It is impossible to deal even in the most cursory manner with this "pocket" question without just glancing at the important bearing which the question of temperance must exercise upon it. To place a further spending power in the hands of an incurably intemperate populace would obviously mean only to increase and intensify the vice of intemperance. While deprecating any intention of making this paper the vehicle for a furious tirade against drunkenness, I feel bound to say in passing that, little as I love total abstinence, I regard it as a much lesser evil than the unrestrained indulgence of dipsomania; and if any man feels that he is so much a slave to his degraded appetite that he cannot keep up a nodding acquaintance with John Barleycorn without wallowing under his influence in the mud of inebriety, I respect that man for signing the pledge. My optimist instincts, however, buoy me up again on this subject also, for I sincerely believe that, high authority for the assertion though there be, mankind are _not_ mostly fools; and that when they have begun to realize the fact that they have a choice as to the kind of investment they may obtain for their money, the great majority of them will be looking out for some more substantial advantage than the questionable luxury of seeking temporary oblivion from carking cares and the grisly spectre of hopeless indigence. It may, I think, be relied on with certainty that an improvement in the pecuniary circumstances of the poor would beget increased self-respect, and self-respect would proclaim drunkenness _unfashionable_, and that now vigorous and lusty giant would ere long find himself as decrepit and infirm as Bunyan's Giant Pope. Those of us who have read of the bacchanalian orgies of the great no further back than the days of the Regency of George IV., and contrast it with the sobriety which is said to prevail amongst them in our days, cannot be accused of being groundlessly sanguine if we augur the percolation downwards of this stream of moderation under happier auspices, and that, too, in no remote future.