If the Scotchman acquainted with the moral condition of Scotland, were to answer the appeal of this Swedish writer to find Mr. Laing guilty of a libel on the moral character of the Swedish nation, Saunders would probably take a snuff, and quietly observe, that there are nations, as well as individuals, whom it would be very difficult to libel.

This moralist seems to be particularly shocked at Mr. Laing's statement, that the Swedish population, at least the town populations of Sweden, is remarkably unchaste. Mr. Laing states that the proportion of illegitimate to legitimate births in Stockholm is as 1 to 23, while in London and Middlesex it is 1 to 38 legitimate births; and in Paris 1 to 5, and in the other French towns 1 to 7. Mr. Laing admits that he has here made a mistake-a very important mistake in his statement; but it happens to be a mistake in understating instead of overstating the amount of illegitimacy in Stockholm in one year. In the year 1838, there were born in Stockholm 2714 children, and of those 1577 were legitimate, and 1137 were illegitimate, making a balance of only 440 chaste mothers out of 2714: so that instead of 1 illegitimate birth for every 2 legitimate, it is actually 1 illegitimate for every 1 legitimate. In the town populations of Sweden, Stockholm not included, there were born 4083 legitimate and 926 illegitimate children in 1838, so that there the proportion is about 1 illegitimate to 4 legitimate births. Now these are, in general, petty country towns, without manufactures or commerce, towns of three or four thousand inhabitants. Is it the state of morals in our small towns, that 1 illegitimate child is born for every 4 legitimate? Aberdeen approaches nearer in popu

lation to Stockholm than Edinburgh. In Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, in any town in Christendom, is the proportion of bastards to legitimate children as 1 to 1. It is in vain to quote the opinion of the editor of "The Polytechnic Journal," that the returns of illegitimate births in the towns of England and Wales are, or may be, erroneous that London and Middlesex swarm with prostitutes, so that, in reality, the male sex may be quite as unchaste there as in Stockholm. The plain common sense of every man tells him, that such an enormous proportion of illegitimate births proves that the want of chastity in the female sex is not confined, as in London, to an outcast class of females, but is spread very widely over the female community of other classes, among whom, with us, a breach of chastity is of very rare occurrence. All the Swedish moralists and polytechnic journalists in the world will not make out that a nation is in a high moral condition with one unchaste for every four chaste mothers in the small towns, and two unchaste for every three chaste mothers in its metropolis.

This writer passes over in prudent silence the enormous proportion of the population of this metropolis which has gone in the course of a year through the public hospital, viz. 1 in every 607 of unmarried adults, for the treatment of an infamous disease; and also the attempt of this moral government a few years ago, to establish brothels, either as a financial or as a sanatory speculation. Mr. Laing is conscious that he has fully established by the official returns for 1838, which he now quotes, as well as by those for 1836, which he quoted in his "Tour in Sweden,"

moral scale of Europe, that chastity is not a Swedish virtue, and that he is not guilty of a libel on the Swedish nation in publishing their own official returns of the crimes committed among them in 1836, and now in 1838, and drawing obvious unavoidable inferences from them of the very low moral condition of Sweden.

What may be the causes of this frightfully demoralised state of a country in which the church establishment and the educational system are vigorous and effective? This silly pamphleteer would insinuate, that Mr. Laing attributes the demoralised state of the Swedish nation to religion and education: Mr. Laing attributes it now, and in his "Tour in Sweden," distinctly to misgovernment, and to the privileged classes in the social structure of Sweden keeping down all free agency as moral beings among the people, reducing them to the state of a soldiery with regulations, interference, and conventional laws and observances, instead of moral duties to guide them, and liable, like a soldiery, to fall into excesses and transgressions of all civil duties, when occasionally escaping from the kind of military surveillance of the public functionary.

The Swedish people are not vicious naturally. No people are so. But they are not treated by their government as free agents. Their time, labour, industry, property, are interfered with, and taken from them by government and its functionaries, by privileged classes, by a greedy and poor nobility living upon the taxes. They have consequently the vices of men who are not free agents -not bred under moral restraint, but under discipline, police regulation, or conventional restraint. In spite of religious and

educational establishments, they are demoralised by misgovernment, bad laws, and a faulty structure of society; and Mr. Laing draws, from the striking moral condition of this people, the important conclusion, that the cause of reform is the cause of morality; that the pious and good men among us who would make every sacrifice for the diffusion of education and religious instruction among the people, yet oppose every innovation or reform in the civil institutions and government of the country, are involved in contradiction and inconsistency. The very remarkable diminution of crime in Ireland, which accompanied the more liberal administration of government under the Whig ministry, the equal bearing of law at present towards the Catholic and Protestant population, strengthens this conclusion, proves that national morality is more intimately connected with good, even-handed, liberal government, and the equal rights of all in the social system, than with the religious and educational establishments of a country. The latter, as moral influences, are inefficient without the former.

This writer attributes the immorality of Sweden, which, after a long juggle with opinions and authorities against facts, he is forced to admit, to the drunkenness of the people, and their drunkenness again to the too powerful spirit of democracy in the Swedish constitution, by which the peasantry "enjoy the right to distil their own brandy as freely as to make their own soup." In the Swedish diet-this too liberal, too democratic assembly there are three chambers, besides that of the peasantry - the chamber of nobles, of clergy, and of the burgesses of

dicial or any beneficial act proposed in any other chamber, and hinder it passing into a law. How comes it that this excessive and demoralising right of every man to distil brandy at his pleasure, passed into a law through these three conservative chambers, any one of which could have stopped it? Is it that the nobility, clergy, and privileged shopkeepers get their rents, their church dues, their shop accounts, better paid; and, therefore, they allow this universal distillation among the people, have no objection to a demoralising influence provided it fills their purses? If the Swedish clergy and nobility sincerely believe that the general depravity, the low moral condition, of the Swedish nation proceeds from drunkenness fostered by this general unchecked distillation of spirits, why do they not restrain, or at least propose a law to restrain, this right of distillation? They themselves furnish the proof that their diet is merely a meeting of delegates of certain privileged bodies, for the purpose of legislating for their own advantage, without regard to the morality, well-being, or pros perity of the country. But to consider drunkenness as the cause of the low moral state of the Swedish nation is like the reasoning of the murderer Courvoisier, who held that his petty theft of his master's silver spoons was the cause of his midnight murder of his master; and that the deeper crime. was only a consequence of his theft, necessary to conceal it.

Drunkenness is the cause of crime but too often in the individual; but it is the effect of a low and degraded moral state of the national mind and habits, that individuals drink to excess. It is not, as this writer supposes, a necessary consequence of the