“No person,” says Sir Astley Cooper “has greater hostility to dram drinking than myself, insomuch that I never suffer any ardent spirits in my house—­thinking them evil spirits!—­and if the poor could witness the white livers, the dropsies, the shattered nervous systems which I love seen as the consequence of drinking, they would be aware that spirits and poisons were synonymous terms.”

Institutions; it will advance, and what the legislature may never be able to accomplish, the spirit of improvement eventually will.

But having considered those cases, in which wilful neglect and bad example may be charged upon the parents, we should not forget to tell those who object to our interference in the duty of a child’s natural protectors, that it is not, in every instance, from wilful neglect on their part, that their children are left unprotected in the streets.  The circumstances of the labouring classes are such, in many cases, that they are compelled to leave their children either wholly unprotected, or in the charge of some one who frequently becomes a betrayer instead of a defender.  The father, perhaps, goes to his daily labour in the morning, before the children are out of bed, and does not return till they are in bed again at night.  The mother goes out in like manner, the earnings of the husband being insufficient for the maintenance of the family, and the children are intrusted throughout the day to the care of some girl, whose parents are as poor as themselves, and are glad to let her earn something towards her support.  Numbers of little girls thus go out before they are twelve years old, and teach the little children all they know,—­commonly to be deceitful, and not unfrequently to be dishonest.  The parents, careless or unsuspecting, only make inquiry when they return home if the children have been good and quiet, and of course receive an answer in the affirmative.  In the course of a few years the evil consequences begin to show themselves, and then the good folks wonder how or when the seeds of such depravity could have been sown.  Many I know will be inclined to smile at the insignificancy of the cause pointed out.  I can only say, it is from such springs, however regarded, that the great stream of vice is supplied; and what we laugh at now, for its insignificant origin, will hereafter, in its maturity, laugh at us for our impotence, in vainly endeavouring to stem it.  What are parents to do with their children, situated as those are of whom we have just spoken?  And very many are so situated.  Is it possible for them to perform their duty, as protectors of their children?  It requires all their time to labour for their support, and they therefore leave them, unavoidably, either in such hands as we have described, or to take care of themselves; to range the streets, and form such associations as may there happen to fall in their way.  They get into company with older delinquents, and become first their instruments, and then their associates; till at length they find their way into a gaol.