needful, explaining and perplexing and contradicting each other, and leaving the application of them too often to chance or something worse; but that it would best serve the object, to be rational and consistent, to oppose vice and encourage virtue at all times, and on all occasions. Now, although the writer hopes that he is only one of many millions who are, more or less, desirous of the welfare of this country; and, although he thinks it both bad taste and bad policy for every one to presume to request the notice of the Rulers of the country to their sentiments, as though it were likely they were so well informed, or so quick to learn and wise to know;" yet, imagining he clearly sees that we exceedingly miss it for want of a little more practical common sense, to render the efforts of more imposing genius tangible, he has ventured to offer these suggestions, confining himself to a few of the more prominent and generally admitted wants, vacuities, and redundancies of our present

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system; and beginning at the two points where he feels and sees the greatest source of unhappiness, debasement of character, and impoverishment to the nation, in the increased crimes of the working classes, arising from various causes; but no other so prolific and general as the inducement which cheap gin affords to drunken habits, and a code of criminal jurisprudence remarkably deficient in its every stage. So that if a simple, practical code, excluding all legal nonsense and false profession, would seem calculated to arrest the present rapid march of crime, he ventures to hope that no unworthy fears of the administers of the present system, miscalled jurisprudence, would be suffered longer to stand in the way of the happiness and respectability of the nation; believing that the promotion of very high degrees of national virtue is practical, plain, and indeed not difficult, and that those suggestions would serve as a nucleus to form them; and indeed, that

the adoption of any one of these suggestions would yield some real, substantial, permanent happiness to the country, increase her prosperity, her wealth, and her respectability. Notwithstanding they are offered by unitiated obscurity, yet, perhaps, in some cases, a lookeron may take a more unprejudiced survey than those, who, in the midst of opinions not unfrequently conflicting, and of interests incompatible with each other, sometimes find subjects offered to them smothered in sophistry, which would otherwise be obviously clear. Should the liberty herein taken require apology, the writer would wish to plead his ardent wishes for the welfare of his fellow-creatures generally, and of his own countrymen and King in particular, whom it has pleased God to bless with so fine an understanding and honour, he verily believes in mercy and goodness to this country, and which we all have the benefit of, though in various degrees.

PREFACE.

THESE observations were written with a hope that the Duke of Wellington might afford time to bestow on them some reflections of his powerful and straight-forward mind, and apply such remedies as should appear, at once needful and practicable; but this hope having been, a few days ago, disappointed, yet the desire remaining of their practical application, has induced the writer to prepare them for the press, with such slight alterations as seemed indispensable to the circumstances of the change. Thus, though quiet, unobtrusive usefulness may not be so fully attained, yet

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