ANOTHER PART OF THE RIVER. 53 



the entire community. Instead of promoting social 

 order and happiness, or of furthering the cause of 

 virtue, they have only served to create misery and op- 

 pression, and withal to encourage the increase of crime. 

 Our Elysian soil, from which root to root, morality and 

 religion were wont to spring, has been impregnated, 

 out of the storehold of this baneful system, with the 

 seeds of contention, profligacy, and harm ! Who, in 

 fact, are most of the dirty-jobbers employed in its 

 service, but a set of worthless miscreants, and reduced 

 debauchees men, of course, who have few pretensions 

 to principle, and fewer still to those golden charities 

 of the heart, those tendrils of our natural philanthropy, 

 which have adorned the virtuous in all ages ? What 

 such creatures effect in the way of contaminating 

 an unguarded people is almost incredible. Disposed 

 of in an artificial manner through every item in the 

 land, they enforce their several examples beyond the 

 reach of control. Achieving nothing but corruption 

 of principle, and the unfrequent demolition of a few 

 whisky stills, they are incomed, notwithstanding, with 

 large and lavish emoluments. The public gain nothing 

 but detriment at their hands ; and yet the public it is 

 by whom they are pampered up. Every one knows 

 how the poet Burns felt his situation among them 

 how he abhorred the company necessity had compelled 

 him to mingle with ! Since his time, they have 

 grown worse and worse, and, strange to say, although 

 cursed by him from his very heart, glory in the fact 



