and drinking, is
a proof of morality in your country?"

"It is a proof, not of the morality of the party, but of the high
estimation in which virtue is held, shewn by the indifference and
disregard to everything else after virtue is once lost."

This is a specimen of many arguments held with the Americans upon that
question, and when examining into it, it should be borne in mind that
there is much less excuse for vice in America than in the Old Countries.
Poverty is but too often the mother of crime, and in America it may be
said that there is no poverty to offer up in extenuation.

Mr Carey appears to have lost sight of this fact when he so
triumphantly points at the difference between the working classes of
both nations, and quotes the Report of our Poor Law Commissioners to
prove the wretchedness and misery of ours. I cannot, however, allow his
assertions to pass without observation, especially as English and French
travellers have been equally content to admit without due examination
the claims of the Americans; I refer more particularly to the large
manufactory at Lowell, in Massachusetts, which from its asserted purity
has been one of the boasts of America. Mr Carey says:--

"The following passage from a statement, furnished by the manager of one
of the principal establishments in Lowell, shows a very gratifying state
of things:--`There have only occurred three instances in which any
apparently improper connection or intimacy had taken place, and in all
those cases the parties were married on the discovery, and several
months prior to the birth of their children; so that, in a legal point
of view, no illegitimate birth has taken place among the females
employed in the mills under my direction. Nor have I known of but one
case among all the females employed in Lowell. I have said known--I
should say heard of one case. I am just informed, that that was a case
where the female had been employed but a few days in any mill, and was
forthwith rejected from the corporation, and sent to her friends. In
point of female chastity, I believe that Lowell is as free from reproach
as any place of an equal population in the United States or the world.'"

And he winds up his chapter with the following remark:--

"The effect upon morals of this state of things, is of the most
gratifying character. The number of illegitimate children born in the
United States is small; so small, that we should suppose one in fifty to
b