ates his children in the dispositions and pathway of hell, becomes the corrupter of youthful purity, and a public teacher of debauchery -with no disposition to engage in good pursuits, and no power to attend to the things which concern his peace, or to take one step toward the salvation of his soul! What can be said of such a man, but that his present and eternal ruin are complete? Earth curses him, while he is upon it, and beyond it he can see no prospect but that of the blackness of darkness. A drunkard cannot inherit the kingdom of God.'

*

*

*

*

*

Now if there were but one being upon earth, who had thus deprived himself of his rational nature, and darkened his hope of immortality, with what intense and fearful interest would he be contemplated! with what earnest sympathy should we crowd around to gaze on so deplorable a spectacle, and how many hands would be united to save him from destruction! Yet it is not one, but many. Multitudes are thronging the broad path, and pressing forward with obstinate infatuation to this hideous gulf. Every village has its list of those who were impoverished and ruined by this vice. Every town can tell of estates forfeited to pay for their owner's degradation, and exhibits on its records the names of young and promising men, cut off prematurely by this infamous sin. Our alms-houses, reared for the refuge of honest misfortune, have become the shelter of poverty and sin, where the drunkard and glutton who have come to poverty, are supported upon the hard earnings of the industrious and sober. Look at a few facts.* Nearly four-fifths of those supported as paupers by a tax upon the industry of the community, have become paupers through intemperance. In one town in this state, thirteen out of every fourteen are a public charge from this In this city the proportion is about two in every three. If, therefore, we consider that the annual expense of our alms-house is more than thirty-thousand dollars, we find that twenty thousand dollars are expended for the support of this vice. Twenty thousand dollars annually appropriated by the town of Boston in charity to drunkards! It is said that the annual expenses of the alms-houses in this state amount to about 900,000 dollars; four fifths of which sum-720,000 dollars-are paid for the benefit of those who were ruined by intemperance. What tax is there so enormous as this!

cause.

In estimating, however, the extent of this evil, we must add to the preceding account, the sum expended for ardent spirits by those who are not yet objects of the public charity. On the presumption that the inhabitants of this city consume their proportion of the thirty-three millions annually expended in the United States, we shall find the annual expenditure in Boston to be one hundred and

*Most of these statements are made from the past reports of this Society; for some of them I am indebted to other sources, but am unable to specify them.

This estimate is founded on the state of things in 1810; it must be much short of the truth at the present time.

New Series---Vol. V.

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eighty thousand dollars*-more than sufficient to pay all the taxes, That this calculation is far within bounds will be evident, if we consider that it supposes each retailer to sell less than the amount of two dollars a week. In the city of New-York, in 1820, the amount expended in 'ardent spirits was one million eight hundred and ninety-three thousand and eleven dollars; which in proportion to the population is more than double the sum just named for Boston. So that, to speak far within bounds, there is every year consumed in this town spirits to the amount of two hundred thousand dollars. What one benefit to society can be named as the result of this monstrous cost? There is no reason to suppose that the town consumes more in proportion to its population than the country; on which supposition we have more than two millions five hundred thousand wasted annually in Massachusetts on this indulgence. Add to this the seven hundred and twenty thousand dollars, charity money, which the public pays from this cause, and there is a waste of more than three millions. I ask again, who will show us the benefits of this expense? How is government strengthened, or education promoted, or good morals aided, or good neighbourhood encouraged?

If

'These various considerations afford some faint idea of the extent of this plague. To apprehend it yet more distinctly, we must remember the waste of life it occasions. It is the cause of more deaths, either directly or by the disorders it creates, than any other single disease. It is said there are every year six thousand persons who die in the very act of intoxication, within the United States. we could take almost any one of these cases separately, and describe to ourselves all its loathsome minuteness of depravity and misery, as Sterne has painted his single prisoner in the dungeon, what a heart-rending and soul-sickening picture would be presented! But when we consider that this scene is repeated six thousand times every year, attended in most cases with indescribable distress and shame to family and friends; and that more than six times six thousand are pressing on in the straight path to the same end; the mind wants power to imagine so great a mass of accumulated and disgusting wretchedness. It turns away with loathing and abhorrence; or, I might say, with incredulity; for the mind is but too little af fected by an evil, which has grown too large for its measurement or conception. It has accordingly happened amongst us, as it happens in a city where a pestilence is raging. While the deaths are few and rare, there is a prevailing alarm and sadness. But as the destroyer advances and deaths multiply, there is produced a dreadful stupidity; so that as horrors accumulate, indulgence and disorders increase also, till you cannot say whether the wide ruin of death be more terrible than the riotous unconcern of the living.

* $180,000 per annum $3,269 per week.

+ In a work lately published at Paris by M. Passenas, entitled Russia and Slavery, it is said, "It is computed that upwards of 200,000 die annually from the effects of intoxicating liquors."

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So it is amongst us. The moral pestilence, which scatters suffering worse than death, spreads itself every where around us, but we are unaffected by its terrific magnitude and fearful devastation. It would be comparatively a little thing that the plague should sweep these thousands from our cities; it would be a comfort, that they perished by the hand of God. But now, they fall by their own hand, and rush downward, of their own-will, to the corrupting grave. And we stand by, unmoved! We hear with amazement and horror of those on a distant continent, who, in the infatuation of religious superstition, cast themselves on the burning piles of their husbands, or fling their bodies before the rolling car of a monster idol. But this sadder infatuation of the multitude at home, who are sacrificing themselves beneath the operation of slow and brutish poison, hardly moves us to a momentary commiseration. We might succeed in preaching up a crusade to India, while we can hardly gain a hearing for those who are perishing by our side.'

These passages will enable every one to form a judgment of the tone of deep and true feeling, the eloquence of strong conviction and moral sentiment, which characterises this address. We will give but one extract more, which may serve to introduce a few remarks of our own. Of the measures to be adopted to lessen the amount of intemperance, the author says

'I have left myself no room to speak. Two things only appear certain. First, that a principal object must be, to draw the public attention frequently and earnestly to the subject. It must be presented to the public mind and kept before it, till its importance is seen and felt by every member of the community. This has been and continues to be the main design of our Society. In this, it asks, and has a right to demand, the countenance and co-operation of patriots, philanthropists, Christians--especially of Christian ministers and instructers of youth-of every man, who, by his pen or his voice, exercises any controul over public opinion, and can help in giving a tone to the moral sentiment of the community. Very little can be hoped, until the apathy which has prevailed, and which has palsied every exertion of this Society, be removed. In the second place, it seems at the same time equally clear, that there is no man nor body of men, who can strike at the root of the evil, but the Legislature of the nation. Exhortation, tracts, preaching, and personal influence will effect but a partial and imperceptible remedy, while it remains so easy and cheap a matter to indulge this pernicious habit. It is the facility of obtaining spirits, it is the suffering the temptation to lie in the path, and at the door, and to be brought to the very lips of every man, wherever he goes and whatever he does, which is the real occasion of the extensive ruin.'

We fully coincide in the opinions here expressed. The first thing to be done is to produce a strong impression upon the pub

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lic, by reiterated efforts, and by presenting the evil under all its various aspects, many and hideous as they are. Its guilt, its destruction of the soul, its bringing on certain misery here, and deeper and more awful misery hereafter, should be urged with the conviction of men, who know that, if religion and morality be not a lie, that, if there be a God and a future state, what they urge is true. But it should, at the same time, be remembered, that the case of the drunkard himself is almost as hopeless as it is deplorable, at least as regards the application of all moral remedies. Many a drunkard,' says a late writer on the subject have I had occasion to observe; and among all the number who have fallen under my notice, I do not remember to have seen one in whom the habit was cured.' The habit destroys those faculties and sensibilities to which moral appeals must be made; and stupifies the apprehension of future evil. It produces at the same time a state of physical disease, which renders the temptation to renew the act of drunkenness almost irresistible. It is therefore not against the vice itself as actually existing, that motives should be arrayed and exhortations and warnings directed; for you would be speaking in the ear of the dead. As regards those who have become its victims, their time of probation, to human apprehension, is past; or at least, it is by physical treatment only, that they can be recovered to life. It is against those courses and indulgences which may lead to this deadening sin, that our efforts should be directed. It is to those who are in danger, and not to those who are publicly regarded as actually guilty, that we may hope to exhibit with effect a picture of its misery, degradation and ruin. You are indulging yourself a little, it may be said; you are becoming accustomed to the temporary exhilaration, which a slight degree of intoxication produces; you are very ready to take your share, whenever the dangerous and immoral practice of the times permits or requires the of fer of spirituous liquors; but you are still within the limits of hope; you still have sufficient power to save yourself remaining; you may become a respected and happy husband and parent, and see your family thriving around you; you have not yet passed the barrier over which no voluntary return is to be hoped for ; you have not yet determined to throw aside all the blessings which God offers you here or hereafter; but go on as you have begun; and in a few years, humanity will regard you as an object of unspeakable compassion; but it will be an ill-judging and false humanity, which, in its compassion, shall forget your degradation and your guilt.

The next topic that may be insisted upon, is the ruin which this vice spreads around it, the heart sinking wretchedness, which

it commonly inflicts upon the family of its victim, wretchedness, perhaps more deep and poignant, than any which the sinner himself is doomed to suffer in this life. In separating himself from his species, by yielding to a thoroughly selfish indulgence, without regard to the hopes or claims of any other being, he is commonly tearing asunder with protracted and unceasing torture, the strongest ties and affections of our nature,-ties and affections, to which by every repeated dose of the moral poison that he swallows, he is rendering himself more insensible. have become accustomed to witness intemperance and intoxication in the lower classes, and have learnt to regard them, per haps, much as a native of one of the West Indian islands may regard the sufferings of the slaves around him. The worldly and sensual will of course be indifferent to whatever misery exists, if it do not penetrate within the sphere of their own selfish pleasures. But let the Christian, who, during this inclement season, is sitting by his fireside, surrounded by domestic enjoyments, think of the suffering of that poor man's wife, who knows that her husband is at the dram-shop, wasting the means, and unfitting himself for the industry, which should provide food for her children, which should patch up the rents of the house, and purchase the decent clothing necessary to keep them from shivering and sickening in the winter's cold. Let him imagine her after the exhausting and cheerless labours of the day, harassed by her little ones, who are paining her with their complaints, while she is waiting for the return of her husband, to receive some brutal insult, or be the object of some loathsome merriment. Let him conceive of all this, not as taking place one day only; but as repeated day after day, and night after night, till heart and strength and life are worn out. It needs but little imagination to conceive of such scenes, which are taking place in our neighbourhood, and, perhaps, within a few minutes walk from where we are sitting; and his sensibility must be dull indeed, who thinks that the description has been overcharged; or that details more painful might not easily be added.

What has been brought to view is but one form of the sufferings occasioned by drunkenness. It would be easy to present a variety of pictures, justified by every day's experience, of the grinding misery which it inflicts. They should be exhibited in different forms and different modes of address, that the community may be awakened to the amount of evil which exists, and that a deep impression, if possible, may be made upon those who are entering the downhill path to ruin, and converting themselves into tormentors of their nearest connexions. They should be conveyed to the lower classes in a manner adapted to affect