Were the evil to be limited to the soldiers, even reflection, or some of the repressing passions, might in some degree operate as an antidote against the consequences of intoxication: an apprehension of incurring the displeasure of their officer might also prevent an abuse of this indulgence. It is not, however, considered enough that this ill-directed allowance should be given to the soldiers on duty, in “the hour of honour stirring watch;” the women, forsooth, must be taken _care_ of in the same way, and the effects may be easily foreseen. The married females permitted to accompany their husbands on board of convict ships, and the women of choice, whom the laxity of public morals permits to take the name of wives, are indulged with spirits in half the proportion given to the men; and the children belonging to them are besides allowed one half the quantity of the women: so that the latter, who are careful to be store-keepers to their infants, (for the youngest baby is allowed the same as those children grown strong in years,) can easily appropriate to their individual use every day a quantity of spirits only one fourth less than what is permitted to be consumed by the men; and if she happen to have several children, the expenditure will be enormous. Imagination can scarcely form such a picture as one of these females when indulged with this immoderate supply of spirits. In a word, one of these women gets drunk, dead drunk, and is harmless only until the first effects of the narcotic poison have subsided, and then—But in honour to the sex, and out of respect to delicacy which virtue only knows, I shall forbear a description. Scenes which I have been compelled to witness in this way might lead to a minuteness of delineation, to do them justice in all their exquisite loathsomeness, as neither the eye of the reader could bear to scan, nor would recital produce aught but disgust and distress. Few mothers could avoid shuddering to see such a female lay her infant baby across her lap, and pour the liquid poison, (rum) into the poor thing’s vitals, continuing that diabolical nursing until the nerves of the unconscious and miserable child are incapable of sensation, and it drops senseless from the hands of its inhuman parent. The counterpart to such a monstrous picture, which also is unfortunately, like that, too often true, is that of the husband, who meantime mounts guard in his turn, having very probably just partaken of the deleterious draught with his spouse, with whom he has had, perhaps, quite sufficient bickering to set his bad passions at work, and in a disposition to be quarrelsome.