intellectual tastes, sensual gratifications are almost the only pleasure they can appreciate. In the midst of a high civilisation, they retain many of the characteristics of savages; with one predisposition more to intemperance in that they lead a much less healthy life. When they have warmed and fed themselves, how can they employ what remains to them of time and wealth more agreeably to themselves than in buying spirits, or beer and tobacco? In the latter they do not often indulge to excess; they have not time to do so. But they have time to get drunk at least once a-week; and they get drunk on Saturday as the music-loving Civil Servant goes that evening to the opera, or the hard-worked young merchant to the ball room, to spend their few weekly hours of leisure in that which gives them the highest pleasure they know. Like those in higher grades of life, if they are not strong of will,-and the uneducated man is here especially inferior to the educated,-pleasure overpowers principle, and the Saturday night's indulgence becomes the occupation for which every spare hour is snatched, for which, presently, hours are taken that cannot be spared, and the man is on the road to ruin. What billiards, clubs, operas, dances, dinnerparties, are to men in one sphere of life, the public-house is to those of another, in more senses than one. It is the place where they find that enjoyment which they most value; it is the place where such other enjoyments as they have are offered them. Does this fact suggest no wiser means of dealing with drunkenness than by suppressing public-houses?

The workman, as a rule, reads but little, even where he reads at all. The penny newspaper is with him the chief literary rival of the beer-can. And if it were so with us, we doubt whether literature would carry the day. The workman's home offers to his senses none of those gratifications which the middleclass man finds in his. Its rooms are inevitably small, because, especially in towns, little space can be given for the rent he can or will pay. They are ill-furnished, because he had little money saved for furnishing when he married at two-and-twenty, and because he had not that educated intelligence which would enable men of a higher class to extract much substantial comfort out of small means. They are untidy, often unclean; for his wife is a bad manager, and her family is numerous. His supper is ill-cooked, and of course therefore unwholesome. In a word, he is thoroughly uncomfortable in body, and his mind is vacant. What wonder if he seeks comfort and amusement where only he can find them?

Again, one grievous cause of intemperance, indicated by its prevalence among workmen in well-paid trades, is the low

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standard of living adopted by the working-class. The economist says that men will multiply so as to keep their comforts down to the standard; the practical observer will be inclined to accuse Englishmen rather of drinking them down to this standard. The more that can be done to induce the workman to increase his home comforts and requirements, the more that we can encourage his dormant taste for decent accommodation, good furniture, cottage ornaments, good wardrobes,—we do not mean silk dresses and crinolines for his wife and daughters,-the more pride he can be induced to take in these things, the better man will he be, and the less drunken. Men in all classes will make great exertions and great sacrifices in order not to fall below their usual style of living,-"to keep up appearances," and avoid loss of caste; and workmen in these respects are not less proud than their employers. Once raise their standard to the average level of their earnings, once induce the formation of a higher standard in the higher ranks of the working-class, and you have struck a blow at national intemperance which it will probably never recover. Teach the workman pride in his home and in the appearance of his family, and you have done two things of most excellent effect; you have diverted his money from drink, and you have diverted his steps from the public-house towards his home.

It is a great misfortune, as bearing on this branch of improvement, that there should exist in England such a "division of society into horizontal layers" as makes a strong distinction between the highest of the working class and those above them, which separates them socially, and makes a union and association, and consequently a gradual assimilation, between classes of working-men whose habits, education, and standard of living ought naturally to be quite distinct. A compositor at 40s. a week is "a working-man," and his sympathies and associations lie with "the working-class;" they consequently influence his habits and ideas; and instead of aspiring to raise himself into a higher class, he is so much removed from it as not to be materially influenced by its existence, and is satisfied with being in the highest rank of his own class. His standard of habits, comforts, education, is not influenced by those above, but by those below him. And this, among the higher grades of workingmen, is a grave evil. On intemperance it operates doubly; making the man both more disposed to spend his money on drink instead of on his home, and less ashamed of doing so than we might at first sight expect from his intelligence and education. For education operates less by directly teaching the folly of vice-which is obvious to most men-than by bringing to bear on educated men the opinion of an educated class. Where it

fails to do this, it loses its chief mode of influence. Again, the further removed the middle class from the upper circles of that immediately below it, the less the likelihood and the ambition of rising in those circles; an ambition, the healthful influence of which on ambitious individuals, and on society at large, can hardly be exaggerated; and which, if generally diffused, would be among the most powerful counteractives that could be applied to the vice of drunkenness.

Another influence favourable to intemperance, as to many other errors, is the moral weakness so conspicuous in the character of the working-classes. The working-man cannot stand alone he cannot stand up against the Trades-Union, even though he knows it to be his enemy; or stand by his master, even when he has found him his friend. He cannot stand up against the noisy energy of a few demagogues, as yet unsupported by the Union, when they intrigue for a strike in some isolated factory against the deliberate judgment of two-thirds of those employed. He never can be an abstainer, except as a member of a society which can take care of itself and him; he has hardly resolution to be temperate in drinking, if his fellows urge him to excess. One of the worst embarrassments in the way of all social reforms, is that fatal facility with which the uneducated Englishman will "follow a multitude to do evil;" and it has made many a man intemperate whom, if left to himself, self-respect and quiet sense would have preserved.

Again, one fruitful source of intemperance lies in the social usages of the age, for which the working-classes are answerable only in part, and of which those that know better must-so far as blame applies to any-bear the heaviest blame. The publichouse is the working-man's club, and a club of which he has more need than his betters have of theirs, inasmuch as he has less enjoyment at home. Give him a better one, and it may be he will leave this; but a club he must have. He needs society, he needs a comfortable room to sit and smoke and hear the news, to keep his mind from rusting-needs it the more because he reads so little. The manager and cashier of the Rochdale Store, himself a working-man, expressed to us what we believe to be the explanation of a very large amount of drunkenness. "The working-man, after his day's work, wants a little company and news. Mostly he can get that only at the public-house. He wants none of the drink" [we should say, would not go for the drink only]; "but as he cannot have the company without the drink, of course he takes it. The habit, in some cases, grows upon him, and he becomes a drunkard." What wonder? If he attempt to amuse himself elsewhere, he is still driven back upon the tavern or the beershop. He goes to the cheap music saloon-the publican

keeps it. He goes to the penny theatre-it is attached to the alehouse. He enters a temperance hotel-dirt, untidiness, discomfort, bad butter, sour bread, nauseous coffee, and tasteless tea drive him out again. He has to attend a benefit-club; he finds its members at the public-house, for where else could they sit? Even in Manchester such societies have sought decent accommodation in vain, except at the public-house. Can he go and enjoy his pipe and his company at home, in his one small room; his wife working there and rocking the cradle with her foot? She would scarcely thank him for bringing his associates there in an evening. A man must have some place of resort, where to meet men; the working-man has none except at the public-house.

The Trades-Unions, among their many other abuses, are fruitful of encouragement to drunkenness. We quote the following from the best teetotal book we have seen, the Temperance Cyclopædia:

"There are no less than 297 occasions when intoxicating liquors must be given, offered, and taken. . . . . . There are very few individuals who are aware of the amount of these fines. Masters themselves are not aware of it; and it is only by an examination of the men and their families that I have found it out. For example, in foundries, a journeyman must pay 10s. 6d. on entering, whether the job is long or short; among carpenters, the fine varies from 10s. to 30s.; a young apprentice to a tailor is obliged to treat the whole shop, and 20s. are expected from him when his time is out; an apprentice to a sawyer is obliged to pay a guinea, to which each of the journeymen puts a shilling; a linen-lapper, after paying 20s. to 30s. on entering, is obliged to pay 2s. 6d. at the measuring of the first web; the coach-maker is obliged to pay 2s. 6d. for every new piece of work he gets; the cabinetmaker's apprentice pays 1s. when he puts on his apron; and when his time is out, he pays 10s. 6d., which is called washing him out; and if he continues in the shop as a journeyman, he pays 10s. 6d. more, and that is called washing him in; he has to pay besides for every new piece of work he gets. If a child is born, the father must pay a footing; and the unfortunate wight who gets married is down for 108. We must not forget the sums subscribed for tramps, and for the waygoose, and drunken bouts at the lighting of candles, amounting to from 10s. to Sl., and, in some cases, to 201. When you take this into the account, you need not be surprised to hear that a poor woman paid 4l. 48. for her son in a rope-walk; and that another individual paid 97. for his son in a cabinet-maker's establishment, every individual farthing of which was spent in drink."

No terms of denunciation can be too severe for those employers who continue, or suffer their subordinates to continue, the infamous practice of paying wages at a public-house. To do this, is deliberately to lead those over whom they have influence into the worst sort of temptation at the most dangerous time.

We would hope that few words need be spent on this point; that all, or nearly all, respectable employers have seen the evil, and given up the practice. For others, some of whom, in a subordinate position-such as "butties" of coal-mines and men of a similar class-actually keep public-houses at which the men are paid, and almost coerce them to drink, it would be well that the law should apply that corrective which a sense of duty fails to furnish, and compel the abandonment of a practice as purposeless as mischievous. Some firms, we believe, continue to pay wages "in the lump" by way of avoiding the necessity for small change; Jones receiving the wages of himself, Smith, Brown, and Jackson, and being charged to arrange the division with them. Of course they must go to the public-house-where else could they get a sufficiency of change? and they pay for the accommodation willingly granted them there by returning to the publican some considerable portion of his change in payment for drink. Where this practice, after existing for many years, has been abolished, employers find at once that the extra trouble of procuring change is more than repaid by the improvement in steadiness and sobriety which immediately takes place among their workpeople. Both usages are fair subjects either for social reprobation or legal suppression.

The payment of wages on Saturday afternoon has a decided effect in encouraging drunkenness. The money, the opportunity and the company for a Saturday night's debauch, the ample time to sleep off its effects on Sunday, form a combination of temptations too strong for the workman's power of resistance. The alteration of the pay-day has, in numerous cases, been tried ; and always, we believe, with a good effect on the morals of the labourer. There is a gradual extension of the practice of paying on Friday, or even earlier, especially in those districts in which Saturday is a half holiday; and we are inclined to augur important results from such a change, if it should become general. It is most necessary that the pay-time should be dissociated completely from the period consecrated by habit, and devoted by convenience, to the public-house. "The testimony is universal that the greatest amount of drinking takes place on Saturday night, and during the hours that the houses are allowed by law to be open on Sunday," says the Report of the Select Committee of 1854. The public-houses, beershops, and gin-palaces, are crowded on Sunday evening; the people wait at the corners to rush into the public-houses directly they are opened."

Besides those that lie in the condition and character of a class, or in the circumstances and usages which surround them, there is yet another cause of intemperance which we must not leave unnamed-that which shortsighted enthusiasts like to consider