any means, constitute my own ordinary beverage; and that my most energetic remarks and aptest quotations in favour of "the cup that cheers but not inebriates," are generally made under the influence of another cup which does both. The fact is as I have told you. Endowed by nature with that candid and insatiable spirit of enquiry, and that entire openness to conviction, which in politics are the characteristic of the respectable section called waverers, and never having been able to make up my mind tho'roughly, conclusively, and inexorably on any subject whatever, I claim the justice of not having my fluctuations ascribed to any dereliction of principle. In truth, Mr North, there is in this question, as in every other that ever Í examined, an infinite deal to be said on both sides. First, let us consider the matter in a chemical point of view. Listen to the animated and urgent remonstrance of a learned hydrophobist addressing himself to those whom he styles the Antichristian Sect, vulgarly and illiterately calling themselves tea totalers. "You say that ale and porter, wines and spirits, are stimulating poisons! What is the atmosphere the air we breathe? It is composed of four-fifths of nitrogen gas, (the most deadly poison if breathed by itself,) mixed with about one-fifth of oxygen gas, which is also a stimulating poison; for, if taken undiluted with nitrogen, it would produce great excitement, inflammation, and death; into which gas, if it pleased Heaven suddenly and entirely to convert the atmosphere, it would consume the world to its foundation in one universal blaze; yet, if diluted with the other gas, it gives vigour, vivacity, health, beauty, and existence to man, and the whole natural world. The oxygen, applied a few moments in a concentrated form, increases the pulse, and produces an excitement bordering on inebriation. When you say we should take no stimulus, must we therefore abstain from inhaling the stimulus of the atmosphere? A stimulating poison, too, it may be called, from being compounded of ingredients which, taken separately, would instantly kill." Here is manifestly the true ground of the comparison instituted by a distinguished orator between the air we breathe and the liberty of the press. Each may be

said to be compounded of inflammatory and destructive elements, the evil properties of which are neutralized by combination. What is nitrogen gas to a letter from Brutus, or a leading article to the gross personality, the rude invective, the wilful misrepresentation, the malicious hint, and the daring libel? Yet, if we have our newspaper not, we die; and, indeed, it appears that such a thing as a deleterious compound is a physical impossibility-a mere chimera; since if, from the combination of even noxious elements, a salutary whole is formed, it follows, a fortiori, that when the ingredients are themselves innocent, or it may be beneficial, the resulting compound must necessarily be wholesome; and this is the great argument in favour of the salubrious properties of punch, bishop, whiskytoddy, and the like. No one is more thoroughly familiar than yourself, Mr North, with the component parts of punch. Your practical knowledge on the subject, where, or at what early period of precocious youth originally acquired I know not, has been matured in innumerable symposia; and, so far as theory is concerned, the source of your learning is probably Johnson's dictionary, which would inform you that punch is a liquor made by mixing spirit with water, sugar, and the juice of lemon, and formerly with spice; and is so called from an Indian word signifying five, that being the number of ingredients. The Greek equivalent for punch, or more properly pounch, is dia EvTS; but the spice is now admissible only in bishop; wherefore in the universities, and in convocations of the clergy, and in other assemblages of learned men, punch is more correctly called d τεσσαρων, signifying a combination of four.

Thus it appears that, in this liquid, the purifying and nutritious principle of composition is carried at least twice as far as in common atmospheric air, which labours under the disadvantage of being a mixture of the elements only. Of course, however, many will be prepared to contend that punch is not, by any means, as important and vital an agent in the economy of nature as air; so that, without its regular supply as a stimulus, men would" dwindle and die." Indeed, there are some people of my acquaintance, and

"small tribute of affection and esteem" should consist of a silver tankard, of course with an appropriate inscription; and I would willingly take either pledge (for it appears that abstinence pledges are twofold, consisting, like quantities in prosody, of long and short) never to apply the testimonial to my lips, except for the purpose of imbibing the contents medicinally. This I might safely undertake; for it is well known to such as drink porter on philosophic principles, that the metal and the liquor together, with the interior oval fleshy membranes with which they come in contact, form a perfect voltaic circle; and to me the galvanic action produced thereby is so peculiarly refreshing, that I defy all the drugs in the pharmacopoeia to do me so much good. But if it should be considered inconsistent with the principles of a society established for the propagation of total abstinence to connive at the existence of tankards with any qualification whatsoever, then I am sure I should not object to a purse, or even a tea-pot, under the circumstances. I have occasionally seen advertisements of trips to Richmond, and excursions to the Nore, for the benefit of evangelical preachers and other meritorious individuals, who have given satisfaction to their respective admirers. I am unwilling to believe that this hint will be thrown away. Try the sincerity and the deserts of the majority of those who profess many things by any practical test; call upon an English patriot or an Irish tail as the condition of the enormous tributes which are poured into their capacious maws, to desist altogether from heavy-wet potations, and it will be seen how much easier it is to spout sedition than to relinquish one of the necessaries of life. This is an illustration of the wide difference between preaching and practice: it is scarcely necessary to call attention to the fact that my own claim is founded on the latter.

When I consider tea totalism with reference to economy, whether politi cal or domestic, I am as much at a stand still as a prime minister irresolute, and doing nothing upon the great question of Non-Intrusion. In the treatise of our Anti-pantapedist (this epithet was coined by my barber, who is the sole and original inventor of the words Rypophagon and Eukeirogeneion, and

the super-essential soaps for shaving which they are intended to designate) I cannot discover any attempt to refute the very questionable position that water is the cheapest of all be. verages. I do not find it so in my own individual case; but perhaps that is owing to the trifling progress I have as yet made in the practice of Rechabitism, and the precautions which I am compelled to adopt at every step. As for my household establishment, it consists merely of one helot-viz. a maid of all work, whom, if I had ever so many children, I should object upon principle to making occasionally drunk for the edification of the young ones, both on account of the expense attending repeated successful attempts to intoxicate a sturdy domestic, and because of the immorality of such a proceeding. On the contrary, I have exerted all my eloquence to induce the girl to renounce fermented liquors; and partly, I must admit, with a view to some little pecuniary saving, which the state of my ways and means renders highly desirable, have given her many lectures on the wholesomeness of water. This I did with the most perfect goodwill and inward satisfaction; for it is a very pleasant and grateful reflection to a benevolent mind, that one is effecting a reduction, be it ever so trifling, in one's annual domestic expenditure, at the same time that one is promoting the great cause of sobriety and morality, and all that. But the artful creature, having stated that if she became a tea-totaler she should require an allowance in lieu of beer—a silver medal containing the long pledge, and an annual trifle for enabling her to join the Rechabite expedition to Hampton Court on Whitmonday, I desisted from my exhortations, and gave her warning without more ado. I cannot tell you, Christopher, how much I was disgusted with the selfish and sordid attempt of this woman to impose upon me. On what principle, I should like to know, could she require compensation for doing that, which in her own heart she must have been persuaded was the correct sort of thing, for adopting those habits of decorum and sobriety which are ever the characteristic of a well-conducted female? But, indeed, compensation seems to be the pervading principle of the present age. Every body is demanding compensa

tion for every thing; town-clerks, bumbailiffs, and Jack Ketches. It is a principle mischievous in the highest degree-leading people into the habitual perpetration of many enormities, with the sole object of afterwards in sisting on having acquired a vested interest in their very excesses, and on being accordingly entitled to compensation for desisting therefrom. I suppose that we shall soon have the members of the swell mob requiring compensation for abstaining from picking our pockets. On consideration, I retracted the warning, as I had forgotten to pay the girl her wages for the two or three last quarters, and I could not discover what had become of the portion of my trifling income which I had intended to appropriate for that purpose.

Thus much, Mr North, touching my own private concerns, to the peculiar state of which I have been led to advert with the more candour and particularity, because I felt assured that the confidence which I reposed in yourself and the public, would not be abused. With respect to the politicoeconomical part of the question, I can safely declare that bewilderment is a feeble term to express the utter perplexity of mind into which I have been thrown in weighing the expediency of adopting water as a universal circulating medium, more especially as many prime ministers, chancellors, and other distinguished statesmen of either house of Parliament, have given a decided preference to the circulation of the bottle. Considering totalism as a question of finance merely, it is admitted that if that fine but volatile people, the Irish, were capable of persevering in the pledge which they have taken in a fit of enthusiasm, ardent as their own Innishowen, and amounting to a species of intoxication, (which I believe to have been purely moral,) and the English nation were very generally to follow the example, there would be a considerable permanent diminution in the revenue of the country-unless, indeed, water were to be made an exciseable article; which expedient I claim the merit of having been the first to suggest. But is a diminution necessarily a loss? It might, perhaps, be so considered, when the finances of a private individual were concerned. I should find it difficult to persuade

Messrs Blackwood, if-putting a tempestuously improbable case, (for there are improbabilities, as well as presumptions, so very violent as to be properly called tempestuous,)—the circulation of the Magazine were to be diminished, by even so small a proportion as a few thousands, that they should consider that event as a matter of great self-congratulation, and call their neighbours around them and rejoice accordingly. In political economy, however, different considerations prevail. I have heard the national debt, for instance, spoken of as a great public benefit. It may be so ; but I do not the less regard my tailor's bill, the settlement of which I have for urgent reasons deferred from day to day, and from year to year, as a very decided nusiance. There is next the doctrine of fructification to be attended to, and applied to the particular case under consideration. It has, moreover, been lately discovered that a falling off in the customs, or the excise, so far from being a just ground for apprehension or regret, ought to be regarded with complacency, inasmuch as it represents a relief in taxation to that extent; and, undoubtedly, if I can be prevailed on to abstain from my matutinal draught of brown stout, I shall, pro tanto, be relieved from the beer-tax. I merely touch upon these points, in order to give you an idea of the immense difficulty of coming to any definite conclusion on this branch of the question.

No subject in the present age, whether it be the use of dog-trucks, or of small boys for sweeping chimneys, or a private inclosure bill, or the matter of a railway petition, can be properly dismissed, without saying something about the connexion between it and the morality of the people. Pray, Mr North, what may be your own idea of morality? In academic life, not the well-conducted youth who earns the prize for good behaviour by assiduous attendance on morning chapel, and strict general conformity with the regulations of college discipline; but he whose thirst for a strong drink, compounded of the two elements of malt and hops, and commonly known in universities by the name of audit, (so called, because it is professedly brewed for the purpose of being administered on audit day

to tenants, but of which the alumni of Alma Mater do not fail to secure a goodly portion for their own cheek,) is perpetually urging him to call for more ale, whenever he can get it, is therefore denominated a moralist.

From this, as well as other circumstances, it is to be collected that the notion of morality entertained by under-graduates at those seminaries of sound and religious learning, is somewhat lax -of course I speak of theory only. I take genuine morality to be "obedience to consistency with-those laws which guide or govern the mode or manner of men as SOCIAL beings." If this definition be correct, then is the water-drinker, or the tea-totaler, not to be compared, as a moralist, with him whose practice is not that of abstinence. For under what circumstances do we yield with most entire abandonment to all the kindly and generous impulses of our nature? When are the social feelings most widely diffused, spreading out, like concentric waves, on every side from our nearest and dearest connexions-until they embrace those whose relationship to us consists merely in their being of the same species as ourselves, or even Negroes, Jews, Cockneys, and the brute creation? It is over the ruby wine, or the flowing bowl, that the yearnings of natural affection are the most expanded and irrepressible; that the good citizen speaks in the tenderest accents and the warmest terms of those respected parents, of whom he is proud to call himself the son of his dear brothers and sisters-of his worthy cousins, and other remoter kindredthat he proposes, with the most benevolent and glowing amplification of all good qualities, and the most determined blindness to all imperfections, the respective healths of the friends of his heart, and even of his distant acquaintance. Imagine an attempt at a collection for the benefit of some orphan asylum, from a party who were

enjoying themselves over a dish of tea, or a bottle of water. The poor infants might in their clean bibs and tuckers, and with well-washed shining faces, be paraded before the company until they were foot-sore, and yet fail in extorting more than a few sympathetic and wishy-washy sighs, or the offer of a lump of sugar. It may be laid down as an axiom that in this country, charity, which is a very material part of morality, is totally incompatible with slops of all kinds.

In conclusion, it may not be improper, with reference to the question of tea-totalism, briefly to advert to the present state of our relations with China. If, in consequence of our hostilities with that whimsical people, the Linnæan system were to be persisted in, and our supply of bohea, souchong, and the Howqua mixture to be permanently stopped, what would be the position of an individual who had unreflectingly taken the tea-total pledge, under the impression that there would be no end to the importation of his favourite herb? Is a pledge of this description like a Roman Catholic oath? Can absolution from it, either total or partial, be granted by any authority, either civil or ecclesiastical? If not, the tea-totaler might possibly find himself suddenly deprived of his necessary element, like a fish from which the water has receded, and left him floundering and gasping upon the dry land. I, for one, shall certainly abstain from any pledge of the kind, until I shall have been firmly convinced that the Chinese have become a thoroughly rational, highlyeducated, and commercial people, understanding their own interests, and never actuated by capricious impulses, or otherwise than by liberal, longsighted, and honourable views. In the mean time I remain, dear Christopher, yours ever, &c.,

TOMKINS.