It is one of the consequences of adopting false and artificial notions on political economy, that these drive the most conscientious and virtuous men to the most mischievous and violent extremities.  Where things should be left to themselves they believe interference to be right, and so believing, they think it necessary to carry out their views at whatever cost.  A remarkable instance of this was shewn by the virtuous and high-minded Duncan Forbes of Culloden.  He thought the introduction of foreign commodities ruinous to the country.  He considered that whatever was paid for them was so much lost to his fellow-countrymen.  On this principle he waged a determined war against a foreign commodity coming into vogue in his latter days, using all his endeavours to suppress its use, and substitute for it a commodity of home-produce.  Will the reader, in the days of temperance societies, believe that the commodity which he desired to suppress was tea, and that which he wished to encourage was beer?  Here are his own words in a letter to a statesman of the time:  ’The cause of the mischief we complain of is evidently the excessive use of tea, which is now become so common that the meanest families even of labouring people, particularly in burghs, make their morning’s meal of it, and thereby wholly disuse the ale which heretofore was their accustomed drink; and the same drug supplies all the labouring women with their afternoon’s entertainment, even to the exclusion of the twopenny.’  After so formidable a picture, it is not unnatural to find him thus crying out against the influence of Dutch enterprise, which was then spreading the drink which cheers but not inebriates throughout Europe:  ’They run their low-priced tea into Scotland, and sold it very cheap—­a pound went from half a crown to three or four shillings.  The goodwife was fond of it because her betters made use of tea; a pound of it would last her a month, which made her breakfast very cheap, so she made no account of the sugar which she took up only in ounces.  In short, the itch spread; the refuse of the vilest teas were run into this country from Holland, sold and bought at the prices I have mentioned; and at present there are very few cobblers in any of the burghs of this country who do not sit down gravely with their wives and families to tea.’[Footnote:  Culloden Papers, 191.] What a frightful picture!  We may laugh at it, but it really was frightful to one who sincerely believed that the money paid for tea was a dead loss to the country, and who did not know that the tea was paid for by the exportation of home-produce.

FAMILY LIFE IN A NEGRO TOWN.