"One of the universal sentiments which Christianity has deeply imbedded in the human heart is that of the natural equality of men.... It has produced the spectacle, which I believe to be peculiar to christian times, of one class uplifting another, the happy toiling for the miserable, the free vindicating the rights of the oppressed. With all the noble examples of disinterested friendship and patriotism, which ancient history affords, I can remember no approach to that wholesale compassion, that general action of one order of society on another, that system of benevolent agitation in behalf of powerless and forgotten suffering, which characterises the history of modern times."

Rationale of Religious Inquiry.

The idea of travelling in America was first suggested to me by a philanthropist's saying to me, "Whatever else may be true about the Americans, it is certain that they have got at principles of justice and mercy in the treatment of the least happy classes of society which we may be glad to learn from them. I wish you would go and see what they are." I did so; and the results of my investigation have not been reserved for this short chapter, but are spread over the whole of my book. The fundamental democratic principles on which American society is organised, are those "principles of justice and mercy" by which the guilty, the ignorant, the needy, and the infirm, are saved and blessed. The charity of a democratic society is heart-reviving to witness; for there is a security that no wholesale oppression is bearing down the million in one direction, while charity is lifting up the hundred in another. Generally speaking, the misery that is seen is all that exists: there is no paralysing sense of the hopelessness of setting up individual benevolence against social injustice. If the community has not yet arrived at the point at which all communities are destined to arrive, of perceiving guilt to be infirmity, of obviating punishment, ignorance, and want, still the Americans are more blessed than others, in the certainty that they have far less superinduced misery than societies abroad, and are using wiser methods than others for its alleviation. In a country where social equality is the great principle in which all acquiesce, and where, consequently, the golden rule is suggested by every collision between man and man, neglect of misery is almost as much out of the question as the oppression from which most misery springs.

In the treatment of the guilty, America is beyond the rest of the world, exactly in proportion to the superiority of her political principles. I was favoured with the confidence of a great number of the prisoners in the Philadelphia penitentiary where absolute seclusion is the principle of punishment. Every one of these prisoners, (none of them being aware of the existence of any other,) told me that he was under obligations to those who had the charge of him for treating him "with respect." The expression struck me much as being universally used by them. Some explained the contrast between this method of punishment and imprisonment in the old prisons, copied from those of Europe; where criminals are herded together, and treated like anything but men and citizens. Others said that though they had done a wrong thing, and were rightly sequestered on that ground, they ought not to have any farther punishment inflicted upon them; and that it was the worst of punishments not to be treated with the respect due to men. In a community where criminals feel and speak thus, human rights cannot but be, at length, as much regarded in the infliction of punishment as in its other arrangements.

Much yet remains to be done, to this end. An enormous amount of wrong must remain in a society where the elaboration of a vast apparatus for the infliction of human misery, like that required by the system of solitary imprisonment, is yet a work of mercy. Milder and juster methods of treating moral infirmity will succeed when men shall have learned to obviate the largest possible amount of it. In the meantime, I am persuaded that this is the best method of punishment which has yet been tried. Much as the prisoners suffer from the dreary solitude, cheered only by their labour and the occasional visits of official superintendents, they testified, without exception and without concert, to their preference of this over all other methods of punishment. The grounds of preference were, that they could preserve their self-respect, in the first place; and, in the next, their chance in society on their release. They leave the prison with the recompense of their extra labour in their pockets, and without the fear of being waylaid by vicious old companions, or hunted from employment to employment by those whose interest it is to deprive them of a chance of establishing a character. There is no evidence, at present, that solitary imprisonment, with labour, is more injurious to health than any other condition which is attended with anxiety of mind. The Philadelphia prisoners certainly appeared to me to be more healthy-looking than those at Auburn, or at any other prison I visited.

There is at present a deficiency in the religious ministrations of the prison. This is a fact which, I believe, has only to be made known to cease to be true. Among the clergy of all denominations in Philadelphia, there must be many who would contrive to afford their services in turn, if they were fully aware how much they are needed. I know of no direction that can be taken by charity with such certainty of success as visiting the solitary prisoner. I think it far from desirable that prisoners should be visited for the express purpose of giving them religious, and no other, instruction and sympathy. The great object is to occupy the prisoner's mind with things which interest him most; to keep up his sympathies, and nourish his human affections; and especially to promote the activity and cheerfulness of his mind. His situation is such,—he is so driven back upon the realities of life in his own mind, that the danger is of his accepting religion as a temporary solace, of his separating it in idea from active life, and craving for the most exciting kind of it; so as that when he returns to the world, he will discard it as something suiting his prison-life, but no longer needed, no longer appropriate. If, keeping this in view, a very few good men and women of Philadelphia would go sometimes to spend an hour with a prisoner, honourably observing the rules, telling no news, but cheerfully conversing on the prisoner's affairs,—his work, his family, his prospects on coming out, the books he reads, &c.—if they would carry him good and entertaining books, and if religious ones, only those of a moderate and cheerful character, (such being indeed not easy to be found,)—these friendly visitors could scarcely fail of restoring, more or less completely, the moral health of the objects of their benevolence. None who have not tried can imagine the ease with which sufferers so placed are influenced; in the absence of all that is pernicious, and in absolute dependence, as they are, on the sympathy of those who will be kind to them. If watchful observance were united with common prudence and kindness, I believe that a prisoner of five years would rarely re-enter society unqualified for the discharge of his duties there. It must be remembered that the criminals of the United States are rarely the depraved, brutish creatures that fill the prisons of the old world. Even in the old world, I have no doubt that every prison visitor has been conscious, on first conversing privately with a criminal, of a feeling of surprise at finding him so human: but in America, convicts are even more like other men. The reason of my visiting them, as I told them, was to satisfy myself about the causes of crime in a country where there is almost an absence of that want which occasions the greater proportion of social offences in England. Sooner or later, all told me their stories in full: and I found that in every case some domestic misery had been the poison of their lives. A harsh step-mother, an unfaithful wife, a jilting mistress, an intemperate son or father,—these were the miseries at home which sent them out to drink: drinking brought on murder, or caused vicious wants, which must be supplied by theft. The stories, infinitely varied in their circumstances, were all alike in their moral.

I do not like the principle of the Auburn prison: and I am confident that very little effectual reformation can take place under it. The disadvantages of the prisoners being waylaid and dogged on their discharge are very great; but there are some within the prison quite as serious. The spy system is abominable, in whatever light it is viewed. It is the deepest of insults; and if there be a case rather than another in which insult is to be avoided, it is where a reformation is desired. The great point to be gained with the criminal is to regenerate self-respect. A virtuous man may preserve his self-respect under the eyes of a spy; (though even he is in some danger); but a morally infirm man can never thus acquire it. Arrangements should be made for his secure custody and harmless outward conduct, and then he should be left to himself. And what is the purpose of the spying,—of the loop-holes to peep through, and the moccasins which are to make the tread of the spies as stealthy as that of a cat? To detect talking; talking subjecting a man to the lash. Talking is an innocent act; and, in the case of men secluded from the world and their families, and all that has hitherto interested them, an unavoidable act. They ought to talk; and they do, in spite of spies, governor, and the whip. They learn to murmur intelligibly behind their teeth, without moving the lips, and to take advantage of the briefest instants when the superintendent turns his back. It is surprising to me that any effectual reformation can be looked for from men who, convicted of grave crimes, have the prohibition to speak set up before their minds as the chief circumstance and interest of their lives for five, seven, or ten years. Their interest in it makes it the chief circumstance. How the disordered being is to be rectified, how the prostrated conscience is to be reinstated, while an innocent and necessary act is thus erected into an offence, I leave those who are most versed in moral proportions to decide. I do not believe in the possibility of effectual reformation in any but a few cases, under such a discipline.

The will of the majority has not yet wrought out the right practice from good principles, in two cases which regard the treatment of the guilty: and great evil arises in the interval. It is extremely difficult, in some parts of the States, and with regard to some particular offences, to get the laws enforced against offenders. In those parts of the States where personal conflicts are countenanced by opinion, offences against the person go too often unpunished; elsewhere, riot is passed over without notice; and in some few places, the most heinous crimes of all are nearly certain to be got over without the conviction of the offender. The impunity of riot arises from the reliance society has on the moral sense of the whole: a reliance very honourable in itself, but found of late to be inadequate under the pressure of such a crisis as that of the anti-slavery question. Nothing can be more honourable to the people, than the fact that they have been safe and virtuous under the superintendence of principle, while the laws have slept so long, that it is now found difficult to put them in force: but now that the time has come for a conflict of classes and opinions, the time has also come for the law to be vigilant and inexorable. The frequent impunity of the most serious crimes arises from the growing enmity of opinion to the punishment of death. There can be little doubt that in a short time capital punishments will be abolished throughout the northern States: and if this is to be done, the sooner it is done the better: for the present impunity is a tremendous evil.

In passing the City Hall of one of the northern cities with a friend, I asked what was the meaning of a great crowd that was about the doors, and even clustered on the windows of the building. My friend told me, that a young man was being examined on the charge of being the murderer in a most aggravated case, which had been related to me the day before. I observed, that no one seemed to have any doubt of his guilt. She replied, that there never was a clearer case; but that he would be acquitted: the examination and trial were a mere form, of which every one knew the conclusion beforehand. The people did not choose to see any more hanging; and till the law was so altered as to allow an alternative of punishment, no conviction for a capital offence would be obtainable. I asked, on what pretence the young man would be got off, if the evidence against him was as clear as was represented. She said, some one would be found to swear an alibi: the young man would be wholly disgraced, and would probably set out westwards the morning after his acquittal. I watched the progress of the case. The trial was a long one. There was no doubt of the suppression of large portions of the evidence against him. A tradesman swore an alibi: the young man was thereupon acquitted; and next morning he was on his way to the west.

On the principle that punishment should be reformatory, the practice of pardoning criminals has gone to far too great an extent, from the belief of reformation in each particular case. The consequence is very injurious. A sentence of life-imprisonment is generally understood to mean imprisonment for a shorter term than if ten or seven years had been named. Every one of the prisoners I conversed with was in anxious expectation of a pardon. In the cases of those who were in for five years, and who I knew would not be pardoned, I reasoned the matter; and found that the fact of all their fellow-prisoners having the same expectation with themselves, made a strong impression. They were, amidst their dreadful disappointment, easily convinced: but I could not but mourn that they did not learn the philosophy of the case in society, rather than in prison.

Whenever the abolition of the punishment of death takes place, it will be essential to the safety of virtue and society, that it should be understood that the practice of pardoning is, except on rare and specified occasions, to cease; and that punishment is to be certain in proportion to its justice.

The pauperism of the United States is, to the observation of a stranger, nothing at all. To residents, it is an occasion for the exercise of their ever-ready charity. It is confined to the ports, emigrants making their way back into the country, the families of intemperate or disabled men, and unconnected women, who depend on their own exertions. The amount altogether is far from commensurate with the charity of the community; and it is to be hoped that the curse of a legal charity, at least to the able-bodied, will be avoided in a country where it certainly cannot become necessary within any assignable time. I was grieved to see the magnificent pauper asylum near Philadelphia, made to accommodate luxuriously 1200 persons; and to have its arrangements pointed out to me, as yielding far more comfort to the inmates than the labourer can secure at home by any degree of industry and prudence. There are so many persons in the city, however, who see the badness of the principle, and regret the erection, that I trust a watch will be maintained over the establishment, and its corridors kept as empty as possible. In Boston, the principles of true charity have been better acted upon. There, many of the clergymen,—among the rest, Father Taylor, the seaman's friend,—are in possession of wisdom, derived from the mournful experience of England; and seem likely to save the city from the misery of a debasing pauperism among any class of its inhabitants. I know no large city where there is so much mutual helpfulness, so little neglect and ignorance of the concerns of other classes, as in Boston: and I cannot but anticipate that from thence the world may derive the brightest lesson that has yet been offered it, in the duties of the rich towards the poor. If the agents of the benevolence of the wealthy will but be scrupulously careful to avoid all that mental encroachment and moral interference, which have but too generally ruined the efficacy of charity, and go on to exhibit the devotion of the philanthropist, without the inquisitiveness and authoritativeness of the priest, they may deserve the thanks of the whole of society, as well as the attachment of those whom they befriend.

In Boston, an excellent plan has been adopted for the prevention of fraud on the part of paupers, and the mutual enlightenment and guidance of the agents of charity. A weekly meeting is held of delegates, from all societies engaged in the relief of the poor. The delegates compare lists of the persons relieved, so as to ascertain that none are fraudulently receiving from more than one society: they discuss and investigate doubtful cases; extend indulgence to those of peculiar hardship; and, in short, secure all the advantages of co-operation. Perhaps there are no cities in England but London too large for a somewhat similar organisation: and its adoption would be an act of great wisdom.

In the south, I was rather amused at a boast which was made to me of the small amount of pauperism. As the plague distances all lesser diseases, so does slavery obviate pauperism. In a society of two classes, where the one class are all capitalists, and the other property, there can be no pauperism but through the vice or accidental disability of members of the first. But I was beset by many an anxious thought about the fate of disabled slaves. Masters are, of course, bound to take care of their slaves for life. There are doubtless many masters who guard the comfort of their helpless negroes all the more carefully from the sense of the entire dependence of the poor creatures upon their mercy: but, there are few human beings fit to be trusted with absolute power: and while there are many who abuse the authority they have over slaves who are not helpless, it is fearful to think what may be the fate of those who are purely burdensome. I observed, here and there, an idiot slave. Those whom I saw were kindly treated, humoured, and indulged. These were the only cases of natural infirmity that I witnessed among the negroes; and the absence of others struck me. At Columbia, South Carolina, I was taken by a benevolent physician to see the State Lunatic Asylum, which might be considered his work; so diligent had he been in obtaining appropriations for the object from the legislature, and afterwards in organising its plans, with great wisdom and humanity. When we were looking out from the top of this building, watching the patients in their airing grounds, I observed that no people of colour were visible in any part of the establishment. I inquired whether negroes were as subject to insanity as whites. Probably; but no means were known to have been taken to ascertain the fact. From the violence of their passions, there could be no doubt that insanity must exist among them. Were such insane negroes ever seen?—No one present had ever seen any.—Where were they then?—It was some time before I could get a clear answer to this: but my friend the physician said, at length, that he had no doubt they were kept in out-houses, chained to logs, to prevent their doing harm. No member of society is charged with the duty of investigating cases of disease and suffering among slaves who cannot make their own state known. They are wholly at the mercy of their owners. The physician told me that it was his intention, now he had accomplished his object of establishing a lunatic asylum for the whites, to persevere no less strenuously till he obtained one for the blacks. He will probably not find this a very difficult object to effect; for the interest of masters, as well as their humanity, is concerned in having an asylum provided by the State for their useless or mischievous negroes.

The Lunatic Asylums of the United States are an honour to the country, to judge by those which I saw. The insane in Pennsylvania hospital, Philadelphia, should be removed to some more light and cheerful abode, and be much more fully supplied with employment, and with stimulus to engage in it. I was less pleased with their condition than with that of any other insane patients whom I saw. The institution at Worcester, Massachusetts, is admirably managed under Dr. Woodward. So was that at Charlestown, near Boston, by Dr. Lee; a young physician who has since died, mourned by his grateful patients, and by all who had their welfare at heart. The establishment at Bloomingdale, near New York, is of similar excellence. The only great deficiency that I am aware of is one which belongs to most lunatic asylums, and which it does not rest with the superintendent to supply;—a want of sufficient employment. Every exertion is made to provide a variety of amusements, and to encourage all little undertakings that may be suggested: but regular, important business is what is wanted. It is to be hoped that in the establishment of all such institutions, the provision of an ample quantity of land will be one of the prime considerations. Watchful and ingenious kindness may do much to alleviate the miseries of the insane; but if cure is sought, I believe it is agreed by those who know best, that regular employment, with a reasonable object, is indispensable.

The Asylum for the Blind at Philadelphia was a young institution at the time I saw it; but it pleased me more than any I ever visited: more than the larger one at Boston; whose institution and conduct are, however, honourable to all concerned in it. The reason of my preference of the Philadelphia one is that the pupils there were more active and cheerful than those of Boston. The spirits of the inmates are the one infallible test of the management of an institution for the blind. The fault of such in general is that mirth is not sufficiently cultivated, and religion too exclusively so. It should ever be remembered that religion comes out of the mind, and not in at the eye or ear; and that the truest way of cultivating religion is to exercise the faculties, and enlarge the stock of ideas to the utmost. The method of printing for the blind, introduced with such admirable ingenuity and success into the American institutions, I should like to see employed to bring within the reach of the blind the most amusing works that can be found. I should like to see it made an object with benevolent persons to go and give the pupils a hearty laugh occasionally, by reading droll books, and telling amusing stories. The one thing which the born blind want most is to have their cheerlessness removed, to be drawn out of their abstractions, and exercised in play on the greatest possible variety of familiar objects and events. They should hear no condolence: their friends should keep their sympathetic sorrow to themselves; and explain, cheerfully and fully, the allusions to visual objects which must occur in all reading and conversation. It grieves me to hear the hymns and other compositions put into the mouths of blind pupils, all full of lamentation and resignation about not seeing the stars and the face of nature. Such sorrow is for those who see to feel on their behalf; or for those who have lost sight: not for those who never saw. Put into their mouths, it becomes cant. When a roving sea-captain tells his children of the glories of oriental scenery which they are destined never to behold, does he teach them to sigh, and struggle to submit patiently to their destiny of staying at home? Does he not rather make them take pleasure in mirthfully and eagerly learning what he can teach? The face of nature is a foreign land to the born blind. Let them be taught all that can possibly be conveyed to them, and in the most spirited manner that they can bear. There is a nearer approach to the realisation of this principle of teaching the blind in the Philadelphia house than I ever saw elsewhere. It would be enough to cheer a misanthrope to see a little German boy there, picked up out of the streets, dull, neglected, and depressed; but within a few months, standing in the centre of the group of musicians, fiddling and stamping time with all his might, and quite ready to obey every instigation to laugh. Mr. Friedlander, the tutor, is much to be congratulated on what he has already done.

It may be worth suggesting here that while some of the thinkers of America, like many of the same classes in England, are mourning over the low state of the Philosophy of Mind in their country, society is neglecting a most important means of obtaining the knowledge requisite for the acquisition of such philosophy. Scholars are embracing alternately the systems of Kant, of Fichte, of Spurzheim, of the Scotch school; or abusing or eulogising Locke asking who Hartley was, or weaving a rainbow arch of transcendentalism, which is to comprehend the whole that lies within human vision, but sadly liable to be puffed away in dark vapour with the first breeze of reality; scholars are thus labouring at a system of mental philosophy on any but the experimental method, while the materials for experiment lie all around and within them. If they object, as is common, the difficulty of experimenting on their conscious selves, there is the mental pathology of their blind schools, and the asylums for the deaf and dumb. I am aware that they put away the phenomena of insanity as irrelevant; but the same objections do not pertain to the other two classes. Let the closet speculations be pursued with all vigour: but if there were joined with these a close and unwearied study of the phenomena of the minds of persons deficient in a sense, and especially of those precluded from the full use of language, the world might fairly look for an advance in the science of Mind equal to that which medical science owes to pathology. It will not probably lodge us in any final and total result, any more than medicine and anatomy promise to ascertain the vital principle: but it will doubtless yield us some points of certainty, in aid of the fluctuating speculations amidst which we are now tossed, while few can be found to agree even upon matters of so-called universal consciousness. I should like to see a few philosophers interested in ascertaining and recording the manifestations of some progressive minds, peculiar from infirmity, for a series of years. If any such in America, worthy to undertake the task, from having strength enough to put away theory and prejudice, and record only what is really manifested to them, should be disposed to take my hint, I hope they will not wait for a philosophical "class to fall into."

I was told at Washington, with a smile half satirical and half complacent, that "the people of New England do good by mania." I watched accordingly for symptoms of this second or third-rate method of putting benevolence into practice. The result was, that I was convinced that the people of New England, and of the whole country, do good in all manner of ways; some better and some worse, according to their light. I met with pious ladies who make clothes for the poor, but who took work (her means of bread) out of the hands of a sempstress, (who had three children,) because her husband was in prison. They told me it would be encouraging vice to have anything to do with the families of persons who had committed offences: and when I asked how reformed offenders were to put their reformation in practice, I was told that if I would employ anybody who had been in prison, I deserved the censure of society. The matter ended in the sempstress (a good young woman) having to go home to her father's house. I met with others, both men and women, who make it the business of their lives, or of their leisure from yet more pressing duties, to seek out the sinners of society, and give them, not threats, nor scorn, nor lectures, but sympathy and help. So does light vary in this glimmering age; so eloquently does the conduct of Jesus speak to some, while to others it seems to preach in an unknown tongue. With regard to some methods of charity, nothing could exceed the ingenuity, shrewdness, forethought, and determination with which they were managed: in others, I was reminded of what I had been told about mania.

In regarding the Temperance movement, the word perpetually occurred to me. How the vice of intemperance ever reached the pass it did in a country where there is no excuse of want on the one hand, or of habits of conviviality on the other, was sometimes attempted to be explained to me; but never to my satisfaction. Much may be said upon it, which cannot find a place here. Certain it is that the vice threatened to poison society. It was as remarkable as licentiousness of other kinds ever was in Paris, or at Vienna. Men who doubted the goodness of the principle of Association in opposition to moral evil, were yet carried away to countenance it by seeing nothing else that was to be done. Some few of these foresaw that, as every man must be virtuous in himself and by himself; as the principle of temperance in a man is incommunicable; as no two men's temptations are alike; and as, especially in this case, the temptations of the movers were immeasurably weaker than those of the mass to be wrought upon, there could be no radical truth, no pervading sincerity to rely upon. They foresaw what had happened; that there would be a vast quantity of perjury, of false and hasty promising, of lapse, and of secret, solitary drinking; that if some waverers were saved, others would be plunged into hypocrisy in addition to their intemperance; that schisms must arise out of the ignorance of bigots, which would cause as much scandal to good morals as intemperance itself; and that, worst of all, this method was the introduction of new and fatal perils to freedom of conscience. A few foresaw all this; but a very few had strength to resist the movement. A sort of reproach was cast upon those who refused to join, like that which is now visited upon such as adhere to the principle on which they first joined;—a kind of insinuation that their temperance is not thorough.—What have the consequences already been?

The amount of visible intemperance is actually lessened prodigiously; perhaps to the full extent anticipated by the originators of the movement. Spirit-shops have been shut up by hundreds; some few drunkards have been reformed; and very large numbers of young men, entering life, are now sober citizens, who seemed in danger of becoming a curse to society. The question is whether the causes of the preceding intemperance have been discovered and obviated. If not, there is every reason to expect that the control of opinion over them will be but temporary; and that the late sweeping and garnishing will give place to a state of things at least as bad as before.

At present, the effect of example is perishing, day by day. The example of those who have not pledged themselves is the only one morally regarded; all other persons being known to be bound. Virtue under a vow has no spiritual force. The more reasonable of those who are pledged have confined their pledge to the distinct case of not touching distilled liquors. They have the utmost difficulty in maintaining their ground, as examples, (their sole object,) under the assaults of bigots who complain that they are not "getting on;" and who, on their part, have got on so far as to refuse the communion to persons who will not abjure as they have done; to banish the sacramental wine; and to forbid malt liquors, and even coffee, in taverns and private houses. The superstition,—the attachment to the form without the spirit,—is fearfully revealed upon occasion. A man was brought dead drunk into a watch-house; and before the magistrate next morning, persisted that he could not have been drunk, because he was a member of a Temperance Society. The subservience of conscience to control is as necessary and remarkable. For instance, a gentleman, whose wife, in a state of imminent danger, was ordered brandy, ran and knocked up his minister to get leave before he would procure any for her. It is true that these are extreme cases: but the effect of such institutions upon weak minds must be studied, as it is for weak minds that they are created.

My own convictions are that Associations, excellent as they are for mechanical objects, are not fit instruments for the achievement of moral aims: that there is yet no proof that the principle of self-restraint has been exalted and strengthened in the United States by the Temperance movement, while the already too great regard to opinion, and subservience to spiritual encroachment have been much increased: that, therefore, great as are the visible benefits of the institution, it may at length appear that they have been dearly purchased. I have reason to think that numbers of persons in the United States, especially enlightened physicians, (who have the best means of knowledge,) are of the same opinion. This is confirmed by the fact that there is a spreading dislike of Associations for moral, while there is a growing attachment to them for mechanical, objects. The majority will show to those who may be living at the time what is the right.

Though scarcely necessary, it may be well to indicate the distinction between Temperance and Abolition societies with regard to this principle. The bond of Temperance societies is a pledge or vow respecting the personal conduct of the pledger. The bond of the Abolitionists is agreement in a principle which is to be proposed and exhibited by mechanical means,—lecturing, printing, raising money for benevolent purposes. Nobody is bound in thought, word, or action. There have been a few Temperance societies which have avoided pledges, and confined their exertions to spreading knowledge on the pathology of intemperance, and its effects on the morals of the individual and of society. Associations confined to these objects are probably not only harmless, but highly useful.