his death is a benefit to society, whether it come by his own hand or by the executioner. Such is the dismal truth with respect to confirmed gamblers, even in those higher walks of society, in which vice has been described by one whose metaphysics were but poorly imbued with Christianity, to have lost half its evil by losing all its grossness." But in regard to the little tradesman, the attorney's clerk, the apprentice, the working mechanic, the gentleman's servant, and a host of others, no language of ours can adequately depict the terrible consequences of a love of play. It is astonishing in how short a time that passion absorbs, or rather incorporates, all others; how rapidly it empties its victim of all goodness, and fills him with "envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness." The shopman pilfers the till, and the butler purloins his master's plate; the little sinner picks a pocket, and the great one forges a bill; trustees and guardians defraud their wards, and husbands and fathers consign their families to beggary, under that demoniacal intoxication of mind which the vice we are considering engenders. Fixedly eyeing the possibility of splendid success, they are blind to the probability of ruinous failure. All varieties of fraud and robbery, from cowardly filching to fierce marauding, are perpetrated by those to whose very existence the stimulus of play has become necessary. To gambling-houses, so fitly denominated hells, the gallows owes its goodliest victims; and many a dying felon has acknowledged himself induced to commit the dishonesty for which his life is the forfeit, by the hope of obtaining, through a fortunate turn of the die, before his crime should be discovered, the means of replacing what he had embezzled. Our journals abound with cases of raw and credulous youths decoyed into the haunts of prowling swindlers, who, after plying them with liquor, fleece them of every shilling they possess, and then turn them adrift to reflect, when their sober sense returns, on the ruin that has surprised them like a summer hurricane.-We cannot, however, pursue this subject any further than to state, that a sum not short of thirteen millions sterling is supposed to be the amount of plunder obtained, through superior luck or skill or knavery, from the unfortunate by the successful gambler.

We alluded to the prevalence of drunkenness, when remarking upon the systematic profanation of the Sabbath. On the debasement of mind and character which it generates in those addicted to it, and on the sins of idleness, quarrelling, thieving, and impurity, which so commonly follow in its train, we cannot now enlarge. But we must enter our solemn protest against the numerous facilities and inducements offered to this species of wickedness under sanction of the laws. The number of

public-houses, all regularly licensed, in London alone, is said to exceed six thousand. Besides which, there are wine-vaults and coffee-shops and oyster-saloons, in which loose men and women congregate to celebrate the orgies of drunkenness and lust. And, what is still more horrible, there are scattered over London professed seminaries of vice, in which children of both sexes are initiated, from the tenderest age, into the arts of imposture and theft, and into the mysteries of lewdness; and are elaborately prepared, as soon as their noviciate shall be finished, to practise debauchery and roguery on the grandest scale. That such enormities should exist in a city which has been "exalted unto heaven" by the singular favour of God and Christian blessings, is a portentous fact from which the mind recoils. But this fact acquires a still more alarming importance from the sad consideration, that many of these doings are covered with the shield of authority;partly for the sake of filthy lucre, partly from a total unconcern about the highest interests of man, and partly, it must be feared, from a keener dislike to evangelical holiness than to the utmost exorbitance of vice. On the duty of our civil and ecclesiastical rulers in these matters we shall have something to observe hereafter; but, in a survey of tolerated and licensed crime, we cannot overlook those haunts and schools of wickedness, the Fairs of London and its vicinity. We have ourselves had opportunities of knowing what a tremendous impulse is given to crime in those scenes "of rioting and drunkenness, of chambering and wantonness," where Satan sits in state to receive the homage of his abject votaries. How many a soul is deflowered of its purity in these infamous rendezvous! how many a young man or woman is beguiled in them to take the first step of a career of vice, which terminates fatally to soul and body! But Mr. Smith has treated this subject with so much knowledge and energy, that we cannot do better for our readers than by quoting from his pages.

Is it not surprising that very little notice has hitherto been taken, and few measures adopted, by the virtuous, the moral, and the religious part of the community, for the suppression of those great public nuisances, the annual fairs of London and its vicinity? Our daily papers, police offices, and courts of justice, are continually placing before the British public instances of juvenile delinquency of the most alarming description; and yet the Christian world appears to sleep over the awful summary of facts, and the dormant powers of moral effort suffer the annual progress of vice, in the metropolis and its suburbs, to advance with gigantic strides to the most alarming degree of perfection. What steps ought to be taken to arouse the best energies of the metropolitan public on a subject so important to the peace of families, the welfare of the community, and the best interests of the British nation? It has been well observed, We need not so much to be informed, as to be reminded of our duty. Under such an impression, I venture to suggest a few observations on the grand sources

of moral turpitude, and trust they will not be altogether in vain. It is well known that the annual fairs of Smithfield, Greenwich, Peckham, Camberwell, Bow, Edmonton, and other places, collect many thousands of persons, who have to date their ruin from the pernicious principles imbibed on such occasions. To young persons of both sexes, these scenes are peculiarly fascinating. If the strength of a nation consists in the morality of her population, here England is most fatally weakened. It is not to be imagined but those fairs, usually held in the finest parts of the year, will attract multitudes of apprentices, servant-girls, young persons who reside with their parents, shopmen, journeymen with their wives and families, together with the idle and dissolute of the middling and lower classes, in so crowded a city as London. Here the rising generation frequently receive their first and most abiding impressions of vice in all its most dreadful forms. A very slight acquaintance with those fairs will convince every person that they are the most fatal schools to initiate our youth into the most abandoned mysteries of human depravity. The frivolity, dissipation, and intermixture of the sexes on those occasions, must be fatal to every virtuous principle. Here drunkenness riots, blasphemy triumphs, obscenity casts off all restraint, and fornication and adultery prevail to an awful degree. Take the fairs of Greenwich, on Easter and Whitsuntide, for instance; the Kent-road for three days is covered with the crowds flocking there. The park abounds with visitors, the public-houses are thronged with dancers and drunkards, and on their return every public-house from Greenwich to the three bridges throws open its doors and windows to invite the deluded thousands to finish by midnight revels that course of vice they have so auspiciously begun at the fair. What is the consequence? Scenes have been witnessed, impressions have been made, and habits formed, that subsequently break down all the remaining barriers of virtue. The apprentice robs his master, the child purloins from his parent, the journeyman frequents the ale-house, his wife wallows in adultery, the servant-girl goes upon the town as a common prostitute, and boys and girls join the company of youthful depredators with whom they have formed some acquaintance at the fairs. Methods to procure abortion are adopted, infants are murdered, robberies are committed, families are ruined, forgeries are studied, the streets are crowded with the most abandoned wretches, and the vacuum caused by imprisonments, transportations, and executions, is continually filled up. It is presumed that 100,000 persons attend the various fairs held in London and the surrounding villages annually; nearly 50,000 of these are young persons. Out of this number, say 20,000 are totally ruined as respects morality :-cast abroad in society, they are "children who are corrupters," for it is in the very nature of vice to propagate, and the delight of the vicious to make others as bad as themselves. Admit that each of this latter number in six months corrupts two persons, and renders them as bad as themselves; here, then, are 60,000 young persons every year rendered grossly immoral, chiefly by the contagious influence of annual fairs, Will not the moralist and the Christian shudder at this hypothesis? But it may be asked, what becomes of this multitude in the course of the year, as, according to this calculation, they must move off from the haunts of vice to make room for a successive 60,000 the next year. I reply, some pass into hospitals, some into asylums and penitentiaries, some into prisons, some are sent to the hulks, some go to sea, others are transported, some executed, and a large proportion are scattered about the country in search of prey, when the London market of vice is glutted,-some few are reclaimed, and multitudes perish by premature deaths, produced by the vices to which they are addicted, for the wicked shall not live out half their days. Now, we publish the vices of the heathen, and very properly advocate Missions to them; but let a Hindoo attend all our fairs and mark the progress of our vicious population, and, with the exception of images as gods, he will perceive but little

difference between those fairs and the Bacchanalian festivals of the heathen in Asia. And, if at those seasons he should enter our theatres, public-houses, flash-houses (as the resort of thieves is termed), and brothels, he will find that British heathen have most admirable substitutes for the Pagan temples and obscene rites of his own country." Smith, pp. 17-19.

Such is the delineation given in the pamphlet before us of the malignant effect of wakes and fairs upon the welfare of our labouring population. Many of them are continued for several days. Nor does the night bring any pause or respite, any abatement and langour, to their infernal activity. It only gives the signal for new scenes to open of more desperate outrage and of deeper licentiousness. They are truly "the destruction that wasteth at noon-day," and "the pestilence that walketh in darkness." They do much to people the gaols of this world and the great prison-house of hell. We really cannot reject as untrue, we can hardly regard as hyperbolical, the strong assertion made by our author, that "our London and neighbouring fairs keep up the supply of the waste of life or liberty, made by disease, disaster, transportation, and hanging, among the one hundred thousand thieves and prostitutes who annually [continually?] prowl about the streets of this guilty metropolis."

And what is alleged in excuse for these chartered infamies? for excused they are (we write it with a blush) by people who, on most Sundays at least, implore God to deliver us "from fornication, and all other deadly sins; and from all the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil." Why, forsooth, the common people must not be abridged of their innocent pleasures! They work hard during the week, and therefore it would be cruel to deny them the privilege of blaspheming their Maker on the Sabbath, and of running riot in all that can disgrace human nature and bring down perdition on themselves! To curtail them, poor things, of the liberty which they abuse to the vilest purposes, would go to the heart of those tender philanthropists, whose humanity would grieve to see madmen and children restrained from edged weapons and from fire!-Oh execrable sophistry, spawned no doubt by that mind which is preeminently capacious and fruitful of wickedness! Is it thus that our statesmen and legislators reason, when the question is how to prevent the spread of an infectious fever? Do they scruple to intercept the plague, although by some coercion of the people? Or does any one arraign the kindness of the policy which imposes a quarantine on goods and persons arriving from regions subject to that malady; and which insulates an infected quarter, and obstructs by actual force all communication with it? On matters affecting our bodily interests we see clearly and reason

soundly. But let it be proposed to extirpate the most dreadful moral nuisances-to demolish, or to place under severe control, such establishments as Sadler's Wells, Vauxhall, and the minor theatres; to abolish fairs, and greatly to diminish the number of licensed drinking-houses; in short, to break up the schools and nurseries of vice, and to repel a heedless populace from the avenues to ruin ;-let such a proposition be made, and what an outcry assails it from every quarter! The liberty of the subject is invaded! the rights of conscience are trampled upon! the poor man is despoiled of his pittance of comfort! Spurious patriots, libertine demagogues, and rancorous unbelievers, detect in these plans superstition, hypocrisy, and morose fanaticism; and would descry in the abolition of St. Bartholomew's Fair an omen of England's downfal. There is not, we believe, so unpopular a Society in the kingdom, as that established for the Suppression of Vice." Full well do we remember the yell of fiendish exultation that burst from every side, and was re-echoed by the public prints, when that Society failed to obtain a verdict against some miscreants whom it had dared to prosecute. One would have thought it a mighty national triumph, instead of being a blot that can never be wiped out, a disaster from which public morals and happiness have not yet recovered. But we bid that Society "God speed;" and conjure it to persist in its holy crusade against the hydras which infest our streets, not less secure of the favour and protection of the Almighty, than of the scorn and hostility of wicked men. What employment there is for such an association may be inferred from the following calculations, derived, we believe, from ample investigations.

"The depredations annually committed in London amount to more than three millions of pounds. About thirty thousand miserable persons, of various classes, rise up every morning, without knowing how they shall be supported during the passing day, or where they shall sleep the next night. Twelve thousand boys and girls, at least, are in constant training at low publichouses and brothels for future depredations."

"Four thousand persons are annually committed to prisons, and nearly two thousand of them are afterwards thrown back upon society ten times worse than when they were apprehended. Upwards of twelve thousand servants are constantly out of place, exposed to become thieves or prostitutes, and easily made so at the fairs. Concerning an immense mass of the population in London, a most experienced and judicious magistrate for the counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, Essex, the City, the liberty of Westminster, and for the liberty of the