of these customs upon society. I have not met one individual yet to whom the subject, in its general bearings at least, has not till lately been entirely new: a most extraordinary

4 S

circumstance, considering that we have been all born and bred in the midst of these practices.

"In the course of investigations upon this topic, I once fell into conversation with a judicious employer, who stated that he had been a prosperous man in his affairs; that he had little to annoy him during the course of a long business life, with the exception of one perpetual vexation, the addiction of his workmen to intemperance, which often prevented important orders from being duly executed, and injured materials and work continually. Conceiving that I had now a good opportunity of gaining information, I requested to know on what particular occasions his men were apt to go astray; he coldly replied, that although he had reason to believe that they had some rules of their own regarding their drinking bouts, yet he knew nothing of them, and had never inquired.

"In general, I have found employers extremely ignorant on this topic, except those who had once been in the operative ranks themselves.

"I was more successful in another case. A highly respectable gentleman, proprietor of an extensive manufactory, stated, that he had read the first edition of this work, published some time ago, and was convinced of the general truth of its positions, being able to confirm them by a case that happened to himself. He and some other proprietors in the same line of business, determined that they would put an end to the intemperance of their workmen by the strong hand. They entered into engagements with each other to turn off every man that came to the works the worse for liquor. He kept scrupulously to the bond, and cashiered without mercy: but the more coercion of this kind was used, the more inebriation seemed to grow and increase, as if by magic. On probing the matter, he found that the spell consisted merely in one of the drinking usages of the trade. Every new workman that came was bound to pay one guinea of entry or footing, which was added to by the other workmen, and spent in strong drink. The sobriety-forcing process had acted nearly in the following manner:

two drunken men were turned off one week, and two fresh men were admitted, each bringing a drinking guinea along with him; this began a debauch which ended in four men coming drunk to their work next day; they were immediately turned off; four fresh men, and four fresh guineas, were ntroduced, and in consequence a still greater number of offenders had to be

dismissed next week. Intemperance went on progressively, and in an augmenting ratio, till the good sense of the employer put a stop to this erroneous method of proceeding, which, by itself, could effect no salutary change in the circumstances, as long as the usage remained in force.

"At other times I have found masters extremely unwilling to acknowledge specifically the intemperance of their artisans, as if this were a reflection on their own character. My men, really, seldom or never get the worse for liquor,' affirmed an employer, when spoken to on the subject; there is not a more sober set of workmen in the district.'

you don't say so,' observed a bystander; 'is not Thomas Such-a-one, and James Such-a-one, in your service; and were they not in the police-office for a drunken riot all night before last?'

"It is also very troublesome sometimes to get at a usage, from the difficulty of defining it, so as to make people understand precisely what is meant. It has on numerous occasions taken the writer nearly an hour's work to explain this to one individual; and he may just add, that the strict definition of the term drinking usage,' as it has been before given, will be found a matter of more consequence in antiusage operations than is obvious at first sight. Thus, customs or habits of drinking for diet, bodily refreshment or indulgence, are not strictly usages, at least as we (for want of more appropriate language) have defined the phrase; but we restrict the term to artificial, conventional use of liquor, on some occasion which nature has not pointed out, but which conjunction man has chosen to constitute, so to speak, on his own authority.

"To recur to the ignorance of the upper ranks on the frequency and potency of drinking usages on the classes beneath them. It happened that a gentleman was travelling lately from the lowlands of Scotland to Inverness by the steam-boat. At a particular station, they met the opposite steampacket coming from the north. It chanced that a sailor lad on board of the one boat thus fell in with his brother, also a seafaring man, who was bound for the Clyde, intending immediately to sail on a foreign voyage. They had not seen each other for seven years, and it might be other seven before they should again encounter. The two captains, interested in the case, permitted them a few minutes' delay, that they might converse apart on family concerns. They instantly adjourned to

all this, and a hundred times more than this, may be enforced; yea, it may be absolutely and positively and unfeignedly admitted by the auditors; yet the point of honour not having been satisfactorily adjusted, a usage intervening next day, will neutralize the most weighty reasons that may have been heartily acceded to the night before, at a Temperance meeting. Let us attend for a moment to an analogous case. Perhaps there are few situations, in which more solemn or satisfying argu; ment can be used, than with a friend who has become implicated in some nonourable mesh and noose of fashionable life, which may draw into a duel. It can with truth be represented to him that wounds, blood, and decrepitude of life, may be in the sequel. It can be unanswerably demanded, what is to become of his amiable wife and beloved children, who are dependent on his professional exertions for nurture and maintenance? Or, if his own sad case do not move him, will not the mournful state of his adversary prevail upon a generous mind a man with ten young boys and girls, and an estate, perhaps, critically involved; a man, whose premature death may all around strike terror, and entail disaster? And if these mere earthly claims penetrate the very heart, what shall be thought of the vindictive frown of Heaven? In short, in few cases can argument of more genuine weight and temper be brought to bear than in this; and no man is, in fact, more assured of its truth than the party himself to whom it may be directed. But it does not reach his case the point of honour is unredressed; he goes forth with all his convictions weighing on his soul, receives the fire of his antagonist, and dies. In like manner, all the arguments on the subject of temperance reach not the case, to whatever height of validity the expostulatory reasoning may attain. The imperative usage in tervenes, and like a shield in the hand of a dexterous' Athleta,' turns aside with ease the keenest and most barbed arrows of conviction."

These facts shew in what a dangerous vortex the frail bark of a youth among the operative classes is launched, and how great is the danger of his making shipwreck of soul and body. If his principles are right, they must require every aid to prevent their subversion; but if they are unstable, the hazard is extreme.

The largely increased use of ardent spirits in England has greatly augmented the evil; for whereas formerly the potations of Englishmen in the classes of life referred to, were chiefly malt liquors, they have of late alarmingly inclined towards the desperate beverages which form the staple of Scotch and Irish drunkenness. The particular name of the distillation is of no consequence in the argument; for though English gin or brandy may not be as fiery as the excised, or often unexcised, alcohols used in Ireland and Scotland, they are all spirituous, as distinct from merely fermented, liquors; and though many temperance advocates class together all beverages capable of producing inebriety, there is a very obvious difference between the produce of fermentation and distillation; between beer, cyder, or wine, and the pestilential exhalations of the still. All are bad in excess, and in many cases under every form; but the dangers and temptations are greatly increased by substituting Scotch and Irish dram-drinking for fermented liquors.

As Mr. Dunlop's work consists for the most part of a mass of details relating to a great variety of trades and occupations, it does not admit of abridgment; nor would a few extracts relative to particular trades present an adequate representation of the ramifications of the system. We will however quote, as a specimen his first illustration, that of the shipwrights, though it is not different in its spirit to many others.