ing any charge against him. The Government can make a law to banish men for writing, printing, or publishing any thing, which a special jury may think to have a TENDENCY to bring either House of Parliament into contempt! Surely, then, such a goa government has power to take off a considerable part, at least, of the taxes which it has laid on! Surely it has powers to do this as well as to do the things which I have above mentioned, and the list of which things, if they were all enumerated, would fill a volume of no contemptible size.

The virtues of sobriety and frugality, and the vices of gaming, are acknowledged by us all. We all say that these virtues ought to be practised, and we all profess to abhor the vices incident to gaming; but it is in the performance in which we too generally which we fail. It is so much more easy to talk about the thing than to do it, that we are very apt to perform the talking part every day, during our lives, and to put off the doing part 'till w we drop into our graves. Yet there only wants a beginning in the performance. It is the want of resolution to begin that prevents the good; for if once we begin, we find the path so pleasant Presented that we never turn aside from it. A

If, indeed, Government were so very inefficient a thing as the Prime Minister is said to have

sober man; a man that never feels the effects of intoxication; a man that knows that he shall always be sober; a man that dismisses, wholly and en

it to be: if it can do so little good: if its power of causing or of curing evils be so very limited, we might ask why we ever heard such a boasting about the excellence of this same Go-tirely, the use of strong drink of every vernment of ours; and, with still more eagerness, might we ask why Government is made to cost us so much! However, the truth is, that nations are happy or miserable in proportion as their governments are good or bad, wise or foolish.

kind; such a man feels, within him-
self, that he has one thing belonging
to him, at any rate, that makes him a
being superior to the common mass of
mankind. And the woman
9 who can
lessen the quantity of her wants;
can subdue the hankerings of a vitiated
taste; who can resort to simple and un-
expensive diet and drink; who can
see, with content, others indulge them-
selves in frivolous enjoyments unne-

People's duty to take care of, that Icessary to her; such a woman, at once, have now the honour to address

you.

feels her superiority; her mind is en

larged and elevated;, from being an | the purpose of decorating the persons

of women; and the man is little better than a beast, who does not value the manufacturing arts chiefly because they contribute to that decoration. And, as to sadness of countenance and starchedness of manner, they have been invented by hypocrites. Give me the smiling virtues; the laughing virtues; and let those whose God is Mammon, and those who expect to purchase happiness, hereafter, by an affectation of unworthiness to live,

As your power over the men is far greater than their power over you; as it always has been thus; always must be thus, and always ought to be thus, I shall begin by proposing to you, the adoption of those measures, which I think you ought to adopt at this time: because, as a means of persuasion, ex-let such men keep to themselves the ample is ten thousand times more pow- enjoyment of the virtues which never erful than precept. An expression of smile, but which present themselves to

you as the harbingers of approaching death.

It is not, therefore, against real pleasures, against gaiety, against mirth, against a life of cheerfulness and of plenty, that I write; but against mere waste; against the throw➡'

foremost, and show him the way. That which I have to recommending away of that which would make has nothing in it of stinginess or of a discontinuance, of hospitality. I despise that sort of virtue (if it ought to be so called) which assumes the garb of niggardliness in house-keeping, meanness in dress, and sadness of countenance. I am for that species of frugality which produces plenty, neatness, and even gayness, in dress, and never-ceasing cheerfulness. The flax, the cotton plant, and the silkworm, seem to have been created for

life gay and cheerful; against the pur chasing of disease and misery with that which might be employed to pur chase pleasure, ease, and gaiety. For ty shillings absolutely thrown away upon coffee and tea, if expended upon an article of female dress, would af ford pleasures of long duration. For ty shillings squandered upon beer or spirits would half cloath a labouring man from head to foot. The very pence, which are worse than thrown

example, and made their joint exam-dians, in America, when they first 16 taste it, call it fire water, and spit it out in great haste and

drunkenness; who have constantly be- son would be the least criminal of the

sibly tend to the making of our own children drunkards. It is probable that much more than half the crimes which bring men to an untimely end, are the fruit of the use of strong drink.

Or Noth of 639

10

see

99

numerous fa

two; seeing that that could only put an end to life, while the former lays the foundation of a life of ruin, misery and disgrace. Drinking is the parent of improvidence, of incapacity to labour, of poverty, of diseases of all sorts, of feebleness of body and feebleness of mind, and, at last, of a departure from life regretted not even by friends, parents and brethren. When a mother who has actually taught her son to drink, sees him lead this life, and come to this death, what remorse

of

This will be denied by hardly any body; and yet, we thers and mothers, not only doing no- ought she not to feel. It is she, in thing to prevent their children becom-fact, who is the criminal and not the ing drunkards; but doing every thing unfortunate son, who has been the obin their power to overcome their natu ject of her seduction. Let her not ral dislike of strong drink. When I blame his boosing companions. He see a mother giving the child a little never would have known them if it had not been for her. On her head, and on her head alone, lies the whole of the sin of causing his sufferings and his destruction.

19

drop;a
and even coaxing it to swallow
the accursed thing; it is not for me
to say what I would do, if I had the
power and the right; but I can safely

I hope that you will excuse the earnestness of my language upon this subject; and I beseech you not to believe that sins of this sort are to be wiped off by a regular attendance at a Church or at a Meeting-house. True piety consists in the due discharge of

say that such a woman, if she had a place in my esteem before, ceases, from that moment, to have it. I have observed, throughout my whole life, that the best mothers; those who are most ardently attached to their children, are those who never think of giving them, apy, thing to vitiate their our duties towards the whole comm (appetites.) A child ought to have strongnity of which we make a pay, and drink, presented to it, no more than it especially of our duty towards our ought to have poison presented to it. own flesh and blood, Husbands and Perhaps aps the act of presenting the poi-wives contract an obligation with re

gard to their children, much stronger force of both precept and example. And the example which I am about to propose for you to give, demands not the smallest sacrifice at your hands, while it presents you with the greatest advantages.

than that which they contract with regard to one another. In the last case, the bond is artificial; it is built upon the injunctions of law made by man. But the obligation with regard

To discontinue the use of coffee and

to children, and especially on the side of the mother, is an obligation im-tea is to discontinue, in fact, the use posed by nature herself. Therefore it is that a cruel mother is looked upon, and justly looked upon, as the most despicable creature upon earth. And, I should like to know what act of cruelty can possibly be so great, and so completely past all forgiveness as the teaching of her child to become a drunkard? Those mothers who voluntarily drive their children from their own breast to the breast of a hireling, are wicked and despicable enough; but those who set deliberately to work to deprive them of the chance of health and happiness appear to me to be guilty of an act of which there is hardly a parallel in the catalogue of human crimes.

of two articles neither of which contains any thing of any one single use to the human frame, and both of which have a tendency to debilitate that frame and also to destroy its beauty. Coffee and tea, if taken strong, produce a shaking of the nerves and a want of sleep. There are some persons so strong of consti tution as to be able to take these things without any immediately injurious effect; but we all know from experience, that they cannot be taken in a strong state without very sensibly affecting our nerves; without producing heart-burn; and without, if taken in the evening, producing restless nights. It is agreed, on all hands, that they afford no nourishment to the human frame; and, therefore, the abstaining from the use of them, can be no possible hardship to any person whatever; while the cost of them (and especially when we consider the application of the money) is a most weighty objection to their

it. Yet, in order to effect this; in
order to render your powers of per-
suasion effectual, you must add the
force of example in your own de-
partment. There are few men so use.
completely brutal as to be beyond the

Persons who live principally within