atever may be the predominant cause of
crime, it is very clear that ignorance, religious ignorance, is the
chief ingredient in the character of the criminal. This combines with
the passion for liquor, and offences numberless are engendered by the
union."

The late Sir Arthur Helps, when speaking of high and low wages, and of
the means of getting and spending money, thus expresses himself on the
subject, in his "Friends in Council":"My own conviction is, that
throughout England every year there is sufficient wages given, even at
the present low rate, to make the condition of the labouring poor quite
different from what it is. But then these wages must be well spent. I do
not mean that the poor could of themselves alone effect this change; but
were they seconded by the advice, the instruction, and the aid (not
given in money, or only in money lent to produce the current interest of
the day) of the classes above them, the rest the poor might accomplish
for themselves. And, indeed, all that the rich could do to elevate the
poor could hardly equal the advantage that would be gained by the poor
themselves, if they could thoroughly subdue that one vice of
drunkenness, the most wasteful of all the vices.

"In the living of the poor (as indeed of all of us) there are two things
to be considered; how to get money, and how to spend it. Now, I believe,
the experience of employers will bear me out in saying, that it is
frequently found that the man with 20s. a week does not live more
comfortably, or save more, than the man with 14s.,--the families of the
two men being the same in number and general circumstances. It is
probable that unless he have a good deal of prudence and thought, the
man who gets at all more than the average of his class does not know
what to do with it, or only finds in it a means superior to that which
his fellows possess of satisfying his appetite for drinking."

Notwithstanding, however, the discouraging circumstances to which we
have referred, we must believe that in course of time, as men's nature
becomes improved by education--secular, moral, and religious--they may
be induced to make a better use of their means, by considerations of
prudence, forethought, and parental responsibility. A German writer
speaks of the education given to a child as _a capital_--equivalent to a
store of money--placed at its disposal by the parent. The child, when
grown to manhood, may employ the education, as he might employ