the "giant smuggler" from the field. The latter object it has in a great measure failed of effecting. The smuggler still plies his trade to a considerable extent, and brings his commodity to the market with nearly the same certainty of acquiring profit as ever. It would be well if the liquor vended to the poor possessed the qualities of that furnished by the contraband dealer; but, instead of this, it is usually a vile compound of every thing spurious and pestilent, and seems expressly contrived for the purpose of preying upon the vitals of the unfortunate victims who partake of it. The extent to which adulteration has been carried in all kinds of liquor, is indeed such as to interest every class of society. Wine, for instance, is often impregnated with alum and sugar of lead, the latter dangerous ingredient being resorted to by innkeepers and others, to take away the sour taste so common in bad wines. Even the colour of these liquids is frequently artificial; and the deep rich complexion so greatly admired by persons not in the secrets of the trade, is often caused, or at least heightened, by factitious additions, such as elderberries, bilberries, red-woods, &c. Alum and sugar of lead are also common in spirituous liquors ; and, in many cases, oil of vitriol, turpentine, and other materials equally abominable, are to be found in combination with them. That detestable liquor called British gin, is literally compounded of these ingredients: nor are malt liquors, with their multifarious narcotic additions, less thoroughly so

phisticated or less detrimental to the health. From these circumstances, two conclusions must naturally be drawn; viz. that inebriating agents often contain elements of disease foreign to themselves; and that all persons purchasing them should endeavour to ascertain the state of their purity, and employ no dealer whose honour and honesty are not known to be unimpeachable. Liquors, even in their purest state, are too often injurious to the constitution without the admixture of poisons.*

The varieties of wine are so numerous as almost to defy calculation. Mr. Brande, in his table,† gives a list of no less than forty-four different kinds, and there are others which he has not enumerated. Ardent spirits are fewer in number, and may be mostly comprised under the heads of rum, gin, brandy, and whiskey. The first is the prevailing drink over the West Indies, North America, and such cities of Great Britain as are intimately connected with these regions by commerce. The se

cond is extensively used in Holland and Switzerland, the countries which principally furnish it, and has found its way pretty generally over the whole of Europe. The third is chiefly produced in Charente and Languedoc, and is the spirit most commonly found in the south. The fourth is confined in a great measure to Ireland and Scotland, in

Child on

*See Accum's Treatise on the Adulteration of Food; Brewing Porter; and Shannon on Brewing and Distillation. † See Appendix.

which latter country the best has always been made. Of malt liquors we have many varieties. Britain, especially England, is the country which furnishes them in greatest perfection. They are the natural drinks of Englishmen - the vinum Anglicorum, as foreigners have often remarked. Every town of any consequence in the empire has its brewery; and in almost every one is there some difference in the quality of the liquor. Brown stout, London and Scotch porters, Burton, Dorchester, Edinburgh, and Alloa ales, are only a few of the endless varieties of these widely-circulated fluids.

Besides wines, ardent spirits, and malt liquors, there are many other agents possessing inebriating properties. Among others, the Peganum Harmala or Syrian rue, so often used by the sultan Solyman; the Hibiscus Saldarissa, which furnishes the Indian bangue, and from which the Nepenthes of the ancients is supposed to have been made; the Balsaç, or Turkish bangue, found on the shores of the Levant; the Penang, or Indian betle; the Hyoscyamus Niger; and the Atropa Belladonna. In addition to these, and many more, there are opium, tobacco, Cocculus Indicus, and the innumerable tribes of liqueurs and ethers, together with other agents of a less potent nature, such as clary, darnel, and saffron. The variety of agents capable of exciting drunkenness is indeed surprising, and in proportion to their number seems the prevalence of that fatal vice to which an improper use of them gives rise.

CHAPTER II.

CAUSES OF DRUNKENNESS.

THE causes of drunkenness are so obvious, that few authors have thought it necessary to point them out we shall merely say a few words upon the subject. There are some persons who will never be drunkards, and others who will be so in spite of all that can be done to prevent them. Some are drunkards by choice, and others by necessity. The former have an innate and constitutional fondness for liquor, and drink con amore. Such men are usually of a sanguineous temperament, of coarse unintellectual minds, and of low and animal propensities. They have, in general, a certain rigidity of fibre, and a flow of animal spirits which other people are without. They delight in the roar and riot of drinking clubs; and with them, in particular, all the miseries of life may be referred to the bottle.

The drunkard by necessity was never meant by nature to be dissipated. He is perhaps a person

of amiable dispositions, whom misfortune has overtaken, and who, instead of bearing up manfully against it, endeavours to drown his sorrows in liquor. It is an excess of sensibility, a partial mental weakness, an absolute misery of the heart, which drives him on. Drunkenness, with him, is a consequence of misfortune; it is a solitary dissipation preying upon him in silence. Such a man frequently dies broken-hearted, even before his excesses have had time to destroy him by their own unassisted agency.

Some become drunkards from excess of indulgence in youth. There are parents who have a common custom of treating their children to wine, punch, and other intoxicating liquors. This, in reality, is regularly bringing them up in an apprenticeship to drunkenness. Others are taught the vice by frequenting drinking clubs and masonic lodges. These are the genuine academies of tippling. Two-thirds of the drunkards we meet with, have been there initiated in that love of intemperance and boisterous irregularity which distinguish their future lives. Men who are good singers are very apt to become drunkards, and, in truth, most of them are so, more or less, especially if they have naturally much joviality or warmth of temperament. A fine voice to such men is a fatal accomplishment.

Ebriety prevails to an alarming degree among the lower orders of society. It exists more in towns than in the country, and more among me