of that feeling of affection which abounds towards thee, I should have little or no satisfaction in thy

company.

I heed very little any man's pointings out for me. Some would hold me longer in one place, others would be willing I went to this or that place; but I mind my own business, for I find they are, in this respect, mostly, if not all, physicians of no value; and I have but One to look to, to open and show me my way, and Him I find all-sufficient on every occasion and in every trial. Oh! may thy acquaintance with Him, and reliance on Him, be more and more increased, as indeed mine has been, in my pilgrimage through this land! JOB SCOTT.

TO THE SAME.

KENNET, IN PENNSYLVANIA, 1st of 12th Month, 1786. DEAR WIFE,-About eight days past I received thy very acceptable letter of the 28th of 10th Month, with one from J. Smith of the same date, and one from thy father of the 1st of 11th month, all truly acceptable. Thy expression of sympathy with me in my trial in the removal of dear Joseph, has a sweetness in it unknown to such as merely compliment each other with unmeaning expressions, and know not that one in every feeling, sympathetic sentence of the other, especially when far separated and under great tribulation, which has mostly been my case since Yearly Meeting. I rejoice in thy patience, and have been obliged to exercise much of that necessary disposition myself, else I know not that I could have endured. If the spoil has, I hope the toil has not been divided between thee and me; for I wish thee happier than in my absence to share my sorrow, unless it might add to thy improvement. What will come next is beyond my short-sighted ken; for I thought my eleven days' captivity, mentioned in a former letter, was near the utmost I had to expect. But, alas! I was not many days liberated from that till I was plunged again, so as not to be able to open my mouth, in a meeting for worship, from the 9th of 11th Month till yesterday the 30th, being quite shut up in fifteen public meetings and diverse meetings for church affairs. I suppose I am a wonder to many, but my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth. I could no more utter words with peace in these meetings than I can at other times keep silence with peace. Dear John Storer, William Jackson, Samuel Hopkins, and diverse others, have manifested deep sym- | pathy with me in this trying season. A number of the last days I have felt no more clear sense of divine good than if I had never known good in my life; saw no way to move and dared not to move homeward; yet omitted writing, not knowing but I must be obliged to skulk away home in the dark, as a defeated soldier that flees before his enemy. But as I endeavoured to keep the word of patience, after all seemed to be gone, and not a spark remaining, to my perception, from which life could ever be again renewed-blessed be the Helper of the helpless-light sprang up again out of seeming total obscurity.

union of souls which adds true satisfaction to the

This day I have been at no meeting. I hope if my way continues open, my exercise may not be so much in the flood-like pressing forward, but more in the gentleness, though I cannot be sorry I have had the experience of yesterday's irresistible breaking forth of waters, for I very often have to say, after varied exercises, "Day unto day uttereth speech," &c. And after all, I never expect to get to heaven till all that is in me dies that cannot bear the Lord's chastising hand without a murmur, or even an unsubjected rising motion of heart, contrary to a full renunciation of my own will and entire submission to his. There

fore may his hand not spare, nor his eye pity, till all that is in me bows, and remains wholly bowed, to endure with perfect patience his whole good pleasure concerning me. And, my best beloved here below, my second-self, may this too be thy blessed experience. I often wish to enjoy thee, when we meet again, as one whose advancement in the divine life has added a sweetness and endearment surpassing the love of our first espousals. Oh! may thy progress in that of getting rid of weakness and infirmity outstrip mine! not as having more need, but because I so sensibly feel mine surrounding me, in the midst of all my probations, that I can but wish to be far outdone by her whose welfare is as interesting to me, nearly, if not altogether, as my own But may thy refinement not cost thee such pangs as I find necessary to pass through!

I can't see the way home very soon. My heart is full on this occasion; but I must close.-Thy heartaffected husband, JOB SCOTT.

AN EPISTLE OF CAUTION AGAINST PRIDE, &c.
FROM THE YEARLY MEETING IN LONDON, 1718.

THE following Epistle from the Yearly Meeting was
printed on a broadsheet for circulation throughout the
Society. It may serve, in some measure, to show the
state of manners in the Society a hundred and forty
years ago, and the mode of reforming them, soon
after the first generation of Friends had passed
away:—

DEAR FRIENDS-It was a day of merciful kindness, wherein the love and great power of God awakened our souls, and enabled us, through faith, to love, serve, and fear Him in humility and holiness of life; and His own work in us brought honour to His holy name, and Friends were a people to His praise, glorifying Him in body, soul, and spirit.

It was by the same power our ancient Friends were raised up to bear à faithful testimony against pride, and the vain and foolish fashions of this world, as well as all other evils, and became a plain and selfdenying people, and adorned our holy profession by their grave, modest, and exemplary conversation.

And a weighty exercise coming upon this meeting, by reason of an undue liberty which too many under the profession of Truth run into, to the great grief of faithful Friends, by reason whereof the way of Truth is evil spoken of, and our holy profession greatly reproached by many men among us putting on extravagant wigs, and wearing their hats and clothes after the vain fashions, unbecoming a religious people; and too many women decking themselves with gaudy and costly apparel, gold chains, lockets, necklaces, and gold watches exposed to open view; which shows more of pride and ostentation than for use and service; besides, their vain imitation of that immodest fashion of going with naked necks and breasts and wearing hooped petticoats, inconsistent with that modesty which should adorn their sex, and did adorn the holy women of old.

And in the like vanity of mind divers amongst us running into great extravagance in the furniture of their houses; together with a great declension in some of both sexes from that plainness and simplicity of speech so constantly used in holy Scripture, and recommended and practised by our ancient Friends, as well as by the faithful in this day.

There is likewise a declension crept in amongst us, by unbecoming gestures in cringing and bowing the body by way of salutation, which ought not to be taught or countenanced.

DEAR FRIENDS,I have now the pleasure of informing you that arrangements have been made for the CONFERENCE OF TEACHERS, to begin its proceed-ciety, Huddleston Stokes, of the Church Missionary ings on Second-day morning, the 24th of 1st Month next, in Friends' Meeting-house, Hunter Street, Liverpool. It is intended that the sittings shall not extend beyond the following Fourth-day evening.

the assertion, not from its novelty, but from its unquestioned truth-that the production of opium in the East is conducted in the most impolitic, and in some important instances the most unjust, manner. To the Ryots the poppy fields yield but a moderate competence, while the wealth that should elevate the people, and improve the commerce and finance of the country, is absorbed in the profit which government, by means of its monopoly, derives from their labour -a profit varying from 600 to 1600 rupees per chest on the opium produced.

On the injurious effect of the drug, the production of which is attended with so much that demoralizes the people, we wish to address your lordship as briefly as possible; but the mass of concurrent evidence is so enormous that we fear that even a summary may appear tedious.

East India Company, and now a member of your lordship's council; Captain Elliot, Her Majesty's superintendent of trade at Canton; Lord Broughton, when president of the Board of Control; the Rev. E. B. Squire, agent of the Church Missionary Society; the Rev. Howard Malcolm, of the United States; M. Huc, the French missionary; the Rev. Mr. Bishop, an English missionary; the Rev. George Smith, now Bishop of Victoria; Sir George Staunton, Mr. Montgomery Marten, and a host of others-men of undisputed veracity-have borne their individual testimony to the amount of the evil, and have deprecated the part which Great Britain has taken in promoting its increase.

Writing of the opium smoking-houses in Canton, the Rev. Mr. Squire says-"Never, perhaps, was there a nearer approach to hell upon earth than within Your lordship cannot be ignorant of the official re- the precincts of these hovels." The Rev. Howard port of Mr. Bruce, late superintendent of the tea Malcolm says "The great blot upon foreigners at plantations at Assam, or of the published opinion of Canton is the opium trade; we have little reason to the late Sir Stamford Raffles, yet we venture to glance wonder at the reluctance of China to extend her inat these independent and really official sources of evi- tercourse with foreigners, when such intercourse dence, in preference to what might perhaps be held as brings on her pestilence, poverty, crime, and disturbthe prejudiced evidence of philanthropists. Mr. Bruce ance. That the government of British India should says "The British government would confer a last-be the prime abettors of this abominable traffic is ing blessing on the Assamese and the new settlers if wrong, as we introduce into China with one hand immediate and active measures were taken to put our transcendently pure Christian gospel, and with down the cultivation of opium in Assam, and after the other the destructive and demoralizing opium wards to stop its importation by levying high duties drug." But perhaps the testimony of M. Huc is on the opium land. If something of this sort is not the most striking of all. We offer to your lorddone, and done quickly too, the thousands that are ship's notice a brief passage from his work, The Chiabout to emigrate from the plains into Assam will soon nese Empire, published in 1855 - "With the exbe infected with the opium mania, that dreadful plague ception of some rare smokers, who, thanks to a quite which has depopulated this beautiful country, turned exceptional organization, are able to restrain themit into a land of wild beasts, by which it is overrun, selves within due bounds of moderation, all others and has degenerated the Assamese from a fine race of advance rapidly towards death, after having passed people into the most abject, servile, crafty, and de- through the successive stages of idleness, debauchery, moralized race in India." Of the remedy suggested by poverty, the ruin of their physical strength, and the Mr. Bruce your memorialists offer no opinion; his complete prostration of their intellectual and moral testimony on the effect of opium smoking is what they faculties. Nothing can stop a smoker who has made desire to bring prominently under your lordship's much progress in this habit; incapable of attending notice. After asserting that the women have fewer to any kind of business, insensible to every event; the children, and that the men rarely become old, Mr. most hideous poverty, and the sight of a family plunged Bruce goes on to say-" Few, but those who have re- into despair and misery, cannot rouse him to the sided long in this unhappy country, know the dread- smallest exertion, so complete is the disgusting apathy ful and immoral effects which the use of opium pro- into which he has sunk." M. Huc publishes this to duces on the native. He will steal, sell his property, all the world, and his statements are both undenied his children, the mother of his children, and finally and incontrovertible, that England is the direct author even commit murder for it. Would it not be the of all this misery. highest of blessings if our humane and enlightened government would stop these evils by a single dash of the pen, and save Assam, and all those who are about to enter into it as tea cultivators, from the dreadful results attendant on the habitual use of opium?"

We entertain a deep conviction that, even in a commercial point of view, this trade in the misery of others is the reverse of beneficial; we believe that it narrows the outlet for home manufacture. We most respectfully invite your lordship's attention to the Before the use of opium had attained its present fact that our exports to China have remained stationextent, indeed, while it was comparatively in its in-ary for a period of twelve years, while our imports fancy, Sir Stamford Raffles wrote thus-"The use of opium has extended its malignant influence to the morals of the people, and it is likely to perpetuate its power in degrading their energies as long as the European government, overlooking every consideration of policy and humanity, shall allow a paltry addition to their finances to outweigh all regard to the ultimate happiness and prosperity of the country."

Turning from British India to China, we find the same awful effects from the habitual use of opium; and we need not remind your lordship of the mode in which the deleterious drug has been smuggled into that empire by British merchants, under cover of the British flag, certainly to the apparent pecuniary advantage of the East India Company, but in direct contravention of the laws of the Chinese empire. Mr. Majoribanks, president of the Select Committee at Canton; Captain Shepherd, recently chairman of the

from China, chiefly tea and silk, have doubled in amount: our exports to China, for six years prior to 1850, amounted to £10,978,000, and for six years subsequently to £10,909,000; in 1850 our imports from China were valued at £5,849,000, and they have gradually increased to £10,652,000 in 1856. But during the same period we have been gradually forcing, if we may use the expression, an increased quantity of opium on the Chinese. Prior to the year 1800 the import of opium had never reached an annual supply of 200 chests, which, valued at £100 per chest, the extreme value, only amounts to £200,000; it has now reached 80,000 chests, valued at £8,000,000.

We, your lordship's memorialists, do not, for a moment, close our eyes to the fact that a vast revenue is now accruing to government from the production of opium in British India; though, at the same time, we would observe that a revenue dependent on the

requirements and the regulations of a foreign state is of a precarious nature. Should the Chinese authorities permit the cultivation of the poppy, this revenue must necessarily decline. We are perfectly willing to admit the importance of the revenue element in the question before us, but we most firmly, though respectfully, insist that no pecuniary consideration ought to be weighed in the scale against the unparalleled misery caused by the production and consumption of opium. And we also most respectfully insist, in answer to the objection that the government of India is entitled to aim at the extension of its revenue, that the rule in India has passed from the hands of a public company into those of an imperial government, the aim of which ought to be to secure the happiness and well-being of its subjects.

but he adduced the deleterious effects of the use of spirituous liquors as a somewhat analogous case, and yet no goverment of this country would consent to prohibit their production: heavy duties were imposed on them, and that was all that legislation had yet accomplished. He could not recommend the prohibition of the cultivation of opium; but other courses seemed to require consideration: the trade might be thrown completely open, but then the evil would remain, and probably even be greatly increased; and the present revenue would be lost without any equivalent advantage being obtained. Two other modes of dealing with the subject had been considered-the imposition of a heavy export duty, and of an excise duty at the place of production; but he would not pledge himself, at present, to either course. One thing his lordship said he was prepared to promise, that no instruction should be given to British men-of-war to support merchants in smuggling operations-that whatever ventures merchants might make in the smuggling of opium should be entirely at their own risk, and should receive no countenance or support whatever from government. His lordship thought that the sentiments of the Chinese government, as regards their prohibition of opium, were somewhat misunderstood by the memorialists: he believed that opium was openly sold in every town in China, without the government taking any decided steps to suppress the traffic, thus inducing a suspicion of the sincerity of the Chinese protests on this head. His lordship concluded by again expressing his sympathy with the present and similar philanthropic objects, and thought that the zeal with which such objects were now prosecuted was a distinguished feature of the age.

We therefore entreat your lordship that no consideration of revenue may for a moment interfere with justice; and justice, as it appears to your memorialists, imperatively demands that monopoly should cease, and that British subjects, in every whatever part of Her Majesty's dominions, should partake of the benefits and privileges which the happy constitution of our country confers. A righteous government cannot sacrifice to any mere financial consideration the health, the happiness, the moral, intellectual, social, and physical well-being of the subject; neither can it become the medium of inflicting an injury on the subjects of another potentate. And here we beg to observe, that whatever may be the diversity of opinion as to the justice of our cause in two comparatively recent wars with China, we cannot forget that one, perhaps both, of these wars, originated in the contraband trade carried on by British merchants in that very drug, against the production of which your lordship's memorialists are now earnestly pleading- William Arthur, minister, observed that he was originated, in fact, in British capital being employed sure he expressed the feelings of every gentleman under the sanction of the East India Company, backed present in tendering his lordship most cordial thanks by the power of Great Britain, to introduce into for the extreme courtesy and the very great consiChina a drug, the use of which was strictly forbidden deration with which he had treated the views exby her laws, and especially by the edicts of successive pressed in their memorial, and for the disposition he emperors, on account of its deleterious effects on the showed practically to meet those views as far as he moral and physical condition of their people. This could feel it to be consistent with his position. While your lordship's memorialists regard as unjust on the highly valuing the change intimated by his lordship, part of Great Britain; and whatever may be our ap- he would permit him to say that, under the very parent temporary interest, it must ever remain an peculiar circumstances of the case, the extreme course immutable truth that "righteousness alone exalteth-manifestly and confessedly extreme-of prohibition, was the right course to be adopted. It was not to be regarded as a question between England and India, or even between the British Empire and the Chinese Empire, but as one affecting the whole human race. His lordship would be the very first man to feel that it was an offence against the public interests of mankind to do anything which lowered the moral influence of England; and his lordship had doubtless had occasion to observe that, in any country where we endeavoured to use English influence for the advancement of good ends, the opium trade stood in our way. He (Mr. Arthur) had found in America, Europe, Asia, &c., that the slave-holder, and the supporters of every abomination, whatever they might be, cast the opium traffic in our teeth, as a moral blot upon our nation. They felt it to be so on many grounds. We lost all appearance of good faith, for while we had treaties with China which recognized the illegality of the opium trade, we were producing and manufacturing the article in government stores in India, and putting it up in forms which could not be used anywhere but in the Chinese market, and, as a government, were selling it in these forms. Our ships of war, also, had the appearance of going into the Chinese waters to support the opium smugglers; and while, as his lordship had said, it was not the duty of one power to see that the fiscal regulations of another were enforced,

a nation."

Influenced by these considerations, your memorialists earnestly implore your lordship to use your great and deserved influence, not only to prohibit the growth of opium in any part of British India, but to prohibit, also, its transit from independent states of India to China through British territory, this transit, as regards Malwa opium, being now a source of large profit to government. The present is, pre-eminently, the time for this important measure. The transference of power in India to the crown, and the simultaneous establishment of friendly relations with China, combine in offering an opportunity, that may never recur, for conferring on the multitudinous subjects of two great powers a boon that must, under the blessing of Providence, exalt them in the scale of nations.

(Signed) ROBERT NICHOLAS FOWLER, Chairman. EDWARD NEWMAN, Secretary.

Lord Stanley listened to the memorial, which was read by Mr. Marsh, with the utmost attention, and proceeded at once to express his full appreciation of the philanthropic motives of the memorialists, but went on to state that, as a political question, it was one surrounded with difficulties. He admitted the deleterious effects of opium, and coincided with what the memorialists said on that branch of their subject;