If the sword, the pestilence, or the famine should slay each their thousands, the vice of intemperance, the crying iniquity of our land, has slain its tens of thousands. The throne, the senate, the pulpit, and the press, alike deplore its ravages; and although differing as to the remedy to be applied, professedly all declare a crusade against this social hydra. Exalted, not alone by our own might, or our own goodness, but by the blessing of God resting upon these, Britain may well be regarded as the lighthouse, divinely lighted, shedding abroad upon the tumultuous waste of sin and ignorance around the saving light of truth and righteousness. Strange inconsistency! notwithstanding[*N?] all this, our merchants sacrifice honour at the shrine of gold, and amass wealth by becoming the moral degenerators of others who have the sublime virtue—which we lack—to expel by enactment the drug which would ruin, by the passion it excites, an intellectual nation. In defiance of these enactments, and despite our fair professions, we regret to think Britain should afford countenance to the opium traffic, and lend the might of her arms to maintain it, although involving a breach of the law of China, and inflicting upon the Chinese a moral wrong. Happy are we to know that there were not a few amongst us who had the courage to repudiate the action of Government in this matter, and at length awakening our people to the iniquity, so impressed our rulers as to induce a better policy. But for the supreme vanity and duplicity of the Chinese, war might have been averted. Their obnoxious impudence, and the insults they strove to heap upon us, necessitated the vindication of our honour, and occasioned the landing of a British force to chastise their folly and protect British property. Accordingly, in 1840, the Twenty-sixth, with the Eighteenth and Forty-ninth regiments, and other Indian troops, embarked from Madras, and, arriving in China, accomplished a landing on the island of Chusan. Excepting in some few cases where the Chinese did behave themselves like men in the defence of their country, our soldiers victoriously marched upon the cities of Shanghae and Chin-Keang-foo, which fell an easy triumph to their daring. The campaigns afford little to interest us in their record: we are, therefore, content to say the arduous services of our troops were rewarded, and, with the Eighteenth, Forty-ninth, Fifty-fifth, and Ninety-eighth regiments, our Cameronians won the distinction of the “Dragon.” Returning to Calcutta in 1843, the Twenty-sixth proceeded thence to England, and in 1850 garrisoned Gibraltar. In 1853 the regiment embarked for Canada, and was stationed at Montreal, afterwards, re-embarking, removed to Bermuda, whence, in 1859, it once more returned to the beloved shores of our native land. Restored to Scotland in 1861, garrisoning Edinburgh Castle, the regiment was welcomed amongst us with every expression of the highest veneration and heartfelt interest as the