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 DR. FRANCIS LiEKKR, 
 Professor of History nnd Law in Columbia Collof^e, New York. 
 
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DISCOURSES 
 
 ON 
 
 INTEMPERANCE, 
 
 PREACHED IN THE 
 
 CHURCH IN BRATTL.E SQUARE, 
 
 BOSTON, APRIL 5, 1827, 
 
 THE DAY OF ANNUAL FAST, 
 
 AND APRIL 8, 
 THE lord's day FOLLOWING. 
 
 BY JOHN G. PALFREY, A. M. 
 
 Pastor of the Church in Brattle Square. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 BOSTON, 
 
 BOWLES AND DEARBORN, 72 WASHINGTON STREET. 
 
 Isaac R. Butts & Co. Printers. 
 
 1827. 
 
*M5|t 
 
 Some of the statements in the following pages are 
 derived from the documents of the Massachusetts So- 
 ciety for the Suppression of Intemperance, and others 
 from various sources. The sermons were prepared in 
 the course of an interrupted week, and are faulty in 
 many respects. But the author has no time to correct 
 them, and if they are capable of doing any thing to 
 open the eyes of the publick to the tremendous scourge 
 under which it is suffering, he would not withhold 
 them, from any sensibility to criticism. If there are 
 any over-statements, he will be most heartily glad to 
 see them disproved. 
 
DISCOIRSES. 
 
 JEREMIAH VI. 8. 
 
 Be thou instructed, O Jerusalem, lest my sojil depart 
 from thee ; lest I mhke thee desolate, a land not in- 
 habited. 
 
 The piety of our ancestors has trans- 
 mitted to us the usage of assembling year by 
 year, at the opening of the season, to seek, 
 with prayer and fasting, a blessing from the 
 God of harvest. Elsewhere, such a solem- 
 nity is considered as appropriate to occa- 
 sions of great publick distress, and a stranger 
 coming among us, might ask what reason of 
 this kind we could have for observing it. He 
 had found, he would say, a numerous peo- 
 ple, living on a bountiful soil, in a temperate 
 climate, with every thing called for by the 
 reasonable wishes of man, within the reach 
 of their industry; with a free and at the ^ 
 
same time well established government, re- 
 lations of extended and profitable intercourse 
 abroad, and the rights of person and reputa- 
 tion, property and conscience, protected by 
 equal laws and just magistrates at home. 
 He had heard of no interruption of any of 
 the channels of publick prosperity ; no in- 
 testine broil, nor wide devastation of flood 
 or fire, storm or earthquake ; no famine, 
 pestilence, nor war. 
 
 The observation, however, would be su- 
 perficial, and the inference groundless. If 
 seasons of publick distress and peril call for 
 publick fasting, humiliation and prayer, we 
 have cause to keep a fast this day. It is 
 truly a day for a reflecting man to ' afflict his 
 soul,' to ' bow down his head as a bulrush, 
 and spread sackcloth and ashes under him.' 
 Not less than ten thousand citizens of this 
 nation, as there is good reason to believe, 
 have fallen during the year now past, vic- 
 tims to one mortal scourge, prematurely cut 
 off, cut off in the midst of their days. 
 
They did not die by pestilence. How 
 happy if they had ! Their sufferings then 
 would have been short and innocent. They 
 did not fall by the sword. Their bones 
 might have been worthy then to repose in 
 the fair soil they had defended, by their fa- 
 thers' graves which they had kept sacred 
 from an invader's footstep. They did not 
 waste away in the lingering torments of 
 starvation. O how much less heart-wring- 
 ing would then have been the sorrow that 
 burst in long stifled sobs by their last home. 
 They died by self administered poison ; by 
 that cup of guilty excess, compared with 
 which war, famine and pestilence, are mer- 
 ciful plagues. Famine ? Should we hear 
 of one tenth part, one hundredth part, of ten 
 thousand persons likely to perish of hunger, 
 we should be possessed with horror by an 
 event so unprecedented, and the whole coun- 
 try would be subsidized for their relief. 
 Pestilence? The most awful visitation of 
 1^ 
 
6 
 
 that kind ever known in our nation,^ one 
 which made the ears of all that heard of it 
 to tingle, one of those fearful providences 
 that come at long intervals from one another, 
 did not extend its ravages beyond one city, 
 and was content with less than four thousand 
 victims. War ? Our last war was not reck- 
 oned a comparatively bloodless one ; but, 
 in the three years it lasted, the sword de- 
 voured in our armies considerably less than 
 five hundred in a year,f while, in a time of 
 profound tranquillity, another destroyer takes 
 from us two hundred in a week, and this 
 great mortality is almost unobserved. To 
 other great ajSlictions of communities, there 
 is commonly a speedy end. When the 
 hardships of war become intolerable, peace 
 on some terms is made, and the hearts of 
 
 * The yellow fever at Philadelphia in 1793. 
 t According to Niles' Register, there fell in our 
 armies 495 in the campaign of 1812, 
 
 422 " " - 1813, 
 
 505 « " 1814. 
 
the distressed people revive. If our borders 
 had been wasted in the past year by epi- 
 demick sickness or scarcity, we should now 
 be looking and praying with good hope for 
 a healthy and abundant season. But who 
 sees any reason to expect, that fewer will 
 perish this year by the slow suicide of guilty 
 excess, than perished the last ? What has 
 been done to avert the same fate, from at 
 least an equal number? Rather, what is 
 not already done to ensure it? The ha- 
 bits are formed,— /ormec?, with many thou- 
 sands of our countrymen, which with mo- 
 ral certainty will bring them to this end. 
 Some thousands will not reach it till the 
 next, or a following year, but other thousands 
 are riper for destruction, and they will find 
 it in this. They are already close to the 
 precipice, and every hour they rush to- 
 wards it with a madder speed. Can they 
 not be arrested? Try it; try it with all 
 the force and tenderness of pity ; but who 
 is so inexperienced as to flatter himself that 
 
 If 
 
8 
 
 one will be saved, for hundreds whose res- 
 cue will be attenmpted in vain ? Shall not the 
 food of their destructive appetite be denied ? 
 On the contrary, lavish provision has been 
 made and is making for it, by the industry of 
 the nation exerted abroad and at home. In 
 town and country, from sea to wilderness, 
 and from the northern border to the south, 
 the processes are uninterruptedly going on, 
 which extract this bane of human life from 
 the generous fruits that nature yields for its 
 support; and every wind from the ocean 
 adds to the supply a contribution from fo- 
 reign shores. The result of one calculation 
 which has been made publick is, that one 
 eighth part of the commerce of this port is 
 engaged in the conveyance of spirituous 
 liquors, or of the means of making them. 
 And though I account this excessive, still, 
 from such examination as I have been able 
 to make, I am obliged to infer, that not far 
 from one twelfth part of our imports, not re- 
 
exported, consists of that commodity and the 
 materials for its manufacture.^ 
 
 We speak of ten thousand premature 
 deaths directly produced by intemperance. 
 But how partially does this represent the 
 magnitude of the evil. Look at it more 
 nearly, and see what kind of death it was. 
 
 * On examining this point more carefully, I am led 
 to think that the calculation, to which I have first re- 
 ferred, is not so wide of the truth as I had supposed. 
 The amount of imports into the port of Boston in the 
 year ending October 1826, was $14,246,582. The 
 amount re-exported I do not know, but supposing it to 
 have been the same in proportion as in the country at 
 large, property to the amount of about $7,000,000 
 only remained for consumption. In the same year, the 
 amount imported of spirits produced from grain was 
 $292,623; of molasses, $519,624; and of brandy, 
 supposing it to have been in proportion to the importa- 
 tion of this commodity in the country at large, about 
 $75,000; making a total of $887,247. Of this, on 
 the same supposition, there were exported domestick 
 spirits amounting to about $50,000, or $25,000 
 worth of molasses, and foreign spirits amounting to 
 about $50,000 ; which would leave $812,247 worth for 
 consumption, considerably over one ninth part of the 
 amount of imports not re-exported. 
 
10 
 
 Each of those persons once was as capable 
 of happiness, and perhaps looked for happi- 
 ness as confidently, as any one of us. How 
 bitter was the remorse, how painful were the 
 struggles of niany, when they first perceived 
 themselves to be entangled in the ruinous 
 habit. What stern self-upbraidings did they 
 not utter, what overwhelming self-contempt 
 did they not feel, when they first began to 
 think of their bright prospects overcast, their 
 fair name blighted, by the pernicious indul- 
 gence. Who can picture the fearful pro- 
 cess of feeling they passed through, from the 
 time when they began to experience their in- 
 constant resistance to be vain, to that, when,: 
 in transient intervals of sobriety, they saw 
 themselves surrendered, soul and body, to 
 the bondage of the omnipotent sin ? Many, 
 in the course of their fall, having wasted 
 their substance with riotous living, sustained 
 their last days on the coarse bread of pub- 
 lick charity. A large proportion exchanged 
 the dignity and comfort of a decent dwell- 
 
11 
 
 ing for a jail. Not a few endured those 
 wrenches of the mind which precede and 
 end in fatuity and frenzy. AH suffered in 
 some one of the most loathsome forms, the 
 feebleness and torments of bodily disease.* 
 And, for all w^ho had sanity to reflect, how 
 must they have shuddered, as they drew 
 near their unlamented end, in recalling 
 that emphatick scripture, which declares that 
 drunkards shall not inherit the kingdom of 
 God. The expression is awfully peremp- 
 tory. But who that considers the spiritual 
 nature of the heavenly happiness, in connex- 
 ion with the capacities of enjoyment of that 
 
 * ' A train of complaints of the most dangerous na- 
 ture, at once destroying the body and depraving the 
 mind, are the certain followers of habitual ebriety. 
 Amidst all the evils of human life, no cause of disease 
 has so wide range, or so large a share, as the use of spi- 
 rituous liquors. * * * * More than one half of 
 all the sudden deaths which happen, are in a fit of in- 
 toxication.' — Trotter's Essay, Medical, Philosophical, 
 and Chemical, on Drunkenness, and its effects on the 
 Human Body, p. 137. 
 
12 
 
 being whose work on earth has been to 
 sink the human nature in the brute, who, 
 thus reflecting, can be at a loss to justify it, 
 in all its comprehensiveness and force ? 
 
 What a tragical tale would be told, if one 
 such history could be written out at length. 
 And yet, to apprehend the mass of such 
 misery which really exists, we must repre- 
 sent it to ourselves as repeated among us 
 many thousands of times within a year. As to 
 the extremity of the evil in each case where 
 it occurs, no one, who has any experience or 
 imagination, needs or can be assisted by 
 the descriptions of others to estimate it. Its 
 extent, I apprehend, is less understood, and 
 to establish this, I am to offer some state- 
 ments which must needs be of a minute and 
 homely kind. They will not on that account 
 be the less in place, if they serve at all to 
 illustrate the subject. 
 
 I have stated the number of persons who 
 yearly perish in these states by the direct 
 effects of intemperance, at ten thousand. 
 
13 
 
 This was the number according to one cal- 
 culation, six years ago, when our popula- 
 tion was much smaller, and the vice less 
 common ; and though the estimate was prob- 
 bly at that time exorbitant, I greatly fear 
 that it might now be found to fall considera- 
 bly within the truth. The year before, the 
 bill of mortality of one of the most ex- 
 emplarily moral of our large towns, (I speak 
 of the town of Salem,) recorded twenty 
 deaths out of a hundred and eighty-one, 
 one ninth part, to have been produced di- 
 rectly by intemperance ; and the remark is 
 added, ' many who are included in the con- 
 sumption list, might be added to the deaths 
 by intemperance, because it is ascertained, 
 that habits of intemperance have produced 
 various diseases, which have terminated in 
 apparent consumption.' If the proportion of 
 twenty in a hundred and eighty-one, the pro- 
 portion of that orderly town, had been main- 
 tained throughout the country, intemperance 
 would have been the direct cause, that year. 
 
14 
 
 of the death of nearly thirty thousand citi- 
 zens. In the same year, it was stated, on the 
 authority of the bills of mortality, that the an- 
 nual average of deaths from intoxication, in 
 this state, was six hundred and sixty-six. If 
 the proportion of drunkards to the whole 
 population be taken to be throughout the 
 union, the same as in this state, whereas in 
 fact it is probably considerably greater, it 
 would follow that more than thirteen thou- 
 sand citizens of this nation, yearly fell victims 
 to drunkenness as long ago as 1821. Three 
 years before, from data which seem to have 
 been accurate, as far as they went, it had 
 been computed, that intemperance was the 
 remote or proximate cause of the death of 
 about three persons yearly, in a population 
 of a thousand ;^ according to which estimate, 
 
 * In Portsmoutli, 21 persons died by excess in drink- 
 ing, last year. This place had at the last census a 
 population of 7,327. New Haven had by the same 
 census, 8,327 inhabitants. The Medical Association 
 of that city, in a late publication, say ; * on referring to 
 
15 
 
 the number of persons whose lives are tlius 
 more or less directly sacrificed, would be 
 every year, in this state, eighteen hundred, 
 and in the United States thirty-six thousand. 
 When we attend to the supply provided for 
 this use, we shall see cause to admit that the 
 calculation is not much, if at all, exagge- 
 rated. The consumption of foreign spirituous 
 liquors was, in the year 1828, more than four 
 and a half millions of gallons, and in the year 
 1824, more than five millions. The average 
 yearly amount of foreign spirits consumed for 
 ten years preceding 1812, was nearly seven 
 millions of gallons.* The use of them, how- 
 ever, had been already in great part super- 
 seded by those of domestick manufacture. 
 
 the list of deaths in this town during the year 1826, we 
 find that of the 94 persons over 20 years of age, more 
 than one third were, in our opinion, caused or hastened, 
 directly, or indirectly, by intemperance ; and on refer- 
 ring further back, we find a similar proportion imputable 
 to the same cause for the two years preceding.' 
 * Seybert's Statistical Annals, p. 463. 
 
16 
 
 In 1810, according to the census then made 
 by the marshals, the quantity thus produced 
 from domestick and foreign materials, was 
 nearly twenty-six millions of gallons,^ of 
 which six hundred thousand were exported, 
 leaving more than twenty-five millions for the 
 consumption of the country ;f to which if 
 the above named average amount of the for- 
 eign commmodity be added, it appears that 
 an average quantity of more than four gal- 
 lons was consumed in a year, by every man, 
 woman and child in the nation, the slave po- 
 pulation included. I am not aware that any 
 similar report to that, on which these calcula- 
 tions are founded, has been since made. It is 
 thought that the annual consumption of ar- 
 dent spirits cannot now amount to less than 
 forty-five millions of gallons,f which, reckon- 
 ing the drinking population at a million of per- 
 sons, would give them individually an average 
 
 * Seybert's Statistical Annals, p. 463. f lb. 
 
 X This would feed the Middlesex canal to a distance 
 of 15 1-6 miles, or the Erie canal, 8 1-3 miles. 
 
17 
 
 allowance of a pint of liquid poison in a day. 
 With such a consumption, we could not, in 
 any reason, look for consequences less dis- 
 tressing than we witness. If, of this number, 
 we suppose that more than two thirds permit 
 themselves only that indulgence which is 
 reckoned moderate, and considerably less 
 than one third drink to that excess which 
 brands them as decidedly intemperate per- 
 sons, we have then, in the nation, three hun- 
 dred thousand of the latter class, in some 
 stage of their progress ; an estimate which I 
 am disposed to think not far from the truth, 
 and almost certainly not beyond it. We 
 come to a similar result by a different method 
 of calculation. If, for the ten thousand who 
 die yearly by the direct effect of intempe- 
 rance, there be twice as many more of such 
 as either, in consequence, fall victims to some 
 one of the various diseases to which it pre- 
 disposes, or, being intemperate, are from 
 causes independent of their vice, arrested by 
 some one in the variety of mortal diseases, we 
 
 It 
 
18 
 
 have then a yearly mortality of thirty thou- 
 sand intemperate persons, a result below, but 
 not far from that of the computation which I 
 mentioned before, as founded on the assump- 
 tion of intemperance being the remote or 
 proximate cause of three deaths yearly, in a 
 population of a thousand. And supposing 
 ten years to be the average term of life, after 
 habits of excess are fixed, (a favourable sup- 
 position, it is true, for this is an evil work, 
 against which, vengeance is commonly exe- 
 cuted speedily,) it would then follow, that 
 there are three hundred thousand inebriates 
 living in this country at a time, the same re- 
 sult as appeared from the other method of 
 calculation. 
 
 II. But, secondly, the deplorable misery 
 which the drunkard feels is by no means all 
 that he inflicts. Most men belong to families. 
 Almost all men at first have friends. How 
 does the heart of frendship bleed, when it 
 sees the object of its regard wedding him- 
 self to utter ruin, for this world, and the 
 
19 
 
 world to come. What moving remonstran- 
 ces are uttered, how hard to bear the 
 alternations of timid hope and cruel disap- 
 pointment, as promises of reformation are 
 successively made and broken. But friend- 
 ship, if it will, can be inconstant when its 
 object is unworthy, and go elsewhere for 
 consolation. Not so with domestick love. 
 What pangs rend brothers' and sisters' hearts, 
 when one of a once united family is seen 
 going thus astray. With what agonizing soli- 
 citude does parental affection watch the child, 
 whom idleness or bad company has enticed 
 into the destroyer's paths. With what soul- 
 absorbing earnestness are all methods of 
 amendment tried, and when they fail, what 
 mingled shame and anguish bow down the 
 hoary head. Worst of all, when the deadly 
 fascination has fastened on them whom prov- 
 idence has set to rule in the domestick 
 sphere. The husband and father, fatigued 
 with his labour, or perplexed wdth his cares, 
 or perhaps from the mere excitement of good 
 2 
 
20 
 
 fortune, or in the hearty greeting of hospi- 
 tality, is observed to give in to indulgences 
 which excite at first only occasional alarm. 
 By and by his spirits appear disturbed, and 
 his temper unequal. The meek assiduities 
 of conjugal affection are sometimes rudely 
 repulsed, and his children hesitate to greet 
 his return with their once always welcome 
 caresses, doubtful whether it is with a maud- 
 lin fondness, or a terrifying severity, that 
 they are to be met. His habits of regular 
 industry are not maintained ; employment 
 does not seek him as it has done ; and be- 
 fore long, it appears that his affairs are em- 
 barrassed, and provision for the wants of his 
 household is not punctually made. Morti- 
 fied at the change which he sees at his 
 home, he absents himself from it more and 
 more. The alternative is the society of the 
 tippling house, from which the wakeful wife 
 awaits him night after night, to receive his 
 insults, if he shall stagger home an angry 
 brute, or busy herself to restore him to con- 
 
21 
 
 sciousness, if he shall be conveyed home a 
 senseless load. There is, probably, not a day 
 in which this scene is not acted, in thousands 
 of the dwellings of this happy country. He 
 wakes in the morning from his deep sleep, to 
 feel a sick craving which must be relieved at 
 the accustomed haunt ; and if he be of that 
 largest class, whose daily industry should pro- 
 vide their daily bread, she who has watched 
 and wept by him till the dawn, awaits his de- 
 parture, to apply herself to the feeble and sor- 
 rowful labour which must buy her little ones 
 food, if indeed she shall be able to conceal its 
 earnings from their tyrant to be devoted to 
 that use. A common end of all this is, that 
 the decent dwelling of industry and content 
 having sustained the successive changes that 
 convert it into the rueful abode of want, its 
 scanty furniture is sold to pay the tavern 
 score, and its once happy tenants join the 
 number of similarly ill-fated persons in the 
 alms-house. To those families, which the 
 bounty of providence has placed above such 
 
22 
 
 consequences of vice in their head, still some 
 portion of the curse of the drunkard, that he 
 shall come to poverty, is apt to clmg ; and 
 in such, the sufferings of the mind too, are 
 for the most part, felt with added keenness. 
 All alike are exposed to the distress and dis- 
 grace of follies and crimes committed by the 
 drunkard in paroxysms of his madness, and 
 all alike suffer the mischiefs of a depraving ex- 
 ample, and the loss of that respectability, that 
 instruction, tliat aid in all interests, spiritual, 
 intellectual, and temporal, which a family has 
 a right to expect from its head.^ There is 
 one case, if possible, yet more revolting ; and 
 it is not unknown to experience. It is when 
 female purity is touched with this deadly 
 stain. That is a wreck of all that God has 
 made most honourable and lovely among his 
 
 * Dr. Rush (Inquiry p. 8.) appears to think that a 
 tendency to intemperance is transmitted in families, not 
 only by example, but by physical laws. Dr. Trotter in 
 his learned Essay, refers various physical and mental 
 maladies to the intemperance of parents. 
 
23 
 
 earthly works, which is truly meet for angels 
 to weep over. What are it3 conseqences 
 too, at least in instances in which the most 
 important relations of woman are sustained, 
 and her influence, rightly used, is one of the 
 most excellent instruments of the dispensa- 
 tions of the divine mercy. A man's associ- 
 ations with religion and goodness settle round 
 his home. Drive them thence, and you se- 
 ver his hold upon them. In the bustle of 
 life, his mind Ts crowded, perplexed, shaken. 
 He goes home to refresh his virtues. Let 
 him find there sensual degradation in one of 
 its most hateful forms, and what wonder if he 
 learn to forsake it? What wonder, if, disap- 
 pointed and desperate, he forsake it for the re- 
 sorts of vice, and himself have recourse for re- 
 lief to the same insane indulgence ? And then, 
 the children whom it has pleased God in his 
 mysterious providence to commit to such a 
 mother. Neglected, harshly treated at one 
 lime, and at another the subjects of indul- 
 gence as injurious, uninstructed, (at least by 
 2^ 
 
24 
 
 n consistent example, the best of teachers,) 
 and when the offence becomes gross, having 
 those feelings of reverential tenderness, which 
 most powerfully of all things, a mother's love 
 is fitted to call forth, and which in almost all 
 worthy men, have much connexion with 
 whatever is best in their character, having 
 these delicate and influential feelings, I say, 
 displaced by associations of mere brutality, 
 what is to be augured of the temporal or eter- 
 nal prospects of such children ? To the ma- 
 ternal feelings, the good being who implanted 
 them, gave an unequalled strength. They 
 reign alike supreme in the proudest and the 
 lowliest bosom. Among all impulses of all 
 various kinds, only one has been found of 
 force to subdue them, and that is the love of 
 intemperate drinking. Horrible as the rela- 
 tion is, there are authenticated instances of 
 mothers taking from their children's mouths 
 the bread which charity had given to satisfy 
 their hunger ; yea, literally stripping from 
 their children the clothes which charity had 
 
25 
 
 given to keep them from the cold, and sell- 
 ing them for intoxicating liquor. If the pas- 
 sion is strong enough to do this, is there any 
 thing else of such appalling might ? 
 
 Considering the connexion of most men 
 with either families or friends, would it be 
 unreasonable to suppose, that for every three 
 habitually intemperate persons, there are as 
 many as seven others, whose happiness is in 
 some way seriously affected by the vice of 
 those three ? If it be so, and there be now 
 living in this country three hundred thousand 
 persons devoted to the habit, then the unhap- 
 piness arising from it extends itself directly 
 to a million of persons, a twelfth part of the 
 population of the country. This is a very 
 startling conclusion, but I see not how the 
 inferences that lead to it are to be escaped, 
 and also it is to be considered, that in that 
 class of society upon which most of my hear- 
 ers (being acquainted with it) would form 
 their judgment, the evil is incomparably less 
 than in others, and that this portion of our 
 2t 
 
26 
 
 country, on the whole, presents an unduly fa- 
 vourable specimen. If one man in twelve 
 throughout this nation suffers in sbme way 
 an important abatement from his happiness in 
 consequence of the existence of fixed habits 
 of drunkenness in himself or some one for 
 whom he strongly feels, — nay, qualify the 
 supposition as you will, suppose there were 
 but one such man in twenty, in thirty, — no 
 more need be said to establish the conclu- 
 sion, that intemperance is a prodigious pub- 
 lick evil, and requires very serious publick 
 notice ; that a great national calamity at this 
 moment is endured, and demands a great 
 common effort. What a voice of wailing 
 would be heard, if one man in thirty through- 
 out this republick were sentenced by some 
 savage power to lose a hand. Yet what 
 were this, compared with the tenfold worse 
 than widowhood of a drunkard's wife, and 
 his more than orphaned children's shame ? 
 
 III. The evil which we are deploring, has, 
 in the third place, political aspects of the 
 
most alarming character. THey open a to- 
 pick which may be consideresd to have some 
 appropriateness on a day solemnized by 
 publick authority like this. A sad pre-emi- 
 nence it is, but the politician and the political 
 economist of America have need to devote a 
 special share of their inquiries and counsels 
 for the publick, to the effects of the use of 
 ardent spirits. 
 
 1. And, first, as to the waste of property 
 which it occasions. 
 
 According to the estimate before referred 
 to, forty-five millions of gallons of ardent spi- 
 rits of the different kinds are annually con- 
 sumed in this country. Reckoning the cost 
 of these to the consumer at an average of 
 two thirds of a dollar, the amount annually 
 expended in this way in the United States, 
 would be thirty millions of dollars ; a sum 
 which, though falling much short of the esti- 
 mate that has commonly been made, is great- 
 er than that levied for the maintenance of the 
 general government in all its departments, in 
 
28 
 
 the proportion of five to two. Of this sum, 
 this city, taking its appropriations of this na- 
 ture to be in the ratio of its population, pays 
 yearly a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, 
 about half the amount of its annual corporate 
 expenditure. Undoubtedly, however, this 
 estimate for the city must give a result much 
 below the truth, as at this rate each licensed 
 retailer would sell on an average to the 
 amount of less than five dollars in a week, 
 even if they sold all that is consumed, which 
 again is by no means the case. The pro- 
 portion of the commonwealth, reckoned upon 
 its population, would be a million, five hun- 
 dred thousand dollars ; six times as much as 
 the revenue that yearly goes into its treasury. 
 Two hundred thousand dollars, perhaps, are 
 annually paid by the commonwealth for the sup- 
 port of the christian ministr^^, and two hundred 
 and fifty for publick, and two hundred thousand 
 for private instruction ; six hundred and fifty 
 thousand dollars for the maintenance of the 
 joint interests of learning and religion, and 
 
29 
 
 fifteen hundred thousand, at liie lowest com- 
 putation, for ardent spirits. A million and a 
 half of dollars annually paid for intoxicating 
 liquors, while to the venerable seat of learn- 
 ing, the pride of the noble founders of our 
 State, from which as from the heart into the 
 system, has gone forth through successive 
 generations the life blood of its strength, it 
 refuses to continue the grant of ten thousand 
 dollars a year, because it is too poor. A like 
 instance on another scale is known, of a tow^n 
 of more than three thousand inhabitants, 
 which ceased to support the institutions of re- 
 ligion, merely on the ground of pecuniary in- 
 competency, when it was found on inquiry to 
 spend ten thousand dollars annually on spirit- 
 uous liquors. In the year 1820, it was as- 
 certained that the sum of one million eight 
 hundred and ninety three thousand dollars 
 was thus mischievously bestowed in the city 
 of New York. 
 
 But as regards waste, such statements as 
 this, it will be said, only shew that money is 
 
30 
 
 shifting hands, and employing industry. It 
 employs little industry, but as far as it does 
 this, it is rather to be regarded as a bounty to 
 unproductive labour ; and certainly it might 
 shift hands to better purpose. But to bring 
 die waste to a stricter test, he who consumes 
 daily a pint of spirits made of rye, consumes 
 yearly twenty five or thirty bushels of that 
 valuable grain ; and there being, as I have 
 stated, a million times that consumption 
 among the population of our country, it fol- 
 lows that a quantity of nourishing food equiva- 
 lent to twenty five or thirty millions of bushels 
 of grain is annually thus consumed. 
 
 Again, with respect to publick waste ; in- 
 temperance is the great cause of pauperism. 
 The proportion of persons thus reduced to 
 want, to the whole number maintained at the 
 publick charge, varies, as might be expected, 
 in different places. In the town of Ports- 
 mouth, ten years ago, a careful examination 
 of the circumstances of the tenants of the 
 alms-house, showed the number of those 
 
31 
 
 whom love of this kind of pleasure had made 
 poor men, to be sixty four out of eighty five, 
 nearly four fifths. In Pordand, about the 
 same time, there were seventy one such out 
 of eighty five, nearly six sevenths. In the 
 state of New York, in 1S24, the proportion 
 was four thousand seven hundred and forty- 
 one out of six thousand eight hundred and 
 ninety-six, more than two thirds. In the 
 city of Baltimore, in the year ending April 
 1826, of seven hundred and thirty-nine per- 
 sons received into the alms-house, five hun- 
 dred and fifty-four, that is three quarters, 
 were abandoned to intemperate habits.* The 
 report on the pauper laws of this common- 
 wealth, made to the legislature by a Commit- 
 tee in 1821, contains the report of one town, 
 that of twenty-eight persons in its alms-house, 
 there were but two who were not brought 
 thither, either directly or indirectly, by intem- 
 
 * Fifty four were maniacs, and seven cripples, from 
 this cause ; and twenty-eight suffering under fractures 
 and wounds, received in a state of intoxication. 
 
32 
 
 perance. The general inference is, that there 
 cannot be a less proportion than two thirds 
 who become a publick burden from this cause. 
 The annual expenditure of the commonwealth 
 in this way was reckoned, in the report^ which 
 I have quoted, at three hundred and sixty- 
 thousand dollars, two hundred and forty 
 thousand of which, at this rate, was levied in 
 favour of persons ruined by one vice. It was 
 also found that in the twenty years immedi- 
 ately preceding, pauperism had increased 
 three fifths. If its'* increase has not been 
 checked, and intemperance has maintained 
 its ground among the causes, it levies at this 
 moment a tax of this kind, of three hundred 
 and sixty thousand dollars. But other chari- 
 
 * A similar report was made in 1820, to the Legisla- 
 ture of New Hampshire, from which it appeared that 
 the expense for paupers was in a ratio of increase, which 
 would douhle it once in five years. The Committee 
 thereupon brought in a bill, providing among other 
 things, that ' no person, who shail be reduced to pover- 
 ty by habitual drunkenness, shall be supported by any 
 town.' 
 
33 
 
 ties also provide for it ; that is, there is in 
 other ways a waste of property for its sup- 
 port. In 1820, it was officially stated, that of 
 eighty-seven patients admitted into the New 
 York Hospital for the Insane, the insanity of 
 twenty-seven, nearly a third, was caused by 
 the immoderate use of ardent spirits. A 
 physician attached to the Philadelphia Hospi- 
 tal, reported one third of the insane during 
 his connexion with that institution, to have 
 incurred their dreadful malady through the 
 same vice ; and in our General Hospital, since 
 its institution, almost every individual case 
 which has proved fatal, of casualty, of acci- 
 dental wounds, has proved so in consequence 
 of the subject being addicted to excess in 
 drinking. Concerning the proportion of such 
 persons cured or still under treatment, I am 
 not informed. 
 
 The expense bestowed in the support of 
 paupers, who have become such by intem- 
 perance, does not represent the publick loss 
 occasioned by them. Considering the eco- 
 
34 
 
 nomical scale on which the publick maintains 
 them, it would be rating the worth of their 
 industry low, to say that the portion who 
 might labour, if their vice had not disabled 
 them, might earn twice as much as the living 
 of the whole now costs. In a country like 
 this, it is safe to assume, that every healthy 
 man is able to maintain himself and a family in 
 decency, and some degree of comfort ; which 
 at the lowest calculation, requires him to earn 
 twice as much as the sum with which the 
 publick supports a family of paupers. The 
 intemperate paupers of this commonwealth, 
 then, with the strength which their vice has 
 stolen from them, instead of costiag it three 
 hundred and sixty thousand dollars, would be 
 able to contribute to the common stock, an 
 amount of labour worth seven hundred and 
 twenty thousand, making a difference to its 
 wealth of more than a million of dollars 
 annually ; and if we add to this, the million 
 and a half expended in the purchase of ardent 
 spirits, the result is over two millions and a 
 
35 
 
 half, paid annually by the commonwealth, in 
 these two ways, for them and their effects. 
 The annual pauper expenses of the union, 
 for the intemperate, have been stated to be 
 twelve millions of dollars. If the argument 
 were applied to that sum, that is, if that sum 
 were held to represent one third of the cost 
 which intemperance brings in one way on the 
 community, what a vast effect would this 
 cause appear to have on the national resources. 
 But I do not ' pursue it in regard to them, 
 because I know not on what grounds the esti- 
 mate is made, and incline to think it cannot 
 be relied on.^ 
 
 * It will be observed, that I have taken no notice of 
 the large expenditures of voluntary charitable associa- 
 tions, and of private benevolence, on both of which in- 
 temperance makes its drains quite as much as on the 
 legal provision, if not more. Intemperance is account- 
 able, as will appear under the next head, for a large part 
 of the cost of the infraction, administration and execu- 
 tion of the criminal and other laws. Also, the commu- 
 nity is heavily taxed for the drinking of the publick, 
 servants. Among tlie provisions for the army, adver- 
 
 n 
 
36 
 
 2. A second way in which intemperance 
 affects the publick weal, is through its tendency 
 to multiply crimes. We scarcely take up a 
 newspaper that we do not meet an account 
 of some outrage committed under the influ- 
 ence of this insanity. Of one thousand eight 
 hundred and ninety-five complaints presented 
 to the police court of this city, during the last 
 year, four hundred and ten, two ninths, were 
 under the statute against common drunkards. 
 We could not adduce this naked fact, as 
 proof that intemperance prompts to crime, 
 but it is reasonable to suppose that what actu- 
 ally led to complaint against these individuals, 
 was commonly some act or practice, which 
 marked them as disorderly citizens, or trou- 
 blesome neighbours. In the same period, 
 were presented, at the same tribunal, four 
 hundred and seventy cases of assault and 
 battery, three quarters of which, it is thought, 
 
 tised for by the commissary department, to be delivered 
 in the years 1822 and 1823, were 73,240 gallons of 
 whiskey. 
 
37 
 
 occurred in drunken broils, and a large pro- 
 portion of the other crimes, there adjudged 
 on, is referred to the same cause. The re- 
 cords of ^ our courts certainly are not to be 
 taken as an unfavourable standard, whereby 
 to estimate what is doing in other cities equal- 
 ly populous ; and statements from other cities 
 confirm the general rule, in at least an equal 
 application to them. In a report of the New 
 York Society for the Prevention of Pauper- 
 ism, presented in 1819, it was stated, that 
 'three fourths of the assaults and batteries 
 charged in the city and county of New York, 
 and brought before the court of Sessions, pro- 
 ceed from the degrading use of ardent 
 spirits.'^ A judge of North Carolina lately 
 declared from the bench, that of the cases of 
 
 * Another report made in 1821, states, that ' the 
 whole number of complaints for assaults and batteries, 
 during the last year, was 1061. During the first six 
 months of that year, the number was 409 ; in the last 
 six months, 652. About 180 new licences were granted 
 in the early part of those last six months, in the absence 
 of the mayor.' 
 
 3 
 
38 
 
 manslaughter which had come before him, 
 there was not one which had not been occa- 
 sioned by intemperance, and few of murder, 
 which were not attributable to the same cause. 
 Of one thousand and sixty-one cases of crim- 
 inal prosecutions in a court of that state, more 
 than eight hundred are likewise stated to have 
 had their origin in this vice. The experience 
 of England is not ours, but the tendencies of 
 the same sin are every where essentially the 
 same, and therefore I will quote from an in- 
 teresting paper, which I have lately seen, on 
 this subject, a remark of Sir Matthew Hale.* 
 ' The places of judicature,' said that great 
 lawyer, ' which I have so long held in this 
 kingdom, have given me opportunity to ob- 
 serve the original cause of most of the enor- 
 inities that have been committed for the space 
 
 * Report of the Portsmouth Society for the Suppres- 
 sion of Vice, published in the Massachusetts Journal, 
 Vol. I. No. 37. The report has been ascribed to the 
 late lamented N. A. Haven, a name among the truly- 
 dear to letters, philanthropy, and religion. 
 
39 
 
 of near twenty years ; and by a due observa- 
 tion, I have found, that if the murders and 
 manslaughters, the burglaries and robberies, 
 the riots and tumults, the adulteries, — and 
 other great enormities, that have happened in 
 that time, were divided into five parts, four 
 of them have been the issue and product of 
 excessive drinking, of taverns and ale-house 
 meetings.' 
 
 3. But there are dangers threatening this 
 nation from this cause, more serious than the 
 waste which its rich resources are well able 
 to redress, or even than the crimes, which its 
 laws, standing and administered as now, are 
 adequate to keep in check. It has pleased 
 God, in his great goodness, to permit this 
 people to govern themselves, and so to be dis- 
 pensed from the severe oppressions in mind, 
 body and estate, which the many are wont to 
 feel wherever power is lodged in the hands 
 of the few. Though a perfect independence 
 has existed but of late in form, most of its 
 privileges have been enjoyed since the earli- 
 
40 
 
 est period of our institutions. The founders 
 of those institutions and the successors to their 
 lot were men fit to be trusted with the great 
 task of self-government, and we have still 
 prospered in that task, because a portion of 
 their spirit has descended to their children. 
 They were men, to whom industrious, hardy, 
 frugal habits gave strength of body, and clear- 
 ness and steadfastness of mind. They were 
 no slaves to luxury, that they could be bought, 
 nor victims to it that they could be tamed and 
 trampled on ; and therefore an almost unpar- 
 alleled freedom is our birthright this day. 
 But should a base sensuality pursue and ma- 
 ture the conquests it has hitherto attempted 
 with such deplorable success, where then 
 will be the nervous arms that should defend 
 this soil as it has been defended ; — where the 
 political wisdom widely diffused, to keep 
 watch for the nation's safety, for widely 
 diffused it must be, or the destinies of the 
 nation will cease to be committed to the 
 most trusty men 3 — where the spirit of pub- 
 
41 
 
 lick virtue^ which will be ready for every sac- 
 rifice but the sacrifice of honour and duty ? 
 I do not say that we are to see our warn- 
 ing in our predecessors on this soil, who 
 have been swept away like the blighted 
 leaves of their forests before the breath of 
 the pestilence we have been this day de- 
 ploring. 1 do not say that in an application 
 to us as to them, the judgment predicted in 
 our text is to be literally fulfilled, and this place 
 of our possession to be made ' desolate, a land 
 not inhabited.' I affirm no more than is past 
 contradiction ; that slaves to their own desires 
 are all ready to be slaves to other men; that 
 luxury has been the bane and ruin of repub- 
 licks ; and that the vile indulgence which is 
 now a destruction wasting at noonday among 
 us, is luxury in one of its most menacing 
 forms, and prepares a worthless population 
 the most effectually for a master's yoke. We 
 are jealous of our liberties, we say. And are 
 we the first of modern free states that have 
 been so, and yet have fallen? Was not 
 
42 
 
 Venice watchful of its liberty, and resolute to 
 maintain it, till enterprise brought wealth, 
 and wealth, indulgence, and indulgence, effem- 
 inacy, and effeminacy bondage? We are 
 wise and refined, we thitik. Was Florence 
 less so, when it unsaid all its weighty republi- 
 can maxims, and bowed its neck to the foot 
 of a rich and popular citizen ? No, the guar- 
 dian of our institutions is publick virtue ; an 
 erect, manly virtue, in full command of all its 
 powers ; an independent virtue, not capable 
 of being seduced for the offered supply of a 
 gross appetite. Let but the habit we have 
 been today contemplating pursue its ravages, 
 and that virtue will fast be sapped. A mise- 
 rable population will grow numerous, the 
 subjects alike of intimidation and bribes. 
 Without sense of character, without means of 
 living, they will stand ready to be the instru- 
 ments of the ambitious purposes of any 
 wicked man. Is it thought such persons will 
 value their own political prerogatives too 
 much to forego them, though they may not 
 
43 
 
 respect those of others, too much to invade 
 them ? What care such persons for the 
 difference between one political relation and 
 another ? Their tastes have another object ; 
 and is it to be supposed that the despotick 
 appetite against which natural affection is 
 powerless, is to pause in opposition to a thing 
 so unsubstantial as a theory of the rights of 
 man ? 
 
 I cannot avoid thinking, that as there is no 
 darker stain on our national morals, so there 
 is no darker cloud over our political pros- 
 pects, — the prospect of the permanency of 
 our free institutions, — than this. I see not 
 how this view can be gainsaid, if it be true, as 
 it is unquestionable, that intemperance is an 
 evil of vast extent among us; that it is a tho- 
 rough corrupter of the mind; that the disorders 
 of a depraved population almost demand a 
 despotism, and make it acceptable, and that 
 its services may always be bought to establish 
 one. I never see the drunken crowd on our 
 publick days celebrating their freedom, that I 
 3t 
 
44 
 
 do not think they are then preparing them- 
 selves to part with it. I cannot but consider 
 it as incumbent on us as good citizens,— as 
 friends to civil liberty, and desirous to trans- 
 mit its blessings, — as careful for posterity, and 
 anxious to secure to them the privileges we 
 so value for ourselves, — I cannot but consider 
 it as imperiously incumbent on us, earnestly 
 to inquire what we may do, and do with our 
 might what we may, to stay for them the 
 march of this appalling plague. I cannot but 
 consider it to be so on the most general and 
 admitted grounds. Scripture does not teach 
 more emphatically than historical experience 
 the doctrines, that righteousness exalteth a 
 nation, and sin is the ruin as well as reproach 
 of any people. The masters of political wis- 
 dom have no weightier lesson to instruct in, 
 than that under the just government of a holy 
 God, great national sins always, sooner or 
 later, draw down great national judgments. 
 Individuals go for their retribution to the other 
 world, and in this the wicked may prosper; 
 
45 
 
 but nations are not known in the other world, 
 and they meet their retribution here. But 
 whatever be thought of our dangers and obli- 
 gations as citizens, — as philanthropists and 
 christians, our duty, in its principles, is plain. 
 Never did a general calamity afflict this land 
 calling near so loudly on compassionate and 
 christian men for sorrow, inquiry, concern 
 and effort. I cannot now enter on an inves- 
 tigation so extensive as that into the means of 
 exertion which offer some assurance of suc- 
 cess. But a useful beginning will have been 
 made, if we have come to see this day in any 
 clearer light, how critical, how extreme the 
 exigency is. If we are not altogether blind to 
 it, human as we are, and therefore indifferent 
 to nothing which affects the interests of men, 
 our hearts cannot but bleed at the view of 
 many thousands of our brethren and compan- 
 ions yearly taking that path to utter ruin, 
 which once entered on, there is scarcely 
 strength in human nature to retrace ; involv- ' 
 ing themselves by their own mad act in all 
 
46 
 
 the worst evils to which flesh is heir, wretched 
 poverty, cruel disease, irreparable infamy, 
 
 ' all the fiercer tortures of the mind, 
 
 * Unbounded passion, madness, guilt, remorse,' 
 
 and spreading through the domestick and the 
 social sphere, as far as their influence reaches, 
 the fellowship of their own woes. If we are 
 christians, we can scarcely think without 
 shuddering sensibility, of thousands of immor- 
 tals killing the religious being within them ; 
 divesting themselves of their congeniality with 
 spiritual and heavenly natures ; becoming like 
 to the beasts that perish in all except those 
 diversldes of presumptuous guilt which the 
 beasts cannot imitate, and that responsibleness 
 whose penalties await them at the judgment 
 seat of a deeply ofiended God. My friends, 
 as lovers of men, and as lovers of God, let us 
 ask ourselves, have we any thing to do, to 
 arrest this sweeping current of evil. Some 
 of us have wealth, some station, some author- 
 ity of some kind. Those of us who can do 
 no more, can set an example, and no good 
 
47 
 
 example was ever lost. What can we do, 
 what is the most we can do, with all strenuous 
 endeavours in our power, in this emergency ? 
 Let the question be weighed by each one of 
 us with solicitude, solemnity, and prayer ; and 
 may God, the source of wisdom, enlighten us 
 with a reply, that where there is such a call 
 for prudent, combined, and vigorous effort, 
 no one's aid may be wanting who has any aid 
 to lend. 
 
PROVERBS XX. 1. 
 
 Strong drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived 
 thereby is not wise. 
 
 When I entered on the subject of the pre- 
 vailing excess in drinking, I had no expecta- 
 tion of being led to pursue it to such a length. 
 But if it has been the effect of our reflections 
 to satisfy us, that a most serious evil now 
 weighs on this community, afflicting it and 
 threatening it with a host of evils more, we 
 cannot wish to dismiss the subject till we have 
 asked where the sources of the mischief lie, 
 and whether and where any remedy is to be 
 found. To the first of these inquiries I at 
 this time solicit your attention. That strong 
 drink is raging, and that whosoever is de- 
 ceived thereby is not wise, we need no further 
 to be shewn. But^we desire to see how it is 
 that so many are in fact deceived thereby. 
 
 1. Various causes of this excess may be 
 assigned, as each operating in numerous cases. 
 
49 
 
 1. For instance, uneasiness of mind is fre- 
 quently seen to lead to it. Bereavement, 
 embarrassed circumstances, remorse, disap- 
 pointed love or ambition, domestick trials, 
 make a man's life a burden to him, and 
 prompt him to seek a temporary cheerfulness 
 by artificial means. His mind is relieved and 
 exalted by the physical excitement, but with 
 returning sobriety comes an hour made sad- 
 der by the addition of nervous debility and a 
 sense of degradation, and he is driven again 
 by a stronger impulse to the same expedient. 
 The consequences of each successive indul- 
 gence urge with added force to a repetition 
 of the like, and the indissoluble chains of the 
 habit are locked. This is the case on which 
 the pity the world bestows is mingled most 
 with tenderness, and least with contempt. 
 But what an humbling thought it is, that the 
 sufferings of sentiment, often of the most pure 
 and generous kind, shall impel men to the 
 grossest gratifications of sense, and subdue 
 them to its meanest thraldom. How tenfold 
 
50 
 
 cruel are they when they tempt the distress 
 they create, to rush for relief into the arms of 
 the worst dishonour. 
 
 2. A land and friendly disposition^ again, 
 it is grievous to say, is often seen leading to 
 the same consequence. How well established 
 a connexion of this sort, has been experienced 
 by those who speak our language, to exist, 
 may be seen, for example, in a word in use 
 among them. Conviviality, according to its 
 construction, means companionship, friendly 
 intercourse in society. In its well known ac- 
 ceptation, it denotes, free drinking together. 
 Within certain limits of the excitement thus 
 produced, its effect on a mind disposed by the 
 presence of friends to a friendly tone, is to 
 give warmth to the social feelings, and open 
 the heart to sincerity by removing the re- 
 straints, which a wise or a selfish prudence 
 had imposed. Wo to him who to any pe- 
 culiar strength of the amiable dispositions 
 which prompt men to seek society, adds any 
 peculiar power to make his own desirable, 
 
51 
 
 unless he have cares, or fixed habits, or root- 
 ed principles, to meet the trials to which he 
 will be probably exposed. A talent to enter- 
 tain is a most portentous gift to a man without 
 firm virtue, and with time to spare. Com- 
 pany seeks and caresses him. His hour of 
 triumph is his hour of revelry. Amidst its 
 freedom, his wit is brightest and most ap- 
 plauded, and his heart is fullest in its song. 
 He thinks that good fellowship attracts him by 
 its intellectual and honest joys, and perhaps 
 does not suspect himself to be solicited by 
 appetite, till he has too good reason to know 
 that he is a bond slave to it. ' O that we 
 should,' says one of the characters of the 
 great dramatist, ' with joy, revel, pleasure, 
 and applause, transform ourselves into beasts.' 
 He follows that broad way that leadeth to 
 destruction, whereat there be so many which 
 go in, and when his doom is sealed, when the 
 accomplishments that brought his fall, have 
 shared in it, and the more prudent associates 
 of his days of flattered folly do not recognise 
 
52 
 
 his altered form, he derives what satisfaction 
 he may from knowing what all will say, — that 
 be was nobody's enemy but his own ; — that 
 it was his good heart that ruined him. 
 
 3. Want of occupation, itself, apart from 
 the dangers of society incident to it, is fruitful 
 of temptation in this respect. The human 
 mind is so made, as to demand excitement. 
 Repose, if one may use such an expression, 
 is an uneasy state to it. Without something 
 to engage and stimulate it, it preys upon itself. 
 Wisely was it so constituted, for by this im- 
 pulse, its author designed that it should be 
 driven to seek excitement in useful occupa- 
 tion. From that state of depression, which, 
 to those who do not so occupy it, is its natural 
 state, it is but too likely to have recourse for 
 relief, to the pernicious indulgence on which 
 we are discoursing. No one, who has not 
 some employment, is, in the existing state of 
 things, safe against it. Dispensation from 
 labour is continually experienced to be ruin- 
 ous, to that class in the community, who are 
 
53 
 
 little acquainted with intellectual pleasures; 
 and he, whose worldly concerns do not de- 
 mand his care, is a subject of concern, unless 
 he has resources in plans or offices of service 
 to others, or in a taste for the cultivation of 
 his own mind. 
 
 II. We might add to such subordinate 
 causes of intemperance, but it would be to no 
 purpose. For what is it for which these, and 
 other such, account? Plainly for nothing 
 more than this. For the difference between 
 the moderate and the immoderate use of the 
 means of intoxication. And this needs no 
 accounting for. It sufficiently explains itself. 
 Particular causes, such as have been touched 
 upon, may lead to excess in particular instan- 
 ces ; but without the appearance of any such 
 causes, the phenomenon is fully solved. The 
 fact is, that spirituous liquors possess the re- 
 markable, the mysterious property to practise 
 on minds, otherwise most clear and wary, 
 that deception of which our text calls the sub- 
 ject unwise. Administered to the human 
 
54 
 
 constitution, they so affect it as to dispose it 
 powerfully to an excessive indulgence in 
 them. When a relish for them has once 
 been formed, they urgently invite the appetite 
 to overstep the limits of a strict temperance, 
 and when that step has been taken, they have 
 depraved the appetite. They have created 
 an unnatural craving, which growing continu- 
 ally as it is fed, hurries the victim on with a 
 strength which is all but irresistible. I do 
 not undertake to describe the physical process. 
 That would be the subject of another kind of 
 treatise. But I speak nothing but most pain- 
 fully famihar truth, when I say, that with 
 more certainty than vaccination changes the 
 constitution, so that the subject cannot suffer 
 from that disorder against which it is a safe- 
 guard, a certain degree of indulgence in 
 drinking, towards which every degree of in- 
 dulgence tends, so alters the constitution, that 
 the subject cannot again be a temperate man. 
 We know of nothing which so takes away the 
 freedom of the will. A certain point passed, 
 
55 
 
 which no one is conscious >of having approach- 
 ed, till it is passed, and to all human expecta- 
 tion, though not indeed to human effort, he 
 must be given up as lost. It is all but certain, 
 that he is soon to go down to his grave a dis- 
 honoured, undone man. Motives are no 
 longer any thing to him. Dread of disease 
 and want in their most revolting forms ; 
 shame; pity for his best friends; fear and 
 hope of a hereafter, — to all that can touch a 
 manly heart, and that once touched his, to all 
 he is as insensible as a rock. The relentless 
 demon has clutched his prey, and will drag 
 it down to his place. I do not say that there 
 have not been instances of reform, when hope 
 was gone. But they are so contrary to com- 
 mon experience, that we hear of them almost 
 with the same incredulity that we hear of 
 apparitions from the invisible world, and sto- 
 ries of one and of the other, which we under- 
 take to trace, generally turn out to be equally 
 unfounded. 
 
 The frequent excess then, in the use of ar- 
 4 
 
66 
 
 dent spirits, is sufficiently accounted for, by 
 their own nature, wherever they are in gene- 
 ral use at all, as much as it would be account- 
 ed for, where a fever should spread, that many, 
 from individual circumstances of constitution 
 or exposure, should have it severely and die. 
 And this then, is what I maintain ; that it is 
 
 THE PREVAILING USE OF ARDENT SPIRITS, 
 WHICH IS CHARGEABLE WITH THE FRE- 
 QUENT IMMODERATE USE OF THEM. Their 
 
 use is reputable and general, and therefore 
 it is, that their fatal use is common. Is it not 
 so ? Those who are from time to time break- 
 ing from the ranks and going over into the 
 class of intemperate persons, are we not sure 
 that it was in each of them the less indul- 
 gence, which challenged no blame, that led to 
 the greater, which is infamous and destruc- 
 tive ? Going further back, can we entertain 
 the smallest doubt, that it was the unquestion- 
 ed customs of society, that brought them first 
 wnthin the sphere of that influence, which is 
 about to be thus consummated ? The infant 
 
57 
 
 loathes distilled spirits. So does the man, if 
 his taste has not been won to them by palata- 
 ble mixtures ; by use, in the first place, from 
 some imagined necessity, — to his health, for 
 instance ; by example ; or by some associa- 
 tions of the mind. And even in those instances 
 where a specifick temptation to excessive in- 
 dulgence can be named, it accounts, as has 
 been said, for nothing but the excess, and not 
 for that more guarded indulgence, to which 
 the excess relates, and without which, as a 
 preparation, it would not, in any case, have 
 existed. Why did the boon companion make 
 merry with his friends with liquor ; why not 
 with exhilarating gas, which would have 
 made them happier while under its effects, 
 and left them happier when its effects sub- 
 sided ? Why did he who felt the smart of a 
 wounded spirit, and he who was harassed by 
 vacuity of mind, not have recourse to the 
 poppy's juices? They are a better sedative, 
 are more conveniently administered, and lap 
 the sick soul in a more glorious elysium of 
 
58 
 
 the fancy. This is a Turk's medicine for ^ a 
 mind diseased.' Why is it not a Christian's ? 
 There is but one answer. It is because 
 the gas was out of the way, a thing almost 
 unknown, hidden in the chemist's laboratory ; 
 and the opium was out of the way, among 
 the apothecary's secret stores; neither of 
 them substances familiar to the habits of so- 
 ciety, and included in the economy of daily 
 life. The ardent spirit was in the way, and 
 not to be sought beyond where friends meet, 
 and families dwell, and individuals for their 
 various purposes resort, and the crowds of 
 business and pleasure ' most do congregate.' 
 All comes to the same point ; namely, that ar- 
 dent spirits are so often used to excess, be- 
 cause they are in general use among us, 
 meeting us at every turn, and because with 
 or without what in the individual case we call 
 cause, it is to excess in frequent instances, that, 
 when generally used at all, they tend with a 
 powerful urgency. Every where men meet 
 with them, and, meeting with them, men are 
 
59 
 
 constitutionally liable to become their prey* 
 This is not necessary, and many in fact es- 
 cape. Numbers who use them, it is needless 
 to say, are men without a blot. But what do 
 we thence infer ? We might master a lion 
 who should waylay us ; but a country infest- 
 ed with lions, would not therefore cease to be 
 dangerous to live in. — What, let us ask, has 
 established that habit of society, which in- 
 volves so much danger, and actually pro- 
 duces, year by year, so much wo ? 
 
 1. Partly, it may be supposed, the opinion^ 
 which we often hear expressed, that ardent 
 spirits are efficacious infrequent exigencies of 
 the health. Is a person chilled ; they are the 
 common prescription to warm him. Is he 
 heated ; they will refresh him. Is he fa- 
 tigued in body, they will bring back strength ; 
 or in mind, they will restore tone and cheer- 
 fulness. Has he taken cold, they will expel 
 it. Is he to be exposed to take cold, they 
 are that preventive, a litde of which is bet- 
 ter than much cure. Are his nerves shaken, 
 4^ 
 
60 
 
 they wUl compose them. Is his blood sluggish, 
 they will stir it.* It would seem, to hear their 
 virtues successively set forth, that the alchy- 
 mists might break their crucibles, for the pana- 
 cea was found. I shall not undertake to say, 
 that there are not constitutions which they 
 may benefit, when those constitutions have 
 become inured to the sparing use of them. 
 I shall not deny that there may be other pe- 
 culiar constitutions to which, without the self- 
 created demand of previous use, they may 
 be sei-viceable ; though I should think it not 
 amiss in persons possessing such, to resolve 
 that they will resort to them, as they would 
 to mercury or hemlock, or any of the most 
 
 * In respect to morning drinking, there has been, in 
 this quarter, a manifest improvement in the present 
 generation. Thirty years ago, grave, honourable, yea, 
 reverend gentlemen, were habitually thirsty at eleven 
 o'clock. I have heard it said, however, that the use of 
 herb julaps, as they are called, is travelling towards 
 the north. It is most devoutly to be hoped, that the 
 fashion of this morning prophylactick is not destined 
 to pass the New England border. 
 
61 
 
 unsafe materials of the healing art, — that is, 
 under the strict guidance of professional wis- 
 dom. But full often has the conscientious 
 physician seen cause to rue the day, when he 
 gave for the medicine of the body, what prov- 
 ed in the result, the bane of the soul ; and if 
 not one of the most brilliant recent discoveries 
 of medical science, because not made of a 
 sudden, still one of the most valuable is, that 
 distilled liquors are rarely applicable to medi- 
 cinal uses ; — a conviction which is becoming 
 firmer and extending itself every day, with 
 the progress of the art, and the collations of 
 different experience.^ It is a maxim now 
 among the professional men in the severely 
 warm climates of the East and West Indies, 
 that ' spirituous liquors, whether used habitu- 
 ally, moderately, or in excessive quantities, 
 always diminish in the same degree the vital 
 strength, and render men more susceptible of 
 
 * The piaictice of administering medicine in spirituous 
 vehicles, by which great harm has been done, is, now, 
 I am told, in great part discontinued. 
 4t 
 
62 
 
 disease ;' and the same is the result of the 
 experience of our southern cities.* — It is not 
 artificial stimulus that gives strength, but na- 
 tural food. All observation and experiment 
 go to show it. Would it not have been 
 strange, if God, who meant man to have 
 strength to labour and endure, should have 
 designed him to derive it, not from the sub- 
 stantial fruits of the earth, but from a curious 
 extract of art ? Would it not have been out 
 of all analogy ? What other animal is so 
 nourished ? Do you strengthen the hard- 
 working horse or ox with the simple grain, 
 or with the intoxicating essence you obtain 
 from it ; and if it were prepared for their diet 
 as it is for that of their driver, would they 
 serve him so well or so long as they do ? The 
 
 * * They dispose to every form of acute disease. They 
 moreover excite fevers in persons predisposed to them 
 from other causes. This has been remarked in all the 
 yellow fevers which have visited the cities of the United 
 States. Hard drinkers seldom escape, and scarcely ever 
 recover from them.' — Rush's Inquiry, p. 8. 
 
63 
 
 Roman soldiers, who overran the world, drank 
 vinegar and water. In the parent country, 
 training for athletick exercises, demanding 
 the greatest attainable power of action and 
 endurance, is reduced to a regular science. 
 The subjects of it are a class of men, little 
 influenced by moral considerations. Their 
 discipline is merely a discipline to bring the 
 human machine to its maximum of exertion 
 of activity and force ; and one of its rules, it 
 is said, founded on the nicest observation and 
 full experience, is an utter prohibition of the 
 use of spirituous liquors."^ There can be lit- 
 tle doubt, that, taking the twenty-four hours 
 together, the temporary excitement produced 
 by ardent spirits does not compensate the 
 succeeding languor ; and there can be no 
 doubt that, other things being equal, the per- 
 sons who abstain from them through their 
 lives, have essentially greater strength of body 
 
 * See on this subject, Dr. Bradford's Address before 
 the Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of In- 
 temperance. 
 
64 
 
 and mind, and are happier, and longer lived. 
 In cases of extreme hardship, such as cold, 
 watching, and fatigue in war, it has appeared 
 that the most temperate have been the most 
 able to endure ; and in shipwrecks, in ninety- 
 nine cases in a hundred, it has not been the 
 seemingly hardy sailors, used to all kinds of 
 exposure, who have suffered least, but their 
 officers, more delicately reared, more used to 
 comforts and indulgencies, but who, from the 
 sense of their responsibleness for the safety 
 of the rest, have abstained from their excesses. 
 It has even been ascertained to be an errour, 
 that there is danger to life, in wholly and of a 
 sudden discontinuing the use of ardent spirits, 
 in cases where it has been the most immode- 
 rate. The patient in such cases, undergoes a 
 disease which, among its subjects, is denomi- 
 nated the horrours, and which has been 
 thought to be in its nature fatal, unless the cus- 
 tomary stimulus were supplied. He is thrown 
 into the most miserable condition of bodily 
 and mental imbecility. He cannot sleep. 
 
^5 
 
 He sees all sorts of frightful phantoms of the 
 imagination in a crowd around him, with the 
 distinctness and certainty of actual sense; 
 and sustains, in short, all agonies of terrour. 
 The fit comes on after a day of abstinence, 
 lasts sometimes four days, though commonly 
 less than two, and leaves the body and mind 
 feeble, but without disease. I mention it as 
 greatly to the honour of the physician of the 
 House of Correction in this city,"^ that, pro- 
 ceeding with a judgment and courage that 
 justified each the other, he has established the 
 common opinion concerning the needful palli- 
 ative in this case, to be groundless. Of two 
 hundred and fifty patients, with whom he has 
 enforced total abstinence, he has lost not one. 
 2. Another cause of that general use of ar- 
 dent spirits, which in its turn is the cause of 
 their excessive use, is their instituted connex- 
 ion^ in the minds and habits of a great portion 
 
 * Dr. Joshua B. Flint. I understand that the same 
 course has also been taken, and with an equally satis- 
 factory result, in the state's prison at Charlestown. 
 
66 
 
 of the people, ivith the intercourse of friend- 
 ship, and the duties of hospitality. It is hard 
 to account for the origin of the different usages 
 of different nations. This happens to be ours. 
 The Asiatick gives his guests and his friends 
 presents to carry away. The Frenchman 
 entertains with his ices and his coffee ; the 
 Indian with his pipe ; the Italian with his gar- 
 dens, his pictures, and his rausick, without 
 any thing to satisfy hunger or thirst, taking it 
 for granted that, as to these wants, his guests 
 have provided for themselves at home. We 
 of the English race shew our good will with 
 what we call good cheer; another phrase 
 which speaks our sense of a connexion be- 
 fore referred to ; for cheer in its original sig- 
 nification means gayety and spirit; in that 
 which it has acquired through our habits, it 
 means meat and drink. The connexion is by no 
 means altogether arbitrary. Eating and drink- 
 ing together is a natural and proper sign enough 
 of concord, and under different modifications 
 has perhaps been so considered at all times. 
 
67 
 
 The temperate participation of them itself 
 elevates the spirits, and the seasons for them 
 are naturally enough chosen as the seasons for 
 social interviews. Besides vv^hich, they give 
 opportunity to the offerer to shew his friend- 
 ship by a trifling act of generosity, which is 
 likely to be kindly taken. Why, in this 
 character of a courteous and hospitable offer- 
 ing, provision for thirst has so taken pre- 
 cedence of provision for hunger, is not so 
 clear. Perhaps it is because the former is 
 more readily at hand, and soonest prepared 
 and disposed of. Perhaps, because the ex- 
 citement of animal spirits produced by it is 
 more quickly obtained and in a higher de- 
 gree. But however this may be, the fact is, 
 that the offer of stimulating liquid of some 
 form is in this and the parent country the cus- 
 tomary offer of courtesy, in most classes of 
 society. Among the citizens of the parent 
 country, it is not so generally made in the form 
 of distilled spirits, because, happily for them, 
 that product is exceedingly dear ; happily for 
 
them, at least, it would be, if the strong ap- 
 petite for the exciting essence did not lead 
 them to secure it by consuming greater quan- 
 tities of products which contain it in a less 
 concentrated form. Here, on the contrary, 
 they are exceedingly cheap ; so much so, 
 that I suppose it would be speaking within 
 bounds, to say that with the fruits of the la- 
 bour of one day in the week, a man might 
 keep himself completely brutalized and help- 
 less by them during the remaining six. The 
 consequence is they are within the perfectly 
 convenient reach of every individual, who de- 
 sires to have them to use or to bestow ; and this 
 fully explains, why, in the intercourse of the 
 great majority of persons in this community, 
 they should have established a preference to 
 be the customary token of that good will, 
 which some offering to the palate is looked 
 for to testify. Such, at any rate, they now 
 are among us ; and this being so, when they 
 are always stored on the shelf of the house- 
 holder, and held to the visitor's lips, — when 
 
69 
 
 they are at hand in every place of amusement^ 
 or of bargaining, or of service, to seal every 
 contract, and renew every acquaintance, and 
 requite every good turn, — when one must of- 
 fer, and therefore must taste, and the other 
 must accept, or be reckoned churlish, what 
 wonder that that use of them should be pre- 
 vailing and habitual, out of which a perni- 
 cious use is so certain in numerous cases to 
 grow ? 
 
 3. I might therefore name the cheapness 
 of ardent spirits among us as a third cause of 
 their general use, but it blends itself with the 
 other two. Because they are thought desira- 
 ble for nourishment and medicine, and com- 
 fort and companionship, and because they are 
 cheaply had, they are every where to be 
 found, provided for these purposes ; and, — 
 being so used (without the restraint of costli- 
 ness) for these, whenever they are imagined 
 to occur, — they actually run, in frequent in- 
 stances, into that excess, to which, of their 
 nature, they strongly tend. Again ; being so 
 
70 
 
 freely provided for these uses, they are ready 
 to serve any other not comprehended in these. 
 Make any expedient frequent and agreeable, 
 and you need give no other reason for a re- 
 sort to it which shall be causeless, unexcused 
 and constant. Reversing the la\v^ of econo- 
 micks, the supply creates the demand. It is 
 furnished to serve many uses, and, being fur- 
 nished, it suggests itself and is found applicable 
 for all. Thus ardent spirits have extensively 
 established their place among the regular pro- 
 visions of families, and on the table of daily 
 repast. Along with the common means of 
 sustenance, they are in the sight of children, 
 and sometimes without doubt at their lips, 
 diluted and sweetened at first so as not to of- 
 fend their taste. They come with not a few 
 to stand almost in the place of food, nay, one 
 might say, of shelter, fire, and raiment. No 
 where are they out of place. They menace 
 with their serpent's bite, they brandish their 
 adder's sting, in meetings for sacred duties, 
 nay, in meetings for funeral sorrow. Are we 
 
71 
 
 to expect to be thus continually confronting 
 such a reptile, and never to feel its fang ?^ 
 
 There is another way in which the supply 
 creates the demand. It is in the multipli- 
 cation of houses licensed for the sale of 
 ardent spirits by retail. There are more 
 
 * A little girl at one of the primary schools, after re- 
 peating the letters of the word coffee, hesitated to pro- 
 nounce it. * What does your mother get for your break- 
 fast ? ' asked the mistress, by way of helping her. The 
 child promptly answered ' Rum.' A female domestick, 
 thirteen or fourteen years old, after visiting her parents, 
 was observed to come home intoxicated, and on inquiry 
 it was found that ardent spirits were given her at that 
 repast, of which tea is commonly the provision. These 
 are only two examples, which I happen lately to have 
 heard, of what most persons know, that spirituous li- 
 quors are instar omnium with many families among 
 our population. In the course of some inquiries into 
 the state of the poor in Charlestown within a few win- 
 ters, three or four little children, from infancy upwards, 
 were found huddled together in a miserable bed, in the 
 dead sleep of drunkenness. Their mother said that 
 being destitute of means to feed, clothe, or warm them 
 properly, she quieted them, when they woke, with a 
 new dose of liquor. 
 
72 
 
 dangerous places of resort than these, no 
 doubt. It appears from time to time on the 
 records of our courts, that there are haunts 
 of intemperance furnished for the greater al- 
 lurement with means of gambling, and other 
 seductions ; and lately there was brought to 
 light a den of wickedness, where an intoxicatr 
 ing mixture, till now unknown, of pernicious 
 drugs, was prepared, chiefly, as it appeared 
 for children, — the best nursery, hitherto disco- 
 vered, of those offenders of tender age, who 
 month by month, are convicted under the stat- 
 ute against common drunkards.* But I speak 
 
 * A child was brought up for stealing a watch, under 
 complaint of the keeper of this establishment, who, it 
 appeared, had crazed him by administering this prepara- 
 tion, to which, in evidence, he gave the name of Tom 
 and Jerry. The court held the landlord to be most 
 culpable, and under its direction an uncommonly re- 
 spectable jury acquitted the little wretch. 
 
 In the case of most of the juvenile offenders charged 
 in the police court with assaults and other disturbances 
 of the peace, it appears on examination that the excite- 
 ment of ardent spirits was the origin of their offence, 
 and children apprehended for pilfering are not uncom- 
 monly brought before the magistrates intoxicated. 
 
73 
 
 not of these, but of resorts which break no law. 
 It is enough for serious detriment to the publick 
 morals, that numerous opportunities should be 
 furnished to intemperance, to put out of view 
 all other excitement. Under the present vigi- 
 lant administration of our city government, 
 there are no less than five hundred and eighty 
 licensed tenements, nearly all of them having 
 licenses as victualing houses, and accordingly 
 being authorized to sell liquors in the smallest 
 quantities, to be drunken upon the premises ; 
 and most of them too being the same places 
 where groceries and other requisites of a fa- 
 mily are obtained, so that they present the 
 temptation to the view when visited with a 
 different purpose, and make it convenient to 
 take the change of money paid for other com- 
 modities, in ardent spirits. Five hundred 
 and eighty licensed houses ; one licensed 
 house to every sixteen not licensed ; one 
 licensed house to every thirty-four male citi- 
 zens over sixteen years of age. The weather 
 5 
 
74 
 
 must be inclement which can part an idle per- 
 son from his cups, when at the worst the chance 
 is that he may enjoy them, and with them a cir- 
 cle of congenial society, within sixteen doors 
 of his own. A labouring man must choose 
 his way well, who in going a mile from his 
 work to his home, should not pass a hundred 
 points where his virtue is thus tried. After 
 every sixteenth house, on an average, as he 
 goes, the means of vicious indulgence are pre- 
 sented to him, not improbably with the added 
 inducement of the sight of some acquaintance 
 partaking of them. 
 
 ^ Such are some of the causes, more and less 
 prominent, of the great evil we have been la- 
 menting. Let their reality be well examined 
 and weighed. It is much more easy to de- 
 tect their existence than to devise their reme- 
 dies. Yet let not even that be despaired of. 
 To find and apply them is a great and good 
 work. It is but just begun, and it is too early 
 
75 
 
 for discouragement to await it. Let men do 
 their part, and, in his own^good time, through 
 the providential teaching of experience, a 
 wisdom from God will explain the means of 
 success, and an energy from God will use 
 them. 
 
1 CORINTHIANS, VIII. 13. 
 
 If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh 
 while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to of- 
 fend. 
 
 We have attended to some statements, re- 
 lating to the appalling consequences, here and 
 hereafter, of the vice of intemperate drink- 
 ing ; the extent to which it prevails in our 
 community ; the loss and disturbance which 
 the publick suffers from it, and the dangers 
 with which it threatens even so stable a thing 
 as our political institutions. We have also 
 made some inquiry into the causes which lead 
 to the destructive indulgence. 
 
 So far, our way was sufficiently plain. We 
 had only to use our senses, and we could not 
 fail to see it. We approach now a much more 
 difficult question. What can be done to stay 
 this torrent of wo and death ; to stop this 
 
77 
 
 overflowing fountain of private and publick 
 ruin ? 
 
 I. The readiest way would seem to be to 
 invoke the authority of law. It is by laws, 
 with suitable penalties annexed, that in other 
 cases the community provides for the perma- 
 nence of its institutions, and protects the in- 
 nocent against invasion from the guilty. 
 
 1 . For such protection we look, in the first 
 instance, to the parental government of our 
 own commonwealth. Our ancestors, in the 
 first, and the early part of the second century 
 of our history, thought this a proper field for 
 the operation of legal restraints. Two great 
 features of their legislation on the subject, 
 have since disappeared. (1.) They made 
 each separate act of drunkenness indictable 
 and punishable, as an act of assault or larce- 
 ny now is ; thus rendering it infamous, and 
 obstructing that repetition of it, which is 
 necessary to the forming of the habit. (2.) 
 They enjoined on the municipal authorities to 
 prosecute such offenders, and to employ per- 
 5^ 
 
78 
 
 sons to inform against them, with a compen- 
 sation for their services ; thus refusing to rely 
 on the always invidious method of private in- 
 formation. They also, by an act passed at a 
 still earlier period, forbade persons employing 
 workmen, to give them strong liquors, except 
 in cases of necessity. These provisions are 
 all done away. Our existing laws only pun- 
 ish or restrain persons who are proved, (1.) to 
 be common drunkards ; (2.) to be injuring or 
 endangering their health by intemperance ; 
 (3.) to be exposing themselves or their fami- 
 lies to become a publick charge ; (4.) to have 
 been guilty of excess in a licensed house. It 
 is but too probable, that whenever either of 
 these cases brings the citizen within the reach 
 of the law, the law finds him too late for his 
 own good. 
 
 Was there not reason in the view which 
 our fathers took of this subject ? Does it not 
 accord with just principles of law, to compel 
 the citizen under pain of its retributions to 
 keep sober, as much as to compel him to re- 
 
79 
 
 main peaceable or honest, provided his intem- 
 perance injures other individuals and the 
 community, as much as his passion or his dis- 
 honesty would injure them ? And is not this 
 condition met ? Are acts of violence or of 
 fraud often committed, which affect the com- 
 munity so injuriously as an example of vicious 
 excess ; and how often do we hear of such 
 an act, which inflicts on individuals so griev- 
 ous a wrong, as is inflicted by intemperance 
 on all whose fortunes or whose hearts are 
 bound to its victim ? The lenity which lets 
 it pass unpunished and so emboldens it, seems 
 no less than just so much cruel injustice to 
 the better part of society ; — oppression of the 
 innocent in subjecting them to ill treatment 
 fi-om the guilty, and of the industrious in 
 compelling them to take the burden of main- 
 taining the improvident and idle. To punish 
 drunkenness as a crime in itself, has been a 
 course often enough adopted. The Romans 
 went so far, as to punish capitally a single 
 transgression of the kind by a female. And 
 4t 
 
80 
 
 as to encroachments upon the liberties of the 
 citizen, the publick often protects itself, (and 
 is held by all writers to be justified by the 
 great law of self-preservation in doing so,) by 
 processes which might far better be reckoned 
 encroachments, applied to cases too, where 
 the citizen is chargeable with no offence 
 whatsoever. Take the case of the health 
 laws. A person is attacked in one of our 
 cities by a disease, supposed to be infectious. 
 This is no fault of his. On the contrary, it 
 makes him a subject of pity. But, against 
 his will, he must be taken from the familiar 
 comforts of home, and the alleviations of do- 
 mestick care, to take his fate, whatever it may 
 be, in some place unknown, and possibly 
 odious to him. Repeated instances have oc- 
 curred in this country, and in former times in 
 this town, in which to the pain of separation, 
 and the hazard of removal, — unavoidable in- 
 conveniences, — has been added the grievance 
 of exposure to a place, and to circumstances, 
 of peculiar danger. With the last winter there 
 
81 
 
 occurred here a rare instance, if not the first, 
 of an individual reputed to be suffering un- 
 der a contagious disease, being permitted by 
 the authorities to struggle with it quietly at 
 home, under sufficient securities. By the 
 quarantine laws of most of our cities, persons 
 arriving from tropical climates or suspected 
 places, are required to remain a certain num- 
 ber of days, without intercourse with their 
 friends, whatever reasons they may have for 
 impatience, and under circumstances always 
 wearisome and disagreeable in the extreme. 
 This alone is punishment enough for those 
 who have committed no fault, but it has not 
 seldom happened that they have also been 
 compelled to remain more or less within the 
 reach of infection, and incurred the conse- 
 quences. If the good of the whole rightly 
 enforces such restraints on the liberty of such 
 as, without any fault, might spread physical 
 pestilence, has it no privileges in respect to 
 the voluntary difFuser of a moral pestilence, 
 with all its diversity of destructive conse- 
 
82 
 
 quences ; or is the danger thus threatened to 
 be accounted less worthy of precautions ? 
 
 But I would be as far as any one from de- 
 fending any course likely to infringe the just 
 freedom of the citizen. It may be, that the 
 offence could not be satisfactorily defined, 
 and that penal laws of the kind in question, 
 might lead to an oppressive scrutiny of pri- 
 vate life. Yet are there not, let me ask, some 
 legislative provisions, liable to no objection in 
 point of principle, and which might, if not at 
 once, yet by degrees, be introduced ? Would 
 it not be possible, by a general law, to pro- 
 portion the number of licensed houses, in 
 each municipality, to its population, accord- 
 ing to the supposed general exigency ; and, 
 since the difficulty of discriminating between 
 different applications is so great, as almost to 
 excuse the municipal authorities for unreason- 
 ably multiplying recommendations, might not a 
 heavy tax be imposed by law, on the renewal 
 of licenses ; a tax which the few who would 
 then monopolize the trafiick, would be well 
 
83 
 
 able to pay, and which would have the gene- 
 ral effect to place them in the hands of per- 
 sons of some standing in society, as well as 
 to diminish the number of places of allure- 
 ment ? If ardent spirits were thus made to 
 deposit in the treasury a sum adequate to the 
 support of the pauperism they create, it would 
 not seem that there was injustice done. The 
 effect of a similar measure has been incident- 
 ally tried, if proof of the effect were needed. 
 In three years from the beginning of 1814, 
 after which the internal duty, levied by the 
 federal government, became payable, fewer 
 licences by far were taken out in the counties 
 of Suffolk and Essex, than in the years be- 
 fore and after; and there is no reason to doubt, 
 that the same was the consequence elsewhere. 
 In populous towns, might not the privilege of 
 retailing liquor be withholden from places 
 where household stores are sold, and where, 
 of consequence, it is placed in the way of so 
 many who do not come to seek it ? Is there 
 no just method of instituting some difference 
 
84 
 
 in the treatment of paupers by reason of in- 
 temperance, and others ? May not guardians 
 be trusted with authority over the persons of 
 their intemperate wards ? May not town of- 
 ficers be required to prosecute illegal prac- 
 tices of retailers ? Might they not be forbid- 
 den, under pain of forfeiture of their privilege, 
 to sell liquor to paupers ; and to other individ- 
 uals, after receiving from town officers a pri- 
 vate injunction to that effect, grounded on a 
 representation made by the friends of those 
 individuals, or by other citizens, that they 
 were falling into intemperate habits, which 
 representation should have been ascertained 
 by proper inquiry to be just ? One happy 
 effect of such a measure would be, to re- 
 move from the view of the many, whose occa- 
 sions call them to move from place to place, 
 that crowd of loathsome loiterers, young and 
 old, who, from town to town, are seen haunting 
 the spot where the conveyance rests. In Italy, 
 where natural deformities abound, and where, 
 from the misplaced generosity of travellers, 
 
85 
 
 a hideous deformity is a fortune, no sight so 
 painful as . that is to be seen. A limb which 
 nature has wrenched, is no object of disgust, 
 like a form which vice has disfigured. Again ; 
 one state has prohibited magistrates from hold- 
 ing their courts in taverns, as leading their 
 suitors within sight of temptation ; and a go- 
 vernour of New York, some years ago, re- 
 commended to its legislature, that demands 
 for spirituous liquors sold by retail, should be 
 made not recoverable by law. Is there noth- 
 ing practicable and promising in such provi- 
 sions ? It becomes me not to say, that there 
 are not insuperable objections to all such. 
 But it is not amiss for the questions to be 
 moved. And those of us, who have not the 
 laws to make, have only to inquire what it is 
 desirable to do. We may leave it to legisla- 
 tors to see the difficulties which occur in do- 
 ing it. 
 
 2. Again ; is there nothing to be expected 
 to this end, from the wisdom of the nation ? 
 From that source, if such were the publick 
 
86 
 
 sense, an efficient coercive measure would 
 come in the least exceptionable form. The 
 use of ardent spirits might be reasonably ex- 
 pected to be less, in proportion as their price 
 was greater ; and if ijot, an average duty and 
 excise of twenty-seven cents on each gallon 
 consumed in the union, would meet its cur- 
 rent expenditure. I am not so extravagant 
 as to suppose, that any step of this kind can 
 be expected to be taken ; but, if it could, 
 what discerning person would not say, that 
 we saved the expense of a good government, 
 from a charge whence it could well be 
 spared ? And that government, so far-sight- 
 ed to defend its institutions from foreign 
 plots, might not its care be worthily bestow- 
 ed, to shield them from this tremendous in- 
 testine foe? It spoke the nation's sense, 
 and won the nation's favour, when, not long 
 ago, it declared to the world, that it would 
 maintain the strand of this western continent 
 sacred from the foot of every asserter of ar- 
 bitrary rule ; but I verily believe, that, at that 
 
87 
 
 moment and at this, our freedom was and is 
 more endangered from the different quarter 
 to which we have been looking. I do not 
 say that the country would applaud more, 
 but I am persuaded that it would have more 
 reason to applaud, a determination which 
 should be announced to it, to repel the dan- 
 ger from this source. 
 
 These are not considerations out of place 
 here, because in a country where the citizens 
 are the sovereign, whatever can be made to 
 appear to them to be right, will, in the course 
 of time, be law ; and I need not say that 
 where such a foe to religion, being a proper 
 subject for legal restraints, thrives upon legal 
 sufferance, the search of methods, to drive it 
 from that refuge, takes a place among reli- 
 gious inquiries. 
 
 II. But to turn to other remedies capable 
 of being applied by more manageable agency 
 than that of the sovereign power. 
 
 1. Great things, I doubt not, might be 
 done, by the provision of some substitute for 
 
ardent spirits, which should possess their 
 supposed quality to refresh, and should take 
 their place as the customary offering of good 
 will. This is by no means a hopeless project, 
 and I greatly desire to see it tried. In France 
 or Italy, I did not see an intoxicated person. 
 It is not principle that restrains the people of 
 those countries. They are by no means free 
 from other sensuality, and transplanted to 
 other parts of the world, the French, at least, 
 are not seldom drunkards. It is not want or 
 costliness of the means of intemperance. 
 The strong drink that deceives so many oth- 
 ers, comes from the former kingdom, and the 
 vineyards of Italy rear abundant temptation 
 for other climes. But in those countries, 
 men have not the same faith as in this, in the 
 universal infallibility of ardent spirits, and 
 custom has not made them the appropriate 
 offering of hospitality, and therefore a relish 
 for them is not formed. Friends repair to- 
 gether to houses of publick entertainment, 
 which are every where open, as with us. But 
 
89 
 
 the substance, with which they habitually re- 
 gale themselves, excites without inebriating. 
 The fact is a striking one ; and, as it seems 
 to me, speaks du'ection and encouragement. 
 We wonder at some of the vices of those 
 nations. The most vicious of them would 
 wonder no less at the intemperance of ours. 
 Their preservative from it is equally at our 
 command ; and when they have found a 
 means of perfectly temperate festivity, which 
 satisfies them, in a like use, better than the 
 hurtful one in use among us, is it not worth 
 the trial to have it adopted from them ?* 
 
 * In Venice, there is a coffee-house which is said not 
 to have been closed, day nor night, for a hu^dred and 
 fifty years. This gives an idea of the demand there is 
 for that refreshment. EstabUshments of the kind, — at 
 many (I suppose, most) of which no Uquor except cof- 
 fee is furnished, — are found exceedingly profitable, in 
 Italy and France, being frequented for purposes of re- 
 freshment and sociability, in the same manner as our 
 bar-rooms ; every one may judge how much less injuri- 
 ously. I see no reason why they should not succeed 
 among us. Drams are often resorted to for want of 
 something better, by travellers, for instance, in cold 
 
90 
 
 2. Again ; there is a great want of inno- 
 cent pnblick amusements among iis. We are 
 
 weather, or by night, and since there would be found 
 every thing to recommend the substitute, the fashion 
 would be Ukely to spread. The light wines of those coun- 
 tries seem to have Httle power, if any, to disease the ap- 
 petite. They are dmnk to quench thirst for the most 
 part, as milk would be. Nothing is more common than^ 
 at the little inns where one stops between one city and 
 another, to see people of the labouring class drink part 
 of a bottle of wine, largely diluted with water, and 
 leave the rest, which they have paid for. I have heard 
 it said, that when the French armies returned from the 
 wars in Holland, they brought back a taste for distilled 
 hquor, as the English are reputed to have done before, 
 from the campaigns of the duke of Marlborough. But 
 if this were the case, it seems that the imported vice 
 could not make a stand against the fixed habits of the 
 nation. Certain it is, that one must have more than a 
 visitor's opportunities of being acquainted with Paris, 
 before one will see exhibitions of intemperance which 
 are scarcely to be avoided in any English or American 
 market town. Some successful specimens of light wine 
 have been produced in this countiy, particularly at Ve- 
 vay, in Indiana, by the colony of Swiss, and at Scup- 
 pernong, in North Carolina. These are experiments 
 which deserve attention. 
 
91 
 
 told of a certain king, that he offered a prize 
 for a new diversion. We should do well to 
 follow his example, stipulating for one which 
 should be harmless, and accessible to the 
 whole people. In other countries, museums 
 of antiquities and other curiosities, collections 
 of objects of natural history, galleries of statua- 
 ry and pictures, and extensive and magnificent 
 publick gardens, are places of universal holiday 
 resort to a crowded, but perfectly orderly, 
 because temperate population. Some govern- 
 ments, from motives of policy, are at much 
 pains to recommend these recreations, and 
 make their subjects happy by them ; and the 
 consequence is, that, though greatly behind 
 our population in almost all respects, they 
 greatly excel it in some natural, gentle, and 
 refining tastes. They think not of the appe- 
 tite of thirst in connexion with their holiday 
 pleasures. They love no riot. They will 
 tolerate none. — It is hard to imagine any way 
 in which such provision is ever to be made 
 among us, but certain it is, that we are suffer- 
 6 
 
92 
 
 ing for the want of it. Of a portion of our 
 people, as of the hardy mountaineers, whom 
 we resemble not a little in good and bad, it 
 might be said by a like severe observer ; 
 
 * Unknown to them, when sensual pleasures cloy, 
 
 * To fill the languid pause with finer joy. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 * In wild excess the vulgar breast takes fire, 
 
 * Till, buried in debauch, the bliss expire.'* 
 
 3. There is an institution of recent inven- 
 tion, which has done much, 1 doubt not, and 
 
 * I do not know whether I have here said any thing 
 liable to misconception. Nobody, I suppose, will un- 
 derstand me, as expressing approbation of many of the 
 publick amusements of the continent of Europe, though, 
 even as to these, he would be har^Jy tasked, who should 
 undertake to maintain that they lead to more evil than 
 the sottishness, in whose place they stand. I am not 
 even insensible to the force of much that may be said 
 against the moral tendency of exhibitions in the fine 
 arts. Part of this ground, however, is not debateable. 
 PubHck walks, and collections of natural curiosities, 
 afford relaxation which is nothing but harmless and im- 
 proving. Let any one compare the scene at the botan- 
 ick garden in Paris, or the gardens of the Grand Duke 
 at Florence on some festival day, with that displayed 
 
93 
 
 may be made to do more, for the suppression 
 of intemperance. I speak "of the Savings 
 
 on similar occasions on our common, and he will find that 
 he must have recourse to other considerations to sus-. 
 tain his pride of country. This latter exhibition is a 
 scandal, which I can scarcely doubt the city government 
 would be borne out by the publick sense in removing ; 
 the land thus violated, and the credit thus lost, being 
 both the community's property. 
 
 This may seem a strange connexion, in which to in- 
 troduce the subject of publick executions, but it is 
 brought to my mind by a paragraph in one of the pa- 
 pers of the day, in which I am writing this note. It 
 contains an account of a recent execution for murder at 
 Raleigh, in North Carolina. * There were individuals,' 
 says the writer, ' in such a beastly state of intoxication, 
 that not even this horrid spectacle could sober them.' 
 The sentence might, I fear, be inserted in every such 
 account. A publick execution is an occasion of strong 
 excitement to the spectators, and there are but too 
 many, in whose minds excitement and recourse to 
 liquor are indissolubly associated. This subject of pub- 
 lick executions, or, I will even say, of collecting crowds 
 on any publick occasion, when it may be avoided, is a 
 subject entitled to much more serious attention than it 
 has hitherto received. 
 
 To return to the provision of agreeable employment 
 for those seasons of leisure, which are otherwise likely 
 
94 
 
 Banks. The individuals who have establish- 
 ed tliem in our towns, and taken care to have 
 
 to be employed in drinking. The condition of our peo- 
 ple seems to me to offer, in one particular, a plain di- 
 rection. With us every body can read, and a taste for 
 reading, such as, to a certain extent, is generally pos- 
 sessed among us, affords a never-failing resource for the 
 agreeable occupation of time. Pains ought to be taken 
 to cultivate and gratify this taste. I look upon the 
 social libraries, established in many of our country 
 towns, as an excellent preservative against intemper- 
 ance, when proper care is taken to furnish them with 
 entertaining as well as instructive books. With our 
 long winters, our agricultural population find a great 
 deal of time hanging heavy on their hands, and many 
 resort to the tavern to while it away, who would not do 
 it, if they could, in any better way, find agreeable ex- 
 citement for their minds. I think it, therefore, to be 
 greatly desirable, that large collections of improving 
 and amusing books should be provided in every village, 
 for the general use. All private and domestick virtues 
 would find a new aid in such establishments. I ven- 
 ture to propose something further. To meet, in a safe 
 way, the demands of the social principle, and of the 
 taste for news, both which have a place among im- 
 pulses towards the tavern, why might not a reading 
 room be established in each town, in some central place, 
 (not a licensed house,) where the gazettes and other 
 
95 
 
 them attached to the large manufacturing es- 
 tablishments in the country, are publick bene- 
 factors worthy of cordial praise. I mention 
 them particularly here, in order to express 
 my conviction, that every householder and 
 other person who employs labourers, may do 
 important good, in the connexion of our sub- 
 ject, by making known to his dependants the 
 existence of such institutions. A person who 
 has little money at a time, is tempted to part 
 with it for an idle indulgence, because he 
 knows of no way to dispose of a small surn 
 to advantage ; and to inform him of such a 
 way, is to save much more than his money to 
 
 vehicles of news might be found, and neighbours might 
 hold their consultations ? I can see no serious difficulty 
 in the way of such institutions, and it seems to me 
 they would promise much good. May I ask magistrates, 
 ministers, or other publick spirited citizens whose eye 
 this suggestion may meet, to give it some considera- 
 tion ? I suspect that, in cities. Insurance Offices, in 
 this way, answer a purpose, which, if they did not ex- 
 ist, taverns, with all their dangers, would have to 
 sei-ve. 
 
 6* 
 
9d 
 
 him. Should there be such a person present, 
 let me say to him, that if he is in the habit of 
 spending eight cents a day in ardent spirits, 
 and will discontinue that practice, to deposit 
 the amount thus redeemed, in the savings 
 bank, he may in twenty years be master from 
 this source, of nearly a thousand, and in thirty 
 years, of nearly two thousand dollars. How 
 few labouring men are there, who do not dai- 
 ly spend that sum in this use, and what a dif- 
 ference it would make to the comfort of 
 their age, to have its proceeds at their com- 
 mand, to say nothing of the health, good tem- 
 per, and good character they will have added 
 to their purchase. 
 
 4. Much may be done, and has been done, 
 by voluntary combinations of persons engag- 
 ing together to discountenance and check in- 
 temperance, as far as may be, by their au- 
 thority, example and influence ; to remonstrate 
 with, and when necessary, to prosecute of- 
 fenders against the laws already provided in 
 relation to the subject ; to collect and circulate 
 
97 
 
 facts respecting it, and, by whatever means V 
 occur, to exert a joint action on publick opin- 
 ion, that agent which now manages the world. 
 The Massachusetts Society for suppressing 
 Intemperance, instituted fifteen years ago, has 
 laboured well in that field. To its ofl;en dis- 
 appointed, but persevering and efficient la- 
 bours, the anxiety with which the community 
 now regards the subject is in great part to be 
 ascribed. It deserves the help of the able ; 
 the generosity of the benevolent ; and the 
 prayers of all. Several of its branches have 
 also done good service. I will specify the 
 case of one in the town of Yarmouth. Ten 
 years ago some leading persons of that en- 
 terprising place had taken alarm at the ex- 
 tent, to which habits of excess were spreading 
 among their neighbours. They found, as they 
 complained, that ' they could not trust their 
 seamen.' Four individuals met to take coun- 
 sel together in the emergency, and began a 
 reformation by pledging themselves to one 
 another, totally to abstain from ardent spirits 
 6t 
 
98 
 
 themselves, and not offer them to their la- 
 bourers, nor to any other inhabitant of the 
 town. Nine or ten individuals before long 
 formed a society, which in its first report was 
 able to give it as ' their confident opinion, that 
 not one quarter part of the spirituous liquor 
 had been used in their town in that year, 
 which had been used in the years preceding.' 
 All the retailers of ardent spirits gave up the 
 business, and took an active part in the re- 
 form. The society, under the original com- 
 pact of abstinence, now consists of a hundred 
 of the most respectable citizens, fifteen of 
 whom have acknowledged themselves to 
 have stood before on most dangerous ground. 
 Their vessels make long fishing voyages with- 
 out distilled liquor on board, and the effect, 
 in short, is that intemperance is almost ban- 
 ished from the place. Such an instance is a 
 trumpet tongue of encouragement. 
 
 Other combinations less formal and less 
 permanent, for the same object, have done 
 their measure of good. Several towns in the 
 
99 
 
 neighbourhood of Yarmouth, have, in town 
 meeting, instructed their selectmen to recom- 
 mend no retailers for licenses, and but one or 
 two innholders. In those assemblies presided 
 the old virtue of the pilgrims. In Cohasset, 
 twelve or thirteen licensed householders have 
 of late, by agreement together, given up their 
 privilege. The example of conspicuous bodies 
 of men at their publick meetings, in exclud- 
 ing spirituous liquors, has had its good influ- 
 ence, which may most advantageously be 
 further used. The denominations of Me- 
 thodists and Friends have adopted ecclesias- 
 tical regulations, which in those well organized 
 bodies are effective checks. 
 
 Individuals have a similar work to do; 
 sometimes by means of particular advantages. 
 The jurist, for instance, has a task in a strict 
 administration, and, if the way may be found, 
 an improvement of the laws relative to crim- 
 inal indulgence. The divine, in publick and 
 in private, needs to expose it in its character 
 of an awful dereliction of the law of God, 
 
100 
 
 and suicide of the soul } and the physician, 
 from the press and in the family, is called on 
 to make known its terrifick effects upon the 
 system, and to explain what habits of consti- 
 tution, employment and diet tend to, and 
 what oppose it.^ This is a kind of explana- 
 tion particularly wanted. Full experiment 
 of landholders authorizes me to say, that, be- 
 sides serving their own interest, they may 
 prove essentially useful to the labourers they 
 employ, by stipulating to give them higher 
 wages, and, on that consideration, to withhold 
 all supply of ardent spirits, on w^hatever occa- 
 sion or pretence. They who would drink 
 immoderately, thinking that what they should 
 leave w^ould be gain to their employers and 
 loss to themselves, will be comparatively tem- 
 perate, unless already addicted to the vice, 
 
 * An excellent service would be rendered to the 
 cause by medical genUemen and town officers under- 
 taking to ascertain and publish, from year to year, the 
 number of persons who die and become paupers through 
 intemperance. 
 
101 
 
 when they know that tliey must be the poor- 
 er for what they consume.^ To secure ar- 
 
 * A friend informs me, that in expending forty thou- 
 sand dollars upon the large manufacturing establishment 
 at Uxbridge, he has used among his workmen only five 
 or six hogsheads of spirits, and this chiefly among those 
 employed in ditching. The quantity thus named seems 
 not small ; but it is trifling in proportion to the amount of 
 labour requisite to earn such a sum. He gives his la- 
 bourers advanced v^^ages on a stipulation of total absti- 
 nence from distilled spirits, which condition violated in 
 a single instance, he parts with them. Their drink is 
 molasses and water ; and his experience of their peace- 
 ableness among themselves, and better service of his in- 
 terests with a perfectly temperate diet, has led him to 
 the resolution henceforward to employ no labourer, on 
 any terms whatever, except with this restriction. Oth- 
 er similar experiments with a similar result are within 
 my knowledge, and I know of none to contradict them. 
 Let us be warned by the wretched condition of the 
 manufacturing population of England, and let measures 
 be seasonably taken to avert it from ours. 
 
 I scarcely need say that I have here only attempted 
 to indicate a few of the most direct methods of precau- 
 tion against the vice in question. Every thing which 
 tends to promote industrious and orderly habits, to fur- 
 nish useful occupation to the mind, above all to bring 
 it under religious influences, has a high importance ia 
 
102 
 
 dent spirits, in fine, from intemperate use, the 
 method seems to me no other than to drive 
 them absolutely from common use ; and 
 therefore, without undertaking to say what is 
 every one's duty, I am sure that every one 
 will be in the way of doing great good, who 
 will resolve not to keep, never to offer, and 
 never to accept them, except when profes- 
 sionally prescribed, thus causing his ' moder- 
 ation to be known unto all men,' and by his 
 conduct calling their attention to the subject. 
 This is the spirit of the aposde's resolution 
 in our text, in adducing which I did not think 
 
 this view. The libraries for apprentices, and scientifick 
 lectures for young mechanicks, which have lately been 
 set on foot in this city, are excellent moral instruments. 
 The commonwealth is likely to make no better single 
 provisions against intemperance than those which en- 
 force the support of common schools and publick wor- 
 ship. Our primary schools in this city do good service, 
 in withdrawing many young children from the constant 
 bad example of vicious parents ; but the system needs 
 to be completed by the establishment of infant schools, 
 on a plan of recent invention which is producing excel- 
 lent fniits in the parent country. 
 
103 
 
 it necessary to detain you with any illustration 
 of its coincidence with that spirit of consider- 
 ate, self-denying charity which is tlie favour- 
 ite grace of the gospel. I will undertake to 
 say further, that the young, who have no plea 
 to make of habits formed, and so backward 
 to relinquish their indulgence, however tem- 
 perate, — I will say that the young should re- 
 solve absolutely to abstain from ardent spirits. 
 They will not then, it is true, be sure of be- 
 ing temperate. They may use the vinous 
 and other liquors to a criminal excess ; but 
 it is distilled spirits, that experience has 
 proved to have the peculiar power to steal 
 away the resolution while they win the taste, 
 and in the purpose to renounce them the 
 greatest danger will have been escaped. 
 
 5. Once more ; effectually to check this, 
 like every other moral evil, we must faithfully 
 do what in us lies, by inculcation and exam- 
 ple, to spread the sanctifying influences of the 
 gospel of Christ ; of that pure and heavenly 
 spirit which can hold no fellowship with any 
 
104 
 
 sensuality, — which separates itself from the 
 pollutions of the world, as the crystal's solid 
 light takes no stain from the mire of the cav- 
 ern where it is buried. Address then, breth- 
 ren, to the objects of your solicitude, the 
 warnings and entreaties of your Saviour's re- 
 ligion. There is the sovereign antidote for 
 every moral bane. With the affectionate 
 apostle, let the language of your lips and of 
 your conduct to them be, ' dearly beloved, 
 we beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, 
 abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against 
 the soul.' Make them feel the earnestness 
 of that entreaty ; the reality of that charac- 
 ter ; the solemnity of that truth. Help them, 
 as you may, to attain that spirituality of mind, 
 which alone can be relied on as a complete 
 safeguard against disorders of the life. Quick- 
 en them to a devout love of God, so that 
 whether they eat or drink, or whatsoever 
 they do, they may never be regardless of 
 glorifying him. Excite them to a holy love 
 of Jesus, that they may aim, like him, to be 
 
105 
 
 ' harmless, undefiled, and separate from sin- 
 ners.' 'Walk in the spirit, and ye shall not 
 fulfil the lusts of the flesh.' There is our 
 path of safety. There we shall walk un- 
 harmed, however example or viler influences 
 should entice, or treacherous opportunity be- 
 guile. A heart purified by religion is the 
 citadel of unconquerable strength against all 
 assauks of evil. My friends, labour to cre- 
 ate in others that purity of heart, and to that 
 end cherish it in yourselves, with watchful- 
 ness and prayer. Let others see how holy 
 in all manner of conversation the faith of 
 Christ has made you, and by that appeal win 
 them to embrace it and live by it. When 
 you and all others are engaged in communi- 
 cating its blessed spirit, there will exist no 
 evils to deplore, like that which now sum- 
 mons us, each and all, to strenuous effort. 
 
 I have said nothing of methods of recovery 
 of persons already involved in intemperate 
 habits. They are not to be abandoned. But 
 
106 
 
 my only hope that their reformation will in 
 any considerable number of cases be effected, 
 rests on the report which most of us have 
 heard, that a physician has discovered some 
 preparation which, administered, will make 
 the patient forever after nauseate ardent spir- 
 its."^ Jf this be true, let us forthwith decree 
 festivals and erect statues to him. Our tes- 
 timonials of publick gratitude to such a bene- 
 factor can scarcely be too cordial or too 
 costly. He is far more worthy of the high- 
 est honours from us, than were those champi- 
 ons who, in ancient times, were deified for 
 their services in ridding a country of mon- 
 sters. 
 
 * The discovery here alluded to, was that announced 
 in the papers to have been made in New Orleans. 
 The prescription of Dr. Chambers of New York has 
 come into notice since the publication of the first edi- 
 tion. Dr. Flint, and Dr. Tuckerman, missionary of the 
 American Unitarian Association, have, in several in- 
 stances administered it in this town with success, as 
 far as the length of time since elapsed authorizes to 
 pronounce upon the result. 
 
107 
 
 In presuming to suggest remedies, my 
 friends, I have by no means overlooked or 
 underrated the difficuhies of the case. But 
 I also remember, that difficulties are the in- 
 stituted occasion in the order of providence 
 for calling out great wisdom and vigour. I 
 call to mind words of the first president of 
 that society, to which I have referred as suc- 
 cessfully labouring in this cause ;* a great 
 and good man, whose devotions were used 
 to ascend here with yours for a divine bless- 
 ing on all good counsels and all just works, 
 and whose heart, I doubt not, was often warm- 
 ed wit'i yours by the breathings of love to 
 God and man which then fell here from most 
 persuasive lips. He had this cause much at 
 heart. His large and earnest mind counted 
 the obstacles, but it was the better to meet 
 them. ' As the object is good,' said he, ' so 
 it is practicable.' I love to repeat that say- 
 ing. The object is good ; therefore it is prac- 
 
 * I'he late honourable Samuel Dexter. 
 
108 
 
 cable. It is an enterprize against that which 
 is, by eminence, the misfortune, the danger 
 of our beloved country ; the blot on the fair 
 works of God among us ; the weapon of the 
 prince of darkness. It has a right then to 
 the services of every prudent man, every pa- 
 triotick citizen, every disciple of Christ ; and 
 it asks the benefit of no other services than 
 those, effectually to maintain itself. I desire 
 more and more to realize, — for it is a truth 
 which all religion establishes, and all future 
 experience is to seal, — that under the govern- 
 ment of a God who hath pleasure in righteous- 
 ness and favour for its toils, single-minded 
 men need no other omen for the conquest, in 
 due time, over any difficulties, than the omen 
 
 of A GOOD CAUSE. 
 
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