leading death-list officer, _three-fourths_ of the names on these catalogues of the doomed are the names of children. Now, if this be the truth—and I believe it is—hundreds, if not thousands of children must be entered each into _four_, _five_, or even _twelve_ clubs, their chances of life diminishing, of course, in proportion to the frequency with which they are entered. Lest you should imagine that such excessive addiction to burial clubs is only to be found in one place, I furnish you with a report for 1846, of a single club, which then boasted thirty-four thousand one hundred members, _the entire population of the town to which it belongs having been, in 1841, little more than thirty-six thousand_!" The authorities from whom these statements are derived are of the highest respectability; they hear witness to a state of affairs scarcely to be conceived by people of other civilized countries. Hundreds of thousands of human beings seem to be driven into an awful abyss of crime and misery by the iron rule of the aristocracy—an abyss where mothers forget maternal feelings, where marriage vows are scoffed, and where the momentary gratification of brutal passions is alone esteemed. There, indeed, there is no fear of God, and heathenism spreads its upas shade to poison and destroy. The only amusement which the English poor possess in many parts of the country, is to visit taverns. In the towns the "gin-palaces" and the beer-houses are very numerous; and whenever the poor have leisure, these places are thronged by drunken men and abandoned women. In all the rural districts there is a frightful amount of drunkenness. British legislation has increased the number of these hot-beds of crime and pauperism. "In the beginning of the revolutionary war the duties on malt were _augmented_, and in 1825 the duties on spirits were _decreased_. It was thus that whisky was substituted for ale as the beverage of the Scotch, and that gin and brandy began to be generally drunk by the English poor. "The consumption of spirits immediately increased in a tremendous proportion. From 4,132,263 gallons, the consumption in 1825, it rose in one year to 8,888,648 gallons; that is, the consumption was _in one year_ more than _doubled_ by the change; and from that period, with the exception of the year next following, viz. 1827, the consumption has been progressively augmenting. "Since that time the noted beer-shop act has been passed. By that act, any one was enabled to obtain a license to enable him to sell beer, whether the person desirous of doing so was a person of respectable character or not.