steps, and share his fate.

No more was the purity and inexperience of youth to be corrupted by evil
society, artfully introduced for the sordid purpose of making him spend
his money, at the expense of health, honesty, and good name.

No more was the decent wife of the spendthrift tradesman, when forced by
stern necessity, and the cries of her children, to seek her husband in
the public house, of a Saturday night, anxious as she was to secure what
was left unspent of his week's wages, in order to procure to-morrow's
food--no more was she to be wheedled into the bar, to get the landlord's
or the landlady's treat, in order that the outworks of temperance, and
the principles of industry, perhaps of virtue, might be gradually broken
down, for the selfish and diabolical purpose of enabling her drunken
husband to spend a double share of his hardly-earned pittance.

Nor more was the male servant, in whom every confidence was placed, to
be lured into these vile dens of infamy, that he might be fleeced or his
money, tutored into debauchery or dishonesty, or thrown into the society
of thieves and robbers, that he might become an accomplice in their
crimes, and enable them to rob his employer with safety. No more was the
female servant, on the other hand, to be made familiar with tippling,
or corrupted by evil company, until she became a worthless and degraded
creature, driven out of society, without reputation or means of
subsistence, and forced to sink to that last loathsome alternative of
profligacy which sends her, after a short and wicked course, to the
jeering experiments of the dissecting-room.

Oh, no; those wretches who lived by depravity, debauchery, and
corruption, were alarmed almost into distraction by the approach
of temperance, for they knew it would cut off the sources of their
iniquitous gains, and strip them of the vile means of propagating
dishonesty and vice, by which they lived. But even this wretched class
were not without instances of great disinterestedness and virtue;
several of them closed their debasing establishments, forfeited their
ill-gotten means of living, and trusting to honesty and legitimate
industry, voluntarily assumed the badge of temperance, and joined its
peaceful and triumphant standard!

Previous to this time, however, and, indeed, long before the joyful
sounds of its advancing motion were heard from afar, it is not to be
taken for granted that the drunkards of the parish of Ballykee