[Footnote A: Some conception of the fearful height which drunkenness
has attained, may be gathered from the fact, that in 1829, the
quantity of distilled spirits on which the duty was paid in the three
kingdoms, amounted to 23,000,000 of gallons. To form a due estimate,
however, of the actual consumption, an immense quantity must be added,
obtained by smuggling. Of the rum imported for home consumption,
allowing for that re-exported, the quantity was 5,000,000 of gallons.
Of brandy and other articles imported, 1,500,000 gallons; making a
total, with the omission of all on which the duty was evaded, of
30,000,000 of gallons of ardent spirits consumed in the year.
Five millions of revenue grew out of this, but it cost the people
15,000,000_l_. sterling, a which would have paid half-a-year's
interest of the national debt.]

"No person," says Sir Astley Cooper "has greater hostility to dram
drinking than myself, insomuch that I never suffer any ardent spirits
in my house--thinking _them evil spirits!_--and if the poor could
witness the white livers, the dropsies, the shattered nervous systems
which I love seen as the consequence of drinking, they would be aware
that _spirits_ and _poisons_ were synonymous terms."

Institutions; it _will_ advance, and what the legislature may never be
able to accomplish, the spirit of improvement eventually will.

But having considered those cases, in which wilful neglect and bad
example may be charged upon the parents, we should not forget to tell
those who object to our interference in the duty of a child's natural
protectors, that it is not, in every instance, from _wilful_ neglect
on their part, that their children are left unprotected in the
streets. The circumstances of the labouring classes are such, in many