is usually commensurate with the demand; but the numbers have nothing to do with the argument."

"Then I cannot see what you are driving at ; for allow me to say that, admitting the class to be as numerous as you state from American authority, still they are very orderly and well behaved. You never see them drunk in the streets; you never hear swearing or abusive language; and you do in London and your seaports. There is a decorum and sense of propriety about them which, you must admit, speaks well, even for those unfortunate persons, and shews some sense of morality and decency even in our most abandoned.”

"You have brought forward the very facts which I was about to state, and it is from these facts that I draw quite contrary conclusions. If your argument is good, it must follow that the women of Paris are much more virtuous than the women of London. Now, I consider that these facts prove that the standard of

morality is lower in America and France than it is in England. A French woman who has fallen never drinks, or uses bad language; she follows her profession, and seldom sinks, but rises in it. The grisette eventually keeps her carriage, and retires with sufficient to support her in her old age, if she does not marry. The American women of this class appear to me to be precisely the same description of people; whereas, in England, a woman who falls, falls never to rise again-sinking down by degrees from bad to worse, until she ends her days in rags and misery. But why so? because, as you say, they become reckless and intemperate-they do feel their degradation, and cannot bear up against it-they attempt to drown conscience, and die from the vain attempts. Now, the French and the American women of this class apparently do not feel this, and, therefore, they behave and do better. This is one reason why

I

argue that the standard of morality is not so high in your country as with us, although, from

circumstances, conjugal infidelity may be less

frequent."

"Then, captain, you mean to say that cursing, swearing, and drinking, is a proof of morality in your country?"

66

"It is a proof, not of the morality of the party, but of the high estimation in which virtue is held, shewn by the indifference and disregard to everything else after virtue is once lost."

This is a specimen of many arguments held with the Americans upon that question, and when examining into it, it should be borne in mind that there is much less excuse for vice in America than in the Old Countries. Poverty is but too often the mother of crime, and in America it may be said that there is no poverty to offer up in extenuation.

Mr. Carey appears to have lost sight of this fact when he so triumphantly points at the difference between the working classes of both nations, and quotes the Report of our Poor Law

Commissioners to prove the wretchedness and misery of ours. I cannot, however, allow his assertions to pass without observation, especially as English and French travellers have been equally content to admit without due examination the claims of the Americans; I refer more particularly to the large manufactory at Lowell, in Massachusets, which from its asserted purity has been one of the boasts of America. Mr. Carey says

"The following passage from a statement, furnished by the manager of one of the principal establishments in Lowell, shows a very gratifying state of things: There have only occurred three instances in which any apparently improper connection or intimacy had taken place, and in all those cases the parties were married on the discovery, and several months prior to the birth of their children; so that, in a legal point of view, no illegitimate birth has taken place among the females employed in the mills under my direction. Nor have I known of but one case

among all the females employed in Lowell. I have said known-I should say heard of one case. I am just informed, that that was a case where the female had been employed but a few days in any mill, and was forthwith rejected from the corporation, and sent to her friends. In point of female chastity, I believe that Lowell is as free from reproach as any place of an equal population in the United States or the world.'" And he winds up his chapter with the following remark:

"The effect upon morals of this state of things, is of the most gratifying character. The number of illegitimate children born in the United States is small; so small, that we should suppose one in fifty to be a high estimate. In the great factories of the Eastern States there prevails a high degree of morality, presenting a most extraordinary contrast to the immorality represented to exist in a large portion of those of England."

Next follows Miss Martineau, who says