d policy of governments, which, sacrificing the end to the means,
that is, the health and morals of the people to purposes of revenue,
tolerates and even encourages manufactories so pernicious. I am aware
I may be answered, that the working classes love this poison, and must
be gratified; and that in 1813 the duty on British spirits produced
L1,636,504. But I reply, first, that it is obligatory on good
governments to protect the people against the effects of their vices;
and second, that, if the people were not indulged in the ruinous habit
of gin-drinking, and destroyed by it in body and mind, they would be
able to pay a greater sum to the revenue from productions of a
salutary nature. Such are the pernicious effects of drunkenness, and
the numerous miseries created by drinking fermented and spirituous
liquors, that I have often been tempted to consider it as an atonement
for the impostures of Mahomet, that he so forcibly prohibited the
practice, and so far succeeded, that a rigid forbearance is observed
by his followers, and a Musselman rendered beastly, vicious, and
diseased, by habits of drunkenness is never seen. The doctrines of the
New Testament and the example of the Founder of our religion inculcate
an equal degree of abstemiousness, yet how contrary are the practices
of Christians! There seems indeed, in regard to this vice, to be no
middle course. Spirituous, and perhaps also fermented, liquors, will
be abused, or they must be wholly prohibited; because the stimulus
which they create at one time, is sought at another, and the oftener
it is repeated, the oftener it is desired and required; till at length
it becomes necessary to the sense of well-being, or apparently
essential to the power of sustaining the fatigue of life.

In the middle of these fields I passed a handsome house, which
appeared to have been empty for a considerable time. On enquiring the
cause of a young woman, who passed at the moment; she told me, with an
artless countenance, that "_it was haunted_." I smiled, and asked how
she knew it. "Ah, Sir," said she, "its nothing to laugh at--every body
here-abouts knows it well enough--such strange noises are heard in it,
and such lights flit about it at midnight."--Have you seen them? "No,
Sir, but I knows those that have, and I'm sure its true." Seeing a
labouring man at a distance, I enquired what he knew of the haunted
house, when he told me, with a face full of faith, that "he knew
gentlefolks l