the subject of Loan Societies deserves notice:

LOAN SOCIETIES.

IRRELIGION.

Wherever vice still dares to lift up her hideous aspect in all its native deformity, there the working man eagerly rushes in crowds, as if bent on giving the lie to the plausible distich which declares that "vice to be hated needs but to be seen." Who make up the main body of the attendants upon prize-fights, dog-fights, duck - hunts, cock-fights, badger-baitings, and all similar exhibitions, at which cruelty to God's image, and God's creatures, and blasphemy and enmity against God himself so much abound? The answer

The well-known improvidence of the working man, is turned to profitable account by numbers who speculate upon its general prevalence. The tallyman haunts the workshop with his worthless wares, and obtains a firstrate price by instalments for rubbish of the lowest value. Rascally loan societies, established with the sole view of realizing a plundering profit from the involved and the imprudent, fleece the unhappy borrower, or his insane securities, to their ultimate ruin. Fraudu-is-the labourer, the husbandman, the lent friendly societies

and

benefit

clubs, set on foot for no other real purpose than to create a perennial drain upon the gin-keg and the beer-barrel, draw the unsuspicious and uncalculating labourer into their plausible snare. Relying upon the promise of prospective advantages which never can be, nor ever are intended to be, realized, he attends regularly at the periodical meetings, subscribes his threepence or his sixpence, and drinks his shilling or half-crown, and, dreaming that he is laying up a provision for sickness or old age, inwardly extols himself as a model of prudence and forethought. By-and-bye accident or sickness lays him upon the shelf, and his application for the promised relief is met with some false and trumped-up imputation of informality in his membership, or some other flaw in his case, which must, according to the rules, of which he knows nothing, be referred to arbitration, leading to nothing. Or he dies, and his widow is met with the declaration that there are no disposable funds; while at the same moment the society is trumpeting its fame abroad, by lying advertisements setting forth its prosperous state.

handicraftsman, the journeyman-all who have to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. But for the presence of these, the pugilist would meet but small encouragement for the display of the science which teaches him to disable or slaughter (as chance may determine) his fellow-man; and the innocent creatures domesticated for our use and advantage, might escape the torturing experience of man's villainous inhumanities to the living and breathing bounties of his Maker and Pro

vider.

Another proof of the irreligion of the working man is to be found in his multitudinous attendance at all places of vicious and licentious resort, of which there are such abundance in the metropolis, and in all large towns and manufacturing districts. At the theatrical tavern, where drunkenness and the drama have mutually covenanted to divide the contents of his purse, and where bad taste and worse morality cater for his amusement, he sits night after night in gaping admiration, and gloats over the obscene jokes of some stage - worn, sexagenarian Lothario, jokes rendered doubly relishing by the accompanying streams of gin. At the Where there is so much immorality, sixpenny casino, too, the common vesthere is, of course, in the same pro- tibule of the brothel and the stew, the workman joins the midnight orgies, portion, irreligion, since all this is sim-where, to the sound of blatant brass, ply the effect of the absence of the fear of God and the love of the Saviour. Hence Mr. Smith has some excellent, though lamentable statements, on the subject of religion :

he whirls his strumpet partner in the wanton waltz, and then, seduced by her wiles, unheeding

"That the dead Are in her house, her guests in depths of hell,"

in the persons and practice of a great number of the working classes who have long ceased to work. These, he says, are ruined by drunkenness. Expelled from the workshop for incapa. city or irregularity, they have shaken

the inducement of that reliance upon them which they do not warrant, and The truth of this is made evident by a neglect of all other prudent measures. the constant appeals which are made by parties whose maladies confine them beyond the term during which relief is

obtainable from the fund.

One convincing proof of the general improvidence of workmen is patent to the observation of all, and, indeed, can hardly have escaped recognition by any one: I refer to the plenteous attendance of working men's wives at the nearest approach to the pay-table when the important hour of payment arrives. Few things show more effectually than this single circumstance, the debasing and unmanly estimation of a wife's just claims, as well as of his and her proper position in society, which the majority of the class would appear to entertain without a thought of degradation. Men earning regularly thirty, forty, and fifty shillings a week, are content to see their partners in life, the mothers of their children, waiting hour after hour in rain, snow,

hands with shame, and constituted themselves a perpetual tax upon the labours of their fellow-workmen. These are persons who are called tramps," who wander about from place to place, professedly in search of work, whereas they are only intent upon sin in the shape of sensuality. Their lives are those of vagabonds! Some of them have travelled every turnpike-road in England in association with paupers and thieves, and have made acquaintance with every refuge of beggary and destitution with which the country is plagued. The writer states that this huge shoal of perambulating scoundrels," are among the principal sup-frost, or fog, until the weekly dole is paid ports of the beer-shop and the ginshop, and a sort of moral pestilence wherever they go; and he traces this state of things up to habits of intemperance. The writer states that intemperance is always followed by improvidence, and that this prevails to an extent all but incredible! He states that the exceptions are only a handful, the rule being thoughtless, wasteful extravagance. Mr. Smith says:

INTEMPERANCE.

down: happy the wife who, even then, can get enough at last from the gripe of her thirsty lord, to purchase a few household necessaries, and provide the morrow's dinner; and happier still if she can do this in sufficient time to

spend the money before the shops are shut, and thus escape the last disgraceful resource of the Sunday morning's market. This discreditable spectacle, it is almost needless to say, might be prevented and abolished for ever by the exercise of a single grain of prudence or self-denial: but these household virtues, among the seventy per cent., are smothered by pots of beer, the long score for which must be paid off on Saturday night, even though wife and children go barefoot, or stay away from the house of worship, through want of decent cloth

So thoroughly is the improvidence of workmen estimated by the employers, that, in many establishments they compel him, as a condition of his engage-ing to appear in. ment, to subscribe a few pence weekly to a sick-fund, which secures him ten or a dozen shillings a week, for three months only, in case of his being laid up. From careful observation of the working of these funds, I am not disposed to say much in their praise, -their chief tendency appearing to be

This is a mournful picture! It pains the heart even to peruse it; but there can be no doubt of the awful extent to which it prevails, and the consequent misery among the families of the land. The following paragraph on

the subject of Loan Societies deserves notice:

LOAN SOCIETIES.

The well-known improvidence of the working man, is turned to profitable account by numbers who speculate upon its general prevalence. The tallyman haunts the workshop with his worthless wares, and obtains a firstrate price by instalments for rubbish of the lowest value. Rascally loan societies, established with the sole view of realizing a plundering profit from the involved and the imprudent, fleece the unhappy borrower, or his insane securities, to their ultimate ruin. Fraudu lent friendly societies and benefit clubs, set on foot for no other real purpose than to create a perennial drain upon the gin-keg and the beer-barrel, draw the unsuspicious and uncalculating labourer into their plausible snare. Relying upon the promise of prospective advantages which never can be, nor ever are intended to be, realized, he attends regularly at the periodical meetings, subscribes his threepence or his sixpence, and drinks his shilling or half-crown, and, dreaming that he is laying up a provision for sickness or old age, inwardly extols himself as a model of prudence and forethought. By-and-bye accident or sickness lays him upon the shelf, and his application for the promised relief is met with some false and trumped-up imputation of informality in his membership, or some other flaw in his case, which must, according to the rules, of which he knows nothing, be referred to arbitration, leading to nothing. Or he dies, and his widow is met with the declaration that there are no disposable funds; while at the same moment the society is trumpeting its fame abroad, by lying advertisements setting forth its prosperous state.

Where there is so much immorality, there is, of course, in the same proportion, irreligion, since all this is simply the effect of the absence of the fear of God and the love of the Saviour. Hence Mr. Smith has some excellent, though lamentable statements, on the subject of religion :

IRRELIGION.

Wherever vice still dares to lift up her hideous aspect in all its native deformity, there the working man eagerly rushes in crowds, as if bent on giving the lie to the plausible distich which declares that "vice to be hated needs but to be seen." Who make up the main body of the attendants upon prize-fights, dog-fights, duck-hunts, cock-fights, badger-baitings, and all similar exhibitions, at which cruelty to God's image and God's creatures, and blasphemy and enmity against God himself so much abound? The answer is-the labourer, the husbandman, the handicraftsman, the journeyman-all who have to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. But for the presence of these, the pugilist would meet but small encouragement for the display of the science which teaches him to disable or slaughter (as chance may determine) his fellow-man; and the innocent creatures domesticated for our use and advantage, might escape the torturing experience of man's villainous inhumanities to the living and breathing bounties of his Maker and Provider.

Another proof of the irreligion of the working man is to be found in his multitudinous attendance at all places of vicious and licentious resort, of which there are such abundance in the metropolis, and in all large towns and manufacturing districts. At the theatrical tavern, where drunkenness and the drama have mutually covenanted to divide the contents of his purse, and where bad taste and worse morality cater for his amusement, he sits night after night in gaping admiration, and gloats over the obscene jokes of some stage - worn, sexagenarian Lothario, jokes rendered doubly relishing by the accompanying streams of gin. At the sixpenny casino, too, the common vestibule of the brothel and the stew, the workman joins the midnight orgies, where, to the sound of blatant brass, he whirls his strumpet partner in the wanton waltz, and then, seduced by her wiles, unheeding

"That the dead Are in her house, her guests in depths of hell,"

the children of labour; and wherever the means of sensual indulgence are to be purchased, or the standard of folly is unfurled on that day, there is the working man to be found, willing to forget himself in forgetfulness of heaven, and, more than that, willing also to compel his fellow-labourers to that disobedience to the command of God that they are reluctant to commit, because their services are necessary to the completion of his own impious gratification.

he becomes the harlot's gull, and his youth and health, and the fruits of his industry, are lavishly sacrificed at the shrine of all-engrossing lust. The galleries of our large theatres, and both pit and galleries of the smaller ones, attest, by the swarms of the industrial orders that throng their benches every night, how numerous are the members of this class who find in the excitement of theatricals that recreation which, were they under the influence of true religious principles, they would the rather seek in men- The last proof which I shall adduce tal cultivation and self-improvement. of the irreligion of workmen in the There are a thousand dark dens and mass, is one that will be well and lairs of vice and obscenity of every thoroughly recognized by the parties description and degree of vileness, at whose instigation this humble paper which owe their existence and entire has been penned, I allude to the support to the utter disregard by the paucity of professing Christians, and sons of toil of all that religion honours regular attendance upon Christian inand inculcates; and ten thousand struction among the industrial ranks. quacks and impostors, of one sort or I know, of course, (as who does not?) other, who would sink at once into ab- that there are a goodly number of ject poverty, were the working man to working men who are real working hear and to obey the voice of his con- Christians, and I know well their value, science and his God. too, and the great need there is at the A third prominent proof of the ir-present moment of operative Christianreligion of the working ranks, when ity, if I may so call it, in the Christian taken in the aggregate, is their disre- Church. But when we look at the gard of the Sabbath. It would be immense portion of our population, strange indeed if, having the taste and composed of this particular class in its dispositions above described, it were thousand branches-when we find that otherwise with them, seeing that a its number mounts up to millions-and proper observance of the claims of that compare the whole vast total with the day would have saved the working comparatively inconsiderable muster man from the slough of vice and de- who even show so much regard for the gradation in which he has so deeply decencies of religion as to bestow anysunk. But it has long been the system thing like a regular attendance at a of the labouring multitude to transform place of worship, we cannot fail to be the portal of heaven into the gate of struck with the wretched proportion hell; and hence we see them the main these latter bear to the multitudes that supporters and paymasters of that neglect even the outward observances numerous and unprincipled band, who of religion altogether. There is no have everywhere combined to make space allowed me to enlarge upon this their gains by the desecration of the section of our subject here; and, inday of rest. The monster trains that deed, it is rather a matter of serious drag their huge length hourly from reflection than of remark. Where railway stations all Sunday long, are ignorance, improvidence, and intempeheavy with the weight of working men. rance so abundantly prevail, that irreThe over-crammed and topling steam- ligion of which they are the fruits and ers that navigate our rivers and coasts evidences must be equally potent and on that day, are reeling beneath the pervading. It remains now rather to burden of the same kind of freight. inquire how these fearful and fatal The suburban alehouses and tea-gar- elements of the industrial character dens, and other rural receptacles of of our day are connected with the wantonness and debauchery, swarm on spread and reception of infidel prin- | each returning Sabbath evening, with ciples.