cider, ale, brown stout, London porter, and even London small beer? And is he so ignorant of chemical analogies as not to perceive, that were a bottle of his own precious wine of Lebanon subjected to a similar process of distillation, that also would as surely yield a large proportion of alcohol, as any of those wines he would ignorantly proscribe ?

We do not see any thing in Mr. Stuart's essay like an interdiction of London small beer or any malt liquor whatever; and yet to that extent the advocates of entire abstinence must go, if they would proscribe every liquor of which alcohol is a component part. But how many are there, in this enlightened age, who would join in a crusade against small beer?

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Mr. Stuart appears to have struggled hard with an inclination to except wine from his absolute system of proscription, on the ground, that "although it contains alcohol, it does not intoxicate in the same manner or the same degree that an equal quantity of alcohol does, when separated from wine by distillation;" but then came this puzzling question-How could " habitual drinker of the higher kinds of wines object to the drinking of brandy by another, when it is diluted as much by water, and modified by other substances, as his brandy is by the juice of the grape ?" Mr. Stuart very candidly observes, "Here is a point of difficulty I cannot get over.” Neither can we.

Mr. Stuart is obliged in the end to admit, that if spirituous liquors are to be utterly proscribed, so also must all wines having the same intoxicating tendency.

"We should aim at things, not names. The name of Madeira cannot sanction my drinking alcohol enough to excite me, any more than the name of toddy can sanction my taking enough of it in brandy to excite me.

All intoxicating drinks, i. e. all drinks, a moderate quantity of which will occasion inebriation, whether sensibly inceptive or complete, should be stricken out from the list which morals and religion permit."

For a practical rule, this, it must be confessed, is a wonderfully vague one. What are we to understand by a "moderate quantity? Could Mr. Stuart mark out the line of demarcation by nothing more clear and precise than this? The question of moderation is one that must in all cases be determined by the effects produced; and these effects will be as

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various as times, seasons, and constitu tions. What may under particular circumstances be a moderate quantity, may under others be excessively immoderate. When a man is "of a heavy heart," (and the Scriptures say we are to "give strong drink to those that are of a heavy heart") he will drink twice as much without approaching to even "inceptive" inebriation, as when all within is peace, and all without sunshine and smiles. A person, again, who is of a strong constitution, and who has been habituated to the use of wines or spirituous liquors, will drink with perfect impunity what will make a weaker person, who has seldom touched any thing more ardent than water, deeply intoxicated. By what standard, then, are we to get at that particular quantity which Mr. Stuart calls "moderate ?" And if we can find no such standard, of what worth is his rule?

If to humour the view of the matter taken by Mr. Stuart, we were to assume that by the words moderate quantity he means small quantity, the argument would still be left in a singularly inconclusive state. There will be a quantity less than that small quantity, which will not occasion inebriation; and why should the use of that be interdicted? It may be said, as we believe Mr. Stuart says somewhere in his essay, that pure alcohol, taken in any quantity, however small, has an injurious effect on the human system, apart from its intoxicating properties; but the question, it will be recollected, is not whether alcohol, in a pure and uncombined state, is a proper drink, but whether certain drinks from which alcohol may be extracted by distillation, is lawful? Now, if one article is to be prohibited because alcohol may be extracted from it, why not another? If wine, why not porter? If porter, why not small beer? If small beer, why not bread? If bread, why not every vegetable substance we eat? In short, there would be no end to the list of prohibited articles-short of including all the sweets of nature-were we to follow out the principle contended for by Mr. Stuart.

But a moderate use," he tells us, can scarcely be continued for any length of time without becoming immoderate," and "just so far as a moderate use goes, just so far there is a tendency towards all the evils" which come in the train of intoxication. We have before

shown that this doctrine of tendency does not concern the nature of the thing used, but the free will of the person using it. The sinfulness of intoxication-which all admit-is one thing, and the propriety of proscribing every thing capable of producing intoxication, is another. There is not an article of food or drink which may not be taken to an immoderate and injurious excess, as well as wines and spirits; nor is it truer of alcoholic liquors, than any thing else, that frequent, though moderate use begets fondness, and that fondness leads occasionally to immoderate indulgence.

Burns died of whiskey;

Pope of stewed lampreys. We are all apt to eat and drink more than is good for us, but no one would dream of offering that as a reason for abstaining_entirely from eating and drinking. It is the office of the mind to restrain the appetites; and it may be, that our appetites were made thus prone to excess, that the mind might have so much the larger field, for the exercise of its directing and governing powers. Were there no tendency to such vices as gluttony and drunkenness, there would be no such virtues as frugality and temperance. To abstain entirely from an innocent use of any thing from a fear of being betrayed into an inordinate and sinful use of it, seems to us to be a shift of rank cowardice; as unworthy of the man who takes the bible for his buckler, as of him who sees, in the moral beauty of doing right, his guiding star.

The reader will distinctly understand, that we are quite as opposed to intemperance as Mr. Stuart, Dr. Smith, or any other member of the Temperance Societies can possibly be. We are deeply impressed with the magnitude of the evils which it has inflicted, and is inflicting on society; we hold in the highest respect the efforts which have been recently made to eradicate them; and we are satisfied that these efforts have been already productive of much good. But it is because we wish well to the Tenperance Societies-wish them far greater success than has yet attended themthat we have taken the opportunity which Mr. Stuart's pamphlet has afforded us, of pointing out the fallacy of the grounds, on which they insist upon entire abstinence as the only means of cure. We are convinced, that it is owing to their pushing the sound doctrine of tem

perance to this extreme, that they suc ceed so indifferently; and we are confident, that as long as they persist in the same course, they will never make more than a very partial and, perhaps, transitory impression on the community.

We think we have shown clearly, that they have neither reason nor scriptural authority for the degree of self-denial which they exact, and that the utmost they have a warrant for doing so, is to win men to the spontaneous practice of temperance, by an exposition of the manifold benefits, moral and physical, of which it is the certain source; and, perhaps, also, by the promotion of measures for the prevention of that systematic adulteration of wines, and spirituous and malt liquors, which is, we verily believe, the cause of more than one-half of all the ills they produce.

We take this opportunity of atoning for an act of injustice, into which we were betrayed towards the inhabitants of the sister island in an early notice which we took of these Temperance Societies, in our 12th vol., page 296; and we have to apologise to Professor Edgar, of Belfast, who sent a remonstrance to us on the subject, and to his countrymen in general, for not doing so sooner. We there observed, of the Irish people, that they "stand next to the Americans most in need of a reform in this particular," namely intemperance. But we now find, on examining the Parliamentary Returns of the quantities of spirits consumed in England, Scotland, and Ireland, to which Professor Edgar referred us, that the Scotch consume more than either the Irish or English. It may be difficult to reconcile this fact with the high reputation for moral and orderly habits which the Scotch have acquired; but it rests on evidence which is not to be disputed. We observe another fact on the face of these returns, which is equally curious, but not we fear so hard of explanation. It appears, that although a very considerable number of Temperance Societies have been established in Scotland during the past year, and thousands and tens of thousands ostensibly converted to the cause, there has not been, upon the whole, one gallon less of ardent spirits consumed! We should set this down as an impossibility, did we not know that it is the nature of all such absolute engagements, as that which the members of

NEW WATER-PROOF HAT.

Sir, I am an enemy to trade, i. e. what is understood by trade amongst the mere chafferers of every description, whether classed under the imposing title of " British merchant," or the more humble designation of a French "marchand;" those persons whose whole business it is to cause a transfer of goods from hand to hand, either in large or small quantities, for the sake of insuring a per centage on the transit, utterly regardless whether they are, or are not, applicable to the wants of human beings. To such persons, the quick destruction of all the produce of human labour is a most desirable conclusion. Like the razors bought by poor Hodge in the story, their wares are "made to sell;" and could they have their full swing, they would, in their desire for accumulation of per centages, work up all the raw material of the world, even though it were for the purpose of throwing it into the Ocean afterwards.

Now, I differ so much with these gentry, that I think it would be a desirable thing, if all mechanical fabrications which have been brought to a state of perfection, could be made so as to last for ever, or, at any rate, as long as possible; unless, indeed, the act of labour be its own end and reward, which is not found in practice, as every one endeavours to accumulate a quantity of money (the representative of useful things) in order to live without labour. The improvements in machinery of all kinds have a constant tendency to diminish the labour and drudgery to which human beings are reduced, only because their knowledge is imperfect. Were the frame of society better arranged, every change in machinery which threw a few thousand workmen out of employment would be hailed as a blessing, which set free so much surplus labour, to be employed in higher objects. As it is at present arranged, or rather disarranged, all such occurrences cause unspeakable misery, and the monstrous anomaly exists of a majority of the operatives of the nation half inclined to break out into riot, for the sake of entailing eternal labour on

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themselves and their children; not ad verting to the fact, that the whole supply of food must remain the same, and must in some shape be distributed among them, whether they "dig holes and fill them up again," or not. They ought rather to quarrel with the modes of distribution so long practised by "good government," and the absurd regulations which prevent a foreign supply in exchange for the productions of machinery and labour. However, all this will be righted in time by the wide door which. the Reform Bill will serve as an entering wedge to open. Now, to descend to

technicals.

There is a thing, 'yclept a "hat" in the English language, which, though to my notion of comfort, mighty unpleasant in its wear, is very extensive in its use, not only in England, but in various other countries, where the same thing exists under various names. Its most ancient construction is of felted wool or soft hair; and imperative habit has now decided, that if a man walks the streets of London, or any other populous place, and has an aversion to being stared at, he must wear either a felt-hat, or one made in imitation thereof. The object sought is to exclude sun and rain. The old unglued felt served the latter purpose very imperfectly. The more modern felt, stiffened in the interior with glue, answers for a few hours' rain before it falls in, but in return for this accommodation the head of the wearer is usually stewed in its own steam, like that of a calf. For calfish kinds of brains this does not much matter, as they are used to it; but if the wearer happens to possess any thing like vivacity, or has what the Scotch call " bee in his bonnet," it is utterly subversive of personal comfort.

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Felt-hats have now, in a great measure, given place to silk, which latter (when of the best manufacture) are far handsomer, and are not subject to change colour and lose their nap so fast. The silk which is used is, in fact, a species of cut velvet with a very long nap, and it is glued on a frame of pasteboard or straw plait (which latter is lighter and better.) Most of the makers of these hats call them " water-proof," which is an arrant deception, as experience in a two hours' heavy rain will at any time prove. In the sun they cause head-ache worse than those of felt, owing to the closer texture of the material.

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Impressed with these inconveniences, I conceive that I have devised a hat perfectly water-proof, and at the same time free from the property of stewing the head, or being spoiled of its beauty by rain, as the ordinary silk-hats are when the glue is drawn through to the nap. I had perhaps better explain it after the fashion of Mrs. Glasse.

Take the frame of a hat, of any fashion which may be most approved, but the material should be a light staw or Leghorn plait. Cover it with a thin film of dissolved caoutchouc, or Indian rubber, such as is used for patent water-proof cloth. Upon this fasten the ordinary silk covering after the usual fashion, and the result wil be a hat weighing little more than three ounces, which will hold water like a bladder, and consequently keep water out. To let forth the hot air and superfluous steam of the wearer, let it be pierced through the upright sides with a multitude of fine holes from the inner side, by which means they will have in the exterior holes a small burr, which will prevent the rain from entering, after the nature of a valve opening outwards. Exit steam! door closed against rain entering. The pin-holes would not be seen amongst the thick nap; and his Majesty's lieges, if such be their title, might be provided with "tiles," putting umbrellas to scorn, looking equally well in rain and sunshine, and only destructible by the actual wearing away of the material. If your insertion of this, in the pages of your "nation-changing" Magazine, may induce any maker of water-proof hats to set a fabric of this kind in hand, you will confer an eternal favour on all the hatwearers of the world, who will uphold you against all the indignation caused by such an inroad upon the vested interests of the hatters, who doubtless will denounce the plan in no measured terms, as a new-fangled" scheme, destructive of the best interests of trade, i. e. destructive of the destruction of hats, which they will probably maintain gives employment to many poor people, and thereby increases the national stock of food!

APPARATUS FOR STEERING STEAM-VESSELS
FROM THE BOW.
Fig. 1.

Sir, You have inserted, in your 417th number, an excellent paper on a new method of steering steam-vessels, by Captain Basil Hall, extracted from the United Service Journal for August last.