But there is another class of drunkards--God forbid that I should attribute any thing to the decrees of Providence inconsistent with mercy and justice--but I am almost tempted to designate this class the drunkards by _necessity_. However worldly condition, education, or other causes, may modify the result in individual cases, it is not the less certain that there are persons--very many of them--who appear to have come into the world predisposed to an inordinate desire for intoxicating liquors. These wretched people do not begin with thimblesful, and end with gills--the stroke seizes them like a thief in the night--sometimes in the prime of manhood--sometimes in the flush of youth--sometimes (it is a fearful truth) in the thoughtlessness of boyhood. It is a passion with them--a madness. You may know one of these unhappy beings, especially if he be a very young man, by the sullen and dogged air with which, early in the morning, he enters the public house, and sits down in solitude and silence to his double-shotted measure of undiluted whisky--whisky is the only drink for one of this calibre--alas! the worst and fiercest stuff that can be made is the most acceptable to him--his palate is too long palled to distinguish between tastes and flavours--it is the _liquid fire_ he wants; you may know him at other times by the pitiable imbecility which prompts him in his awful craving to reach his tumbler to his lips with both his hands, till he finishes the draught with all the apparent eagerness of intense thirst; you may know such a one by his frightful sleeps, begun, continued, and closed in terrific dreams! The wife and family of the progressive or occasional drunkard are wretched enough as every body knows; but, oh! who can possibly estimate the amount of misery which the wife and children of a madman like this are destined to endure. I have not overdrawn the picture in the abstract--take an individual instance:--