with the straw manufacture, the want of subordination of children to parents. Of course this is accidental and not inherent; parents are much to blame for their inattention to those principles of moral training, which alone can ensure the maintenance of their authority. Hence the ability of a child to secure its own maintenance is too often the signal to throw off the restraints of duty and affection. At twelve years old the girl may be seen to assume the air of independance, and treat her mother with utter contempt. Accustomed to love only for the sake of what it could get, when the child can get for itself, it ceases to love. We have seen many illustrations of this remark, and it will be found that in the towns where straw bonnets are made extensively, disobedience to parents prevails to a lamentable degree. The influx of young persons to such places brings with it the corrupter of morals and the enemy of religion; evil communications corrupt good manners, until the youthful portion of the inhabitants of a town are deplorably sunk in vice. The friends of morality and virtue must do more than inveigh against such delinquency; it should be their care to furnish those mental pleasures by which the influence of the senses will be counteracted. Cannot Mechanics' Institutions, and Literary Societies be made to bear more extensively on the young?

Where the manufacture of straw bonnets is carried on in congregated masses, a third evil may be distinctly seen, inseparable from the factory system. When the allotted work is peformed at home, the charities of domestic life prevent the vegetation of iniquity. But let one or two hundred persons be collected in one place, and pass their time there from morning to night, and the consequences may be foreseen. The hours of breaking up, are, in such cases, like so many eruptions of a moral volcano; vice, pent up for so many hours, uses its first moments of freedom for the contamination of others.

Taken in its whole extent, this branch of trade may be considered as less subject to evils than many other species of manufacture. Being carried on for the most part by the female sex, it brings an important aid to the labouring classes, and secures many comforts which could not be enjoyed without it. As the whole of its operations may be performed at home, it need not be associated with the injurious consequences of combination. For these reasons, the political economist and the benevolent may look with much pleasure on the manufacture of STRAW

PLAT.

TEMPERANCE AND TOTAL ABSTINENCE.

THOSE who watch the progress of public opinion must have perceived the movement which has recently been made with regard to habits of intemperance. An acquaintance with our history and literature about fifty years ago will develope the fact, that drunkenness was then a fashionable virtue. Hospitality demanded as one of its rites, that those who sat at its table should be led from it in a state of intoxication; and, if we do not mistake, the custom of ladies retiring after dinner while the gentlemen continue at the wine, originated in those habits of beastly intemperance which existed;-the weaker sex would not expose themselves to the clamour and rudeness of the stronger. But times are certainly changed; " and drunkenness, among persons of character and education, is considered, as it ought to be, at once sinful and degrading. The consequence has been, increased longevity, and the disappearance among the upper grades of society, of a host of distempers that followed in the train of inebriety."

But the lower classes still manifest a disposition to the vice of intoxication, although it would perhaps be too much to say that the habit of drunkenness is more prevalent among them now, than in former years. Smollett, who wrote in an age not very watchful of the interest of morality, states that in the year 1751 "the suburbs of the metropolis abounded with an incredible number of public houses, which continually resounded with the noise of riot aud intemperance; they were the haunts of idleness, fraud, and rapine, and the seminaries of drunkenness, debauchery, extravagance, and every vice incident to human nature." Without instituting a comparison, the present state of the population is sufficiently deplorable. Beershops in the country, and gin palaces in large towns divide between them whole hecatombs of human victims, and degrade our national character. There is no need of exaggeration to shew the evils of intemperance; enough is seen by the most casual observer to excite benevolert efforts for the

production of a better state of things, and no attempt which is honestly made should be treated with neglect.

Temperance Societies originated a few years back, and have been productive of vast benefit, but the good they have secured has been less direct than incidental. In our opinion they committed three errors in their arrangements, which have much impeded their usefulness. First, they laid much stress on the pledge, which consisted in the signature of the name of the party joining them, to a confession of faith on the subject of temperance. It was not considered that such a pledge is useless unless a power of discipline is possessed to check the breach of it. The

adoption of certain rules by the members of a club or a benefit society is advantageous, because offenders can be punished; but no penalty can attach to the forfeiture of a temperance pledge. Besides, the signature of such a document can be understood to express no more than the present view of the matter entertained by the person signing; when he alters his mind, of what importance is the pledge? The conviction of to-day may disappear by the morrow, and the signature is no longer binding. It is therefore no check whatever, being only the outward and visible sign of a state of mind, on which state a man's temperance must depend.

It

Secondly, the temperance societies adopted a wrong principle, viz. that the abuse of anything should lead to its disuse. This principle never can stand; all that has been written on the subject is fallacious. Thirdly, they have been partial in the application of their principle. was difficult for the eye of common sense to discern why drunkenness from beer was more venial than that occasioned by gin or brandy. Yet the rules of the society implied that, Spirituous liquors were forbidden while beer was allowed These defects warrant us in saying that the benefits of temperance societies have been incidental, not direct. They have done much good, but this has been effected not by the pledge, or by the soundness of the principle, but by moral influence. The information they have circulated on

intemperance has had a striking effect, converting some, and restraining others.

Temperance societies have lately been placed in comparison, or perhaps in contrast, with those which advocate total abstinence from everything calculated to inebriate. On this subject some minds have become almost fanatic, assigning it the highest place in morals, and contending for it with more ardour than all the interests of truth com

bined are found to secure. They give their favourite system such exclusive attention that its importance becomes magnified; every thing must bend to it, and every one must espouse it or his virtue and philanthropy will be somewhat questioned. That we do not overstate will be evident when it is known, that some advocates for total abstinence will not even allow the use of wine at the Lord's supper, and others attempt to prove that the wines mentioned in scripture were not fermented! What then is meant by the sin of drunkenness, so awfully reprehended in holy writ? Or how, if this hypothesis be true, could new wine burst old bottles? Such a determination to uphold a doctrine at all events, must eventually discredit it. All advocates for total abstinence are not however, the patrons of such ultra notions. Many are men of sound understanding, whose single object is to put down intemperance; consequently, we respect their motives while we cannot entertain their views.

Total abstinence societies are not chargeable with the fault of tolerating one instrument of intoxication while they denounce another; they consistently reprehend them all. But they are guilty of espousing the false principle already alluded to, they think the abuse of a thing is an argument for its disuse. On this principle we should endeavour to make a man religious in the following way. "Because you cannot engage in the business of life without being exposed to temptation, you must seclude yourself from the world. Go where no gold glitters lest you should love it; where no merchandise exists lest in the pursuit of gain you lose your soul. As all that you see around you may be