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was much distress in the country, in consequence ofthe general stagnation of trade and manufactures,and the low price of agricultural produce; but oflate a favourable change has taken place: the ma-nufacturers are generally well employed, and the agricultural produce makes a fair return to thefarmers. This country has made great efforts, as well asvery considerable pecuniary sacrifices, to induce thenations of Europe to abandon the odious slave trade,and they are likely to be successful at last; and,after the lapse of two years, I trust, it will no longerexist. We continue to go on here in promoting phi-lanthropic institutions; but it requires much goodjudgment, and a perfect knowledge of the world, toselect those which, in their practical effect, shall pro-duce that good to the community, which will com-pensate the expense and gratuitous labour which isrequired. Theories are often fallacious, although ofmuch promise, and it is only in their practical effectthat their real utility is discovered. Our London hospitals have undergone much im-provement of late, especially since they have attractedthe notice of the legislature; and, I trust, they willbe farther ameliorated. We find here the same corruption of morals, arisingfrom the immoderate use of ardent spirits in vulgarlife, which you experience at New York. It is a malady in the moral world which is difficult to cure,and our only hope is, that the rising generation, frombeing better taught, in consequence of the generaldissemination of free schools, will conduct themselves with more propriety. The quantity of gin drank bythe lower orders of society in this great and over-grown metropolis, in which so many loose and dis-solute characters are congregated, exceeds all calcu-lation, and there is no doubt of many thousandsbeing sent prematurely to the grave, by indulging inthis odious vice. I have for twenty-five years, as a