incapable, than that some thousands had been taken up so often, that there was not the slightest hope of their reformation.

While we wish to speak gently of the dead, while we would rather praise than blame, we must yield our homage to truth, instead of to Dr Strang. Truth declares the passage we have quoted is false. Suppose that in 1851 all the incorrigible drinkers had been seized and sent out of the city, would our character for drunkenness have soon ceased for ever?" We will answer this question in the Scotch fashion, by putting another. If all the water of the river, which is at this moment in front of the city, were instantaneously hurried off to the ocean, would the flow of the Clyde soon cease for ever? Did Dr Strang not know that it is from the ranks of moderate drinkers that all drunkards come? No man is born an incorrigible drinker he gradually becomes one. With all his learning it is possible Dr Strang was ignorant of the physiological action of alcohol upon the human frame, how it produces a physical craving, effects a fatal change, and overcomes the will. The incorrigible drinkers of 1851 are not those of to-day, too many of them lie in a premature grave.

"it

We confess every time we look at the passage quoted, we become more and more surprised. The incorrigible drinkers are, it seems, "the tormentors of our magistracy. We really pity everybody in torment, but we do wish our magistrates were more tormented than they are. We have all due, yea, great respect for them, for there are some of them that deserve the esteem of the whole city, and yet we wish they were for one year tormented as are the relatives of incorrigible drinkers. There is nothing more certain in this world, not even the rising of the sun tomorrow, than this, that so long as whisky shops are open, must needs be that offences come." There is not a man in the city who does not believe that in 1864, as in all past years, there will be many assaults in consequence of taking intoxicating drinks. Since some persons are sure to be assaulted, we have a wish, and we are not ashamed to avow it; it is, that in 1864, those who license whisky shops may suffer from them, it is that all our magistrates and justices of the peace may be attacked and knocked down by maddened intoxicated men. They are quite as able to bear this treatment as wretched wives and children, and these wretched wives, as we have seen, "curse the public houses with a vehemence that is startling." We entertain this desire entirely for the city's sake, not out of any ill-will to them. When they have been tormented for one single year as others are, verily the day of deliverance and of jubilee will be at hand. They will then quickly use the power they have of refusing licences. How often, when on the bench, have we heard them advising culprits to become abstainers, and engaging to allow them to go free if they would take the pledge. What commendable consistency! To-day to be apostles of teetotalism, and to

morrow to license shops certain to make men the very reverse. The sermon to the incorrigible has always little effect, let them now try to preach to the publican.

The worst attempt at covering the deeds of the demon god has yet to be mentioned. Bold, to the verge of insolence as some will count us, we really could not frame the following charge. Abstainers are generally called fanatics, because it is supposed they go too far, but they never go so far as non-abstainers are constrained by the force of truth sometimes to go. Let the Glasgow Herald of December 26, 1863, speak. In its editorial article of that date, we find these words, which hint at an intentional sacrifice of truth—

"The business of the Circuit Court is over, and we cannot help thinking that Judges and jurors, agents and advocates, must feel heartily sick after wading through our winter calendar of crime. There have been no fewer than four cases of murder or culpable homicide tried, every one of which reveals a state of morals which says little for the progress of civilisation or sobriety. Drinking, drunkenness, quarrelling, fighting. and killing follow each other in regular succession; human life is sacrificed as if it were a worthless commodity, and the good name of our country is disgraced. It appears, however, that a number of people belonging to the legal and medical professions have a strong opinion that insanity on the one hand, or apoplexy on the other, are the causes of this unhappy shedding of blood. Killing is not murder apparently, in the estimation of these persons, and they seem to consider that manslaughter is some unknown species of natural disease. If a man gets excited over his bottle, or the loss of his sweetheart, and kills somebody while the raging fit is on him, we find doctors ready, with all sorts of reasons, to prove that the murderer is simply a maniac, and altogether irresponsible for his actious."

"A shopkeeper in Edinburgh gets on the spree,' and after a few days' fuddling, he has, or pretends to have, a jealousy of an acquaintance, and straightway he arms himself with a dagger, and stabs his friend to the heart. He is taken up, tried, and acquitted on the ground of insanity, because a number of doctors differ regarding the condition of his brains. One of the M.D.'s believed the accused was afflicted with the delusions of delirium tremens, a second believed nothing of the sort, while a third felt inclined to split the difference; and in this way the life of Milne was saved."

"The 'natural disease' plea of 'not guilty' is no less illogical-we had almost said nonsensical-as two or three of the cases decided at our own Circuit this week will show. In a public-house at Bishopton, about two months ago, a man named Mullen, in the prime of life, was knocked down upon the floor and kicked or trampled to death by one or more brutes in human shape. The kicking was sworn to by several witnesses; the poor man was found upon the floor weltering in his blood, his head and face covered with wounds and bruises; the post mortem examination of the body discovered the brain clotted with blood, and yet an advocate for one of the prisoners tried to make out that it was simply a case of apoplexy, or the result of a fall! The second case occurred in Stockwell Street on the 4th November last, when Robert Campbell, a policeman, apparently in good health, was murdered, or, at all events, killed, by an old soldier named Alexander Graham. The prisoner and the policeman were seen struggling on a stair together, and sometime afterwards the poor man was found stretched on the ground in a helpless condition. He had a pretty extensive wound on the forehead, and two wounds on the legs, as if he had been tumbled down the stair, and a few hours afterwards he was dead. Doctors G. H. Macleod and J. Stewart made a post mortem examination of the body; they found the wound on the forehead, the brain suffused with blood, and they concluded that the one

thing was the effect of the other. In his examination, Dr Macleod says'When I find the blow over the right eye, and when I find blood in the left ventricle of the brain, I cannot but connect the two, and suppose that the one resulted from the other.' And so, we think, would most sensible men; and so thought the jury in the long run, for the prisoner was found guilty of culpable homicide. Here, however, again 'natural disease' arguments were brought to bear upon the case, but they failed from sheer want of probability. The prisoner's Counsel asked if there was anything in the internal appearance of the body, putting the blows and external injuries out of the question, inconsistent with the supposition of a man's dying from apoplexy,' and Dr Macleod answered that there was not. But then the blows and external injuries' were there, and when that fact was fully established, it was surely begging the question altogether to drag in mere suppositions. If the policeman had been killed by a bullet through his brain, the Counsel might have asked a similar question with similar propriety, providing always that he excepted the injury done by the bullet as he did in the case of the blow. It is also possible that Robert Campbell might have died from apoplexy in the act of falling from the top to the bottom of Nelson's Monument; but then the thing is scarcely probable, and nine hundred and ninety-nine persons out of every thousand would rather blame the fall. In like manner, few, we think, will believe that apoplexy struck down the strong policeman while he was in the grips of his assailant, when they know that he bore the marks of injuries sufficient to account for his death. But Dr James Morton is of a different opinion, and he also is entitled to speak with authority. The Doctor says-'From that medical report I would not be inclined to say that there is any necessary connection between the marks on the head and the effusion on the brain.' Dr Macleod, however, says there is a connection; and who shall decide when doctors disagree?"

"What is to be done with our scientific and contradictory M.D.'s? Are we to believe the medical witnesses for the prosecution; or are we to believe the medical witnesses for the defence; or are we to reject both? They are brought into innumerable witness-boxes to bring light out of darkness, and they wind up by making confusion worse confounded. In almost every murder case that comes up for trial, we find medical men of high standing contradicting each other like fish wives, and playing the very deuce with scientific credibility. In short, their evidence is becoming too much a matter of opinion to be trustworthy; and if they do not tak' a thocht and mend,' judges, juries, and the public will fall back upon their own common sense, and cast medical testimony overboard altogether."

The law at one time held drunkenness to be an aggravation of crime, but now alcohol has so bewitched us, that it can cover a multitude of heinous sins. Killing, as the editor of the Herald remarks, is not now murder. Captain Smart, in his report for 1863, says as much

"Three persons have been remitted to the Sheriff for murder or culpable homicide; but the result proves that they were not serious cases, as one of them, a cabınan, only received sentence of three months' imprisonment for killing a spirit dealer in London Street at his own door. The second, a flesher in Anderston, was tried by the Sheriff and Jury for killing his wife, &c.”

This is a remarkable quotation. What is it that proves whether a case be serious or not? The result. What result? The punishment to be sure. In the first instance a man was killed, and in the second a woman; but death is not hereafter to be counted a result, we are to judge of an action not from what the

victim suffers, but from the punishment awarded to the perpetrator. A publican's life is valued at three months' imprisonment. It is surely time they were taking the hint, and voluntarily shutting up their shops.

What is the expense of our crime? The total expenditure of our Police Board from 15th May, 1862, till 15th May, 1863, was £84,852 18s 4d, but after deducting the charges for lighting, cleansing, &c., there is left as the cost of our day and night watchmen and detectives, with their various superintendents and miscellaneous expenses, the sum of £45,293 10s 1d. The net expenditure of the North Prison in Duke Street, after deducting the work done by the prisoners, was, in the year ending 30th June, 1863, £9090 4s 7d. The net proceeds of assessment for Houses of Refuge for both boys and females, was £4569 18s 5d in 1862; so the total direct charge to the city in one year is £58,953 13s ld. But indirectly the city has to pay for judicial expenses and the maintenance of prisoners sentenced to several years of penal servitude, so the grand total expended in punishing crime, is at least £80,000 a year. Dr Strang, in his report for 1861, in calculating the expense to the city of our 750 constables, deducts the amount received from Government, which is one-fourth of the sum for pay and clothing. But this is a shortsighted mode of computation, as the Government has no mine of its own, independent of the pockets of its subjects. When it gives, it has first got, and Glasgow, as well as other parts of Scotland, contributes before it receives back. We will not allow abstainers to exaggerate the evils of intemperance, nor nonabstainers to extenuate. Let us have the truth, and nothing but the truth.

We are a singular people. We have an affection for criminals, and a great abhorrence of paupers. In the year 1860-61, the daily average of prisoners in custody at the North Prison was 448, and the cost of their maintenance was £22 5s 34d each per annum. The average earnings of each in a whole year was £2 15s 2ąd, leaving a net sum of £19 10s 04d each, which the city had to pay for their support. This is exactly 7s 6d a week. For an out-door pauper, it may be a decent widow of 70 years of age, we grudge the allowance of two shillings a week; and for the inmates of our hospitals, the weekly charge, including food, clothing, salaries to officials, &c., &c., is about four shillings a head. The enjoyment got from intoxicating drinks would require to be transcendental, seraphic while it lasts, since the certain sequel is, that hordes of criminals will have to be maintained at the rate of seven shillings and sixpence a week.

The share of crime and expense of punishment caused annually by the Ruin Investment is, by the acknowledgment of all our judges, at least three-fourths of the whole, viz, about

2 Murders, now called cases of killing.

40 Serious assaults.

350 Offences against property committed with violence.

4500 Offences against property committed without violence (thefts).

50 Malicious offences against property.

25 Offences against the currency.

1 Case of perjury.

3300 Cases of assault simple.

400 Cases of contravention.

22,966 Cases of persons drunk and incapable. 2921 Cases of persons drunk and disorderly.

250 Cases of youths under 15 years brought for crime before the Magistrates, and £60,000.

When will the insanity of the city have an end? By shutting up the whisky shops we can, between the charges for pauperism and crime, save the city one hundred thousand pounds a year. Since we have so little regard for the souls and bodies of men, will we have any for our pocket?

INSANITY.-Whoever has perused several years' reports drawn out by the Physician Superintendent of the Glasgow Royal Asylum for Lunatics, must have detected the hand of a master. There are so many judicious remarks, everywhere so many traces of close investigation and profound penetration, that the reader is convinced, that Institution is under the care of a man thoroughly acquainted with his business. Foreigners may well assert that the Glasgow Asylum is inferior to none in the world. From the tables appended to the reports, we learn, that between 1838 and 1846 inclusive, 2145 patients were admitted, 430 of which number became insane through intemperance. And between 1850 and 1862 no fewer than 3264 were admitted, of this number 519 lost their reason through drink. So in twentytwo years, there have been treated 5409 persons, and of these 949 became maniacs through worshipping the demon_god of Britain. According to the statistics of our Royal Lunatic Asylum, intemperance is the cause of 17.5 per cent. of our insanity. But the true proportion of lunacy produced by alcohol will never be discovered, any more than the true proportion of disease; for this reason, that alcohol, besides being of itself a direct cause, is indirectly, to a great extent, the cause of some of the other causes. The two causes which are mentioned as the principal in all reports, are "hereditary" and "predisposition." Who shall ascertain how many unfortunately have a predisposition on account of diseased fetal formation, the result of a father or a mother's drunkenness. Another very extensive agent in the production of insanity, is that greatest of all curses, a putrid imagination. Who shall trace the beginning of the reign of vice, the slavery of sensual lusts? Was it when inflamed by drink, that the first departure from safety and purity took place? None but the Omniscient can follow alcohol in all its windings; none but God can estimate the fatal agency of that myriad-handed