During my superintendence of the first school, I had a painful facility of examining these matters.  Frequently, when I have inquired the cause of the wretched plight in which some of the children were sent to the school,—­perhaps with scarcely a shoe to their feet, sometimes altogether without,—­I have heard from their mothers the most heart-rending recitals of the husband’s misconduct.  One family in particular I remember, consisting of seven children, two of whom were in the school; four of them were supported entirely by the exertions of the mother, who declared to me, that she did not receive a shilling from their father for a month together; all the money he got he kept to spend at the public-house; and his family, for what he cared, might go naked, or starve.  He was not only a great drunkard, but a reprobate into the bargain; beating and abusing the poor woman, who thus endeavoured to support his children by her labour.

The evil does not always stop here.  Driven to the extreme of wretchedness by her husband’s conduct, the woman sometimes takes to drinking likewise, and the poor babes are ten thousand times more pitiable than orphans.  I have witnessed the revolting sight of a child leading home both father and mother from the public-house, in a disgusting state of intoxication.  With tears and entreaties I have seen the poor infant vainly endeavouring to restrain them from increasing their drunkenness, by going into the houses on their way home; they have shaken off the clinging child, who, in the greatest anxiety, waited without to resume its painful task; knowing, all the time, perhaps, that whilst its parents were thus throwing away their money, there was not so much as a crust of bread to appease its hunger at home.  Let it not be thought that this is an overcharged picture of facts; it is but a faint, a very faint and imperfect sketch of reality which defies exaggeration.  Cases of such depravity, on the part of mothers, I with much pleasure confess to be comparatively rare.  Maternal affection is the preventive.  But what, let me ask, can be hoped of the children of such parents?  What are their characters likely to become under such tuition?  With such examples before their eyes, need they leave their homes to seek contamination, or to learn to do evil.

And here I must say, if I were asked to point out, in the metropolis, or any large city, the greatest nuisance, the worst bane of society, the most successful promoter of vice,—­I should, without a moment’s hesitation, point to the first public-house or spirit dealer’s that met my view.  Nor can I, in speaking of the causes of juvenile delinquency, omit to say, I think these houses, indirectly, a very great cause of it.  Why I think so, my readers will readily conceive from what I have already said.  I am sure that Satan has no temple in which he is so devoutly worshiped, or so highly honoured, as the ale-house,—­no priest is so devoted as its landlord,—­no followers are so zealous in his behalf as its frequenters.