ANGLING REMINISCENCES. 45 



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 

 oppression, 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 /worth- 

 less 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 cor- 

 ruption of principle, and the unfrequent demolition 

 of a few whisky stills, they are in corned, notwith- 

 standing, 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 com- 

 pany 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 



