trators of the Poor-law in Ireland have to deal. There is no difficulty in Halifax on that score; and if throughout America the children of the poor were treated in one essential respect in the same spirit of fairness, there would be fewer occasions for bitterness than unhappily exist in some of the Northern States. The children being carefully taught, the boys are appenticed out as early as the age of twelve or thirteen, and are indentured till twenty-one, due precaution being had not only as to the means and character of the master, but for the protection of the religious faith of the child; the latter being secured by binding the Catholic child to a Catholic master, and the Protestant child to a Protestant master—a course which commends itself to every fair and impartial mind. The girls are apprenticed till the age of eighteen. By the conditions of the indenture, the child is to be suitably educated, and to be provided with a Sunday suit, at the expense of the master or mistress. But with very few exceptions, the children, boys and girls, become incorporated with the family, of which, almost from the first, they are looked upon and treated as members.
Of the entire number of inmates in this Halifax institution, about two thirds are Irish; and according to the united testimony of the secretary and two gentlemen of local eminence, the greater number of them owed their social ruin to the one fruitful cause of evil to the Irish race—that which tracks them across the ocean, and follows them in every circumstance and condition of life—that which mars their virtues and magnifies their failings—that which is in reality the only enemy they have occasion to dread, for it is the most insidious, the most seductive, and the most fatal of all—drink. Remarking on the fact mentioned, the gentleman by whom I was accompanied, a man of long and varied experience, said: 'All can do well here if they only abstain from drink, or if they will drink in moderation; but drink is the ruin of men here, just as
