the vessel employed; for it may be hoped that the medical gentleman belonging to the fleet would arrange a plan by which they could attend the Hospital by turns, and so have indeed more leisure than when attending each his own ship. The expenditure of medicines would not be more in one case than the other: and those ships which were unsupplied with a surgeon, could not object to pay a sum of money, as they now do, for the visits of the Surgeons of other ships.

The Chapel would of course be an entirely new source of expense, as no means have heretofore been used by the English or Americans, for the moral and religious instruction of their seamen in China. Some of the continental nations, who formerly frequented China, had schoolmasters and chaplains on board.

Whether Chinese chop-boats could be fitted up to answer the purposes intended, and other details of the subject, could be ascertained by a Committee of Gentlemen, well affected to the general objects.

The Honourable Company's Chapel in Canton is not of use to the sailors, for they are not allowed to visit Canton, excepting as boat's crews;* and the few that happen to be in Canton on Sundays, never attend the Chapel; probably under an idea that it is not intended for them but for gentlemen. If they were disposed to go, it could not contain many.t

P.S. December 1st.-On the 2d of November, the room fitted up as a Chapel at Canton was burnt down.

* The sailors, in former times, had perfect liberty to go to Canton in large numbers; but they so frequently disgraced themselves and their country, by drunkenness, and became so often involved in serious affrays and homicides, it was found necessary to confine them much to the ships.

On Sunday, the 10th of November, 1822, a Bethel flag, prepared by Mr. Oliphant, a pious American Gentleman of the Presbyterian Church at New York, was hoisted at Whampoa, at the mast-head of the ship Pacific, of Philadelphia, belonging to Mr. Ralston, a veteran foreign Director of the London Missionary Society; and a sermon was preached on deck to an attentive congregation, from a passage in the Prophet Ezekiel, "They caused my name to be blasphemed among the heathen," &c.

NOTE.-I. Captain W. of the Honourable Company's Service, thinks the average number of deaths at Whampoa, amongst the English Sailors, annually is one hundred; others think the average between one and two hundred. In the season 1820-21, a single Company's ship lost

THIRTY men.

II. Instead of a vessel fitted up on purpose for a Chapel, the deck of any ship in the harbour, may at first be borrowed on a Sunday morning, and if there were service twice a day, the deck of another ship, in a different part of the river be employed in the afternoon. It is presumed that there would always be found Commanders who would be perfectly willing to subject themselves to the slight inconvenience which this arrangement would occasion, for the sake of at least making a fair trial to improve the morals of the seamen.

III. "The Port of London Society for promoting Religion among Seamen," was instituted in 1818. The East India Company subscribed to it £100. Prince Leopold attended the Second Anniversary, in May 1820.

(Highmore's View of Charitable Institutions.)

TRACT,

ADDRESSED TO SAILORS.

China, September 22, 1822.

BRITISH SAILORS! Men born in Christian lands !—In consequence of your being now far off from your native islands, and from your kindred, and sojourning for awhile on the borders of a proud pagan nation, I address you as a fellow-countryman and as a friend. I desire to appeal to your understandings and to your good feelings. I desire to promote your personal respectability, the honour of our country, and your happiness, both in this life, and in that eternal state of existence, which God our Saviour has assured us will come after the death of the body. Your circumstances as to your kindred at home are no doubt very various; some of you have fathers and mothers yet alive, who are anxious about their sons, exposed as they deem to the perils of the ocean; scorched by the hot rays of a vertical sun; and in danger of being seduced by bad company to impiety, to drunkenness, or to debauchery; other men and lads are fatherless or motherless, and alas! friendless: others again, it may be, are the only support of an aged mother, of a sister, or of a wife and family. I address you as a man who knows the feelings of a son, of a father, of a husband, and of a friend; and I hope on the perusal of this paper you will cherish all the kindest recollections of your homes and your kindred; that serious reflections may gain the readier access to your understandings and your hearts.

Sailors! you know that, in reference to fighting his country's foes, the gallant NELSON said, " England expects

:

every man to do his duty." This was nobly said in the day of battle, and it is not less true in the time of peace; England expects, and I will add, Heaven expects, every man to do his duty. Now every man has certain duties to perform to himself, to his kindred and country, to mankind generally, and to his God and Saviour. And what is man? Man is a creature composed of a body and of a soul in his body (the flesh, and blood, and bones,) man resembles the beasts; but in his soul, a spiritual thinking substance, he resembles the angels; when the body dies, the soul dies not, but passes to an invisible eternal state. Man is a creature accountable for his thoughts, his words, and his actions to Almighty God, the Maker and Preserver of the Universe, which is composed of the sun, the moon, and the stars; the earth, and all that are on it; the ocean, and all the creatures that are in it. Every man therefore should remember daily that he is not allowed to do as he pleases; but he must do what reason, and conscience, and God's declared will require him to do. When God Almighty made the first man, he taught him to know his will perfectly; and all nations, the Chinese and other heathen nations, have retained to this day some part of this knowledge; and any man may, from studying God's works and God's providence, infer, to a considerable extent, the will of God; but God's will is most fully made known in the books written by Moses and the Jewish Prophets; and by the Apostles and other Disciples of Jesus Christ our Saviour; for those men, out of mercy to all mankind, were taught by God Almighty, what was his will, and what he required of men, and what were his plans of mercy towards men. Now then, Reason, and Conscience, and the Bible must be your guides, and you ought to think and read; and also take the advice of well-intentioned men, who may have had more time to think and to read than you have had. It is on this supposition, that I, although not born with a silver spoon in my mouth, may have had more time and more favourable opportunities than some of you, that I take upon me to volunteer my advice.

Your duty to yourselves requires you to take due care

both of your body and of your soul. You must work to obtain an honest supply of food and raiment; and that, if possible, you may have an overplus to help your kindred, some of whom may be old, or sick, or helpless. If a man merely eats, and drinks, and works, and sleeps, and never thinks about his family, or of improving his own mind, or of promoting the welfare of his immortal spirit, he lives as if he were all body, and not better than the beasts and further, if a man exerts his mind as well as labours with his hands, only to pamper his animal appetites, he makes his soul, which is the spiritual, noble, and angelic part of his nature, a slave to the brutal part, the animal body, and so, in many cases, becomes worse than a beast; or, as some old writers say, such a man is “half brute and half devil." A good man uses his reason and religion to regulate his animal appetites, because God has forbidden excess and irregularity, and because the unrestricted indulgence of appetite and lust is injurious to man's health; wastes the property which should enable him to do good to his kindred or to the sick and distressed ; for excess and irregularity are generally injurious to other people, either by the withdrawment of some good, or by the infliction of some positive evil.

Those of you who have performed several voyages to China, know very well, that annually many men belonging to the fleet die at Whampoa; sometimes by the usual course of God's providence, without any direct cause induced by themselves, and in this case they are blameless; but also sometimes in consequence of diseases brought on by drunkenness and lewdness before coming to China; or by indulgence in the same vices whilst in China. Now although it is sometimes said "such a man is only his own enemy, he hurts nobody but himself;" this is not quite true. If he have parents or sisters to take care for him, and he for them, he injures them by bringing on his own death, he grieves their hearts, and perhaps brings down a parent's grey head with sorrow to the grave. Besides, the drunkard often injures others by his quarrelling and fighting: and the whoremonger either reduces a poor and much