COMMERCIAL GENTLEMEN, and others THE

visiting Town, will meet with superior accommodation at MRS. BOURN'S Private Boarding House. Terms, from 4s. to 4s. 8d. per day, which includes Bed, Breakfast, Tea, Boots, and Attendance. Bed-Rooms airy and commodious. Private Sitting-Rooms if required.

500,000,000 pounds of betel, 20,000,000 pounds of catechu and cambir extract. These estimates, of course, are to a great extent conjectural, but they are sufficiently near the truth, to show how important an influence the narcotic appetite exercises upon the rural labour and commercial intercourse of mankind. T.

TIONAL FORCE.

tivated farm, and hews out another from the native forest, but the same plenty is followed by the same vexatious disasters; his neighbours partake of the same experience; they advance like a devouring tide against the verdant wood, they trample them beneath their advancing culture. The axe levels his yearly prey, and generations after generations proceed in the same direction, a wall of green forests in the horizon before them, a half desert and naked region behind them. Such is the history of colonial THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT AS AN EDUCAculture in our own epoch, such is the vegetable history of the march of European cultivation over the entire continent of America; from the shores of the Atlantic, the unrifled soil retreated to the Alleghanies and the shores of the great lakes; these are now overpassed, and the reckless plunderer, axe in hand, scarcely retarded by the rich bauks of the Mississippi and its tributary waters, is hewing his way forward to the Rocky Mountains and the eastern slopes of the Andes. No matter what the geological origin of the land may be, or what its chemical composition, no matter how warmth and moisture may favour it, or what the staple crop it has patiently yielded from year to year, the inevitable fate overtakes it, the influence of long-continued human action overcomes the tenden

cies of all natural causes."

THE thinking power which inheres in man will always be found a ticklish element to deal with in every community. You may, to a certain extent, restrain or control it by mechanical contrivances-as has been done often enough under spiritual and political despotisms-but the energetic protest of the Reformation, and the democratic revolutions of 1848, will always remain significant illustrations of the fact, that MIND will not submit for ever to be held in fetters. Such explosive power, indeed (if we may so express ourselves), exists in repressed free thought, that it may be said, the dynasty of the Stuarts was safer upon the whole, while Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators were placing their barrels of gunpowder under the Houses of Parliament, than is the Bourbon family of Naples at this moment, while wild visions of Italian liberty are flitting across the minds of their more thoughtful subjects.

For we have not far to look back in the agricultural history of Great Britain to find a state of things not much differing from the present condition of the land in North America and on the continent of Europe; we require to turn aside but a short way from the It is not, however, the despot alone who finds somehighroad to some districts of England still to find in times the difficulty of governing increased by the living operation nearly all the defects and views of the circumstance of his having living and reflecting perpresent American system of farming. A century has sons to direct, and not inanimate and passive things. changed the whole surface of our island. But what At the other end of the scale, in a country where the labour has been expended, what wealth buried in the most absolute freedom of opinion and expression is soil, what thought lavished in devising means for its allowed, the same difficulty is also felt; though, perrecovery from long-inflicted sterility! Commerce has haps, after a different manner, and not, certainly, to brought in from all parts of the world new chemical the same extent. We all know the proverb, "Many riches to replace those which a hundred previous ge- men, many minds." The liberty which is permitted nerations had permitted rains and rivers to wash out to every individual to think as he likes, and to give of the soil, or to carry away to the sea; mechanical utterance to his thoughts in the form most pleasing skill has given us the means of tilling the surface to him, must lead, unavoidably, to an almost indefinite economically, of bringing up virgin soils from beneath, diversity at once of action and opinion; and, as under and of laying dry that which overabundant water a constitutional government, all that diversity is free had prevented our forefathers from utterly impover- to find expression in the great business of making ishing; and scientific investigation has taught us and administering laws, it might even appear, at first how best to apply all these new means to the attain-sight, as if the inevitable consequence must be unceasment of the desired end. This country, then, may ing bickerings, and endless confusion. present a striking illustration of the influence of man in increasing the production of the soil, and the benefit arising from the cultivation of the necessaries of life, in preference to the luxuries which appear only to raise one class and depress the great body of the labourers. Certainly no other crops except corn, and perhaps cotton, represent more commercial capital, employ more shipping and other means of transport, are the subject of a more extended and unfading traffic, and the source of greater commercial wealth; the correctness of this may be judged by the following estimates of the annual produce and value of a few of the narcotics, from Johnston's Chemistry of Common Life:

We shall not attempt to supply here such a solution of the problem which thus presents itself, as shall be satisfactory to every one in every respect. We shall leave it to others adequately to explain how it comes to pass, that like he innumerable wheels, and pullies, and pistons, of a great manufactory, all the forces of society, in such a country as this, conspire with wonderful unanimity, to bring about one grand result. At present, our object is simply this, to call attention to the fact, which is too generally overlooked, that even in a purely political point of view, even as helping to promote the end of good and peaceful and harmonious government, there are certain unpretending organizations in the land, which are entitled to a good deal more credit than technical state craft appears willing to allow to them.

Much reasoning is not needed to prove that government would be a very much more troublesome thing than it is, if the thought of the country was anything like exclusively expended upon it. This is made plain enough, even by this one significant fact, that whenever a season of social distress comes round, and leaves

land, the boven and the mysterious yellow in the peach orchard, the fatal rust on the cotton, and the potato disease, which originated in America.

the industrial class free to speculate upon political questions, the ruling powers immediately feel tha their position becomes encompassed with a certain amount of difficulty and danger. The administration works with comparative freedom, in spite of the amount of mental activity and diversity of opinion which exist, very much on this account, that the various churches, and other such like institutions, act the part of safety valves in the civil system. These allow the thinking power of the nation to find vent in other and more profitable channels than would, in other circumstances, be open to it-nay, more than that, they give such a direction to the national mind, as tends in the most effectual way, to promote the highest purposes of good government.

way, must be plain to all who have ever come into contact with its developments.

This cause, however, has done even better service than this in educating the conscience of the country. Time was, and that not very long ago, when drunkenness was reckoned no sin-when, in fact, it was seen through such a warm and genial light, that its victims could not possibly experience anything like a deep sense of humiliation under the burden of it. Intemperance was a joke-a subject for good-natured laughter. Poets sang under its inspiration; philosophers gave forth profounder thoughts under its influence; aud men of rank, and wit, and learning, met in taverns to engage in orgies, which neither the pen of Dickens nor of Scott has been able to divest of their essentially High up in the list of such institutions as we have disgraceful character. Now, however, we manifestly described, we have no hesitation in placing the vari- breathe a purer atmosphere. Drinking still prevails ous organizations which have for their one object the in many quarters, drinking to excess; but in no society, suppression of intemperance. These have, unques- except the lowest, will you in these days hear expressed tionably, done much in the way of diminishing the the discreditable sentiments which were so much the crime, and poverty, and unhappiness of the country fashion a generation ago. Public opinion has obvi--and we may yet expect them to do much more in ously undergone almost a total revolution in regard the same direction. But the whole merit of the tem- to this particular point. And to whom is the credit perance movement is not exhausted when it is reof this due? We would not be unreasonable. Somegarded simply as promoting these and similar ends. thing, no doubt, is owing to the natural course of imIt deserves to be viewed also as contributing materi-provement, which we see going on quietly in almost ally to the peace and prosperity of the nation as a whole, as occupying many of the best and most active minds in the land in a way which, instead of being prejudicial or embarrassing to the ruling powers, is promotive, in the highest degree, of national virtue and national order.

Interesting, however, as the field opened up before us here undoubtedly is, we must deny ourselves the satisfaction of entering upon it-our object, at present, being not to show to what extent the temperance movement has been a channel for the outflow of the free thought of our country, but to indicate some of the directly educational effects which it has been instrumental in producing. The time appears to have fully come for some notice being taken of this point. The cause itself deserves and demands it at our hands, and we crave, therefore, the attention of the reader while we proceed briefly to enumerate some of these effects accordingly.

In the first place, it is very manifest that this movement has added considerably to the popular stock of ideas. Get into conversation with a decided abstainer anywhere, with a humble tradesman, if you like, in an out-of-the-way district of the country, and you will find that he has turned over in his mind, some of the most perplexing problems in political economy. The theory on which constitutional government is founded, the right of the community to interfere with any particular trade, the relation of the authorities to "the dangerous classes;" these, and many other such points, have frequently been made by him the subjects of reflection and debate, not in the spirit of the hard-headed politician merely, but with the nobler aim of discovering for himself how the curse of drunkenness is to be removed, and his country preserved in prosperity and peace. Nor is it the science of political economy only with which his particular study has contributed to make him acquainted. We find temperance men in general able to talk about the social condition of their own and other countries, able to tell something of anatomy and chemistry, and ready, in conformity with the principles laid down under the new science of statistics, to draw forth the most apposite and most startling strings of figures. One great object in education is to furnish to the mind a store of new facts, new thoughts, new ideas; and that the temperance movement has done much in this

everything. But it would be to say less than truth, if we were not at the same time to affirm that the result which we have just described, has been accomplished chiefly by the direct efforts of temperance reformers; who, by their indefatigable labours in speaking, writing, and lecturing, have awakened the conscience of the country to a more adequate sense of the

character of the evil.

that the same movement has done much also to stir And in connection with this, it may be added, the heart of the people, and to call forth the expres sion of generous and beneficent feeling. It has been affirmed that the object ultimately aimed at by the temperance reformer cannot be called a high or elevating one, it being, in point of fact, simply to make all men what the beasts are already, pure water drinkers. This is, no doubt, a formally correct statement of facts; but if the inference is intended to be drawn from it, that there is nothing in connection with the struggle for that end to set men's hearts on fire, to excite them even to passionate eloquence, and to afford opportunity for the display of a generous and noble self denial, we can only say, that these are conclusions to which no man will come who is at all acquainted with the nature and history of the movement itself. The real truth is, that there is no subject of purely temporal interest whose associations are so high or so heart-stirring. The Corn Law League had its orators and its "rhymers," and these, no doubt, found materials enough associated with the cause they advocated on which to exercise their intellect and their imagination. But it was only in one aspect of it that their subject admitted of decidedly pathetic or even pictorial illustration. That was the side on which it touched on the condition of the poor, and the prospect which the possession of cheap bread seemed to hold out of their ultimate elevation. The temperance movement, on the contrary, touches at many points on the most tragic elements of human life. Human passion in its most awful forms, grief greater than that which mothers feel when they lay their best beloved in the grave, shipwrecked hopes, ruined intellects, blighted genius, desolated homes, and what is more touching than all the rest, acts of self-denial and self sacrifice more heroic in their unpretending nobleness than deeds which have attracted the admiration of the worldthese are some of the materials which form the inspiration of him who seeks by tongue or pen to work out