need to hinder this land, as soon as its population might wish, from becoming Immanuel's land; its peace flowing as a river, and its righteousness and blessings as the waves of the sea?

But the loss of property, great as it is, and enough to stamp the laws which authorise the business that occasions it, with everlasting execration, is still among the least of its evils.

V. The traffic in ardent spirit as a drink impairs the health of the nation. Health depends on one great law; viz. The action of certain agents, upon their appropriate organs in the human body, which agents and organs, "the product of the Divine hand," are so perfectly adapted one to the other, that in view of all their consequences to endless being, their author himself pronounced them to be, "very good;" perfect, good enough to satisfy the mind of Jehovah. Light, for instance, was made for the eye; air for the lungs; and food, nourishing food and drink, for the digestive organs; causing by their operations the functions of vision, respiration, nutrition, and the various movements on which health and life depend. But for what organ in the human body was ardent spirit made? There is none.

What organ in the human body needs its stimulus in order to perform in the most perfect manner, healthy action? There is none. What gland can extract from it the least portion of nutriment, or any thing which can contribute to health, or be in any way useful in the animal economy? There is none.

The anatom

ist, the physiologist, the chemist and the physician examine with the minutest care every part throughout the whole body, and they can find none. God has made none, and there is none. Nor is there an organ whose healthy action is not disturbed by ardent spirit; and which does not instinctively reject it. The blood by its circulation conveys to each part of the body the materials of which it is composed, while each organ by its Creator is endowed with the power of selecting from the mass what it needs for nourishment, and the performance of its appropriate functions, and of rejecting the refuse to be thrown out of the system. "The blood is therefore a sort of common carrier, conveying from part to part what is entrusted to it, for the common benefit." When obliged to carry spirit, it presents it on its way, as it does other materials, to each organ; and each starts with mighty effort, not to welcome and receive, but to repel it. And if not crippled by the overpowering force of the enemy, it succeeds; and rejected, not suffered to stop, because it is worthless, the carrier, though vexed with its burden, is obliged to take it on to the next; rejected by that, it must carry it on, till, rejected by all as a common nuisance, "it is seized upon by the emunctories, the scavengers of the system, and unceremoniously excluded." This is not for any want of kindness in the system toward friends, but because ardent spirit is an enemy

a mortal enemy. It would be treason to harbor it, and suicide to use it. Nature, through unerring laws stamped by the Divine hand, true to herself and her God, is incapable of such an offence; and till poisoned and perverted by the enemy, will never submit to it. On every organ it touches, spirit is a poison; and as such it is chased from organ to organ, marking its course with irregularity of action, and disturbance of function; exciting throughout the system a war of extermination, till the last remnant of the intruder is expelled from the territory. Till vital power is prostrated the enemy can never have a lodgment. And if, through decay of organic vigor, by the mighty force of the intruder, or the long continuance of the war, and by perpetual successions of new recruits, it cannot be expelled, the work of death is done; the last citadel of life surrenders, and the banner of universal ruin waves over all. Thousands of such conquests are made every year, and of territories more valuable than all the material wealth of creation. Before, the prospect was like Eden; and after, a land of sepulchres, with uncovered, putrid carcasses of drunkards, sending up in clouds their poisonous exhalation, wafting contagion and death through the land.

To sanction by law the recruiting and equipping of such an enemy, and the sending of him out to desolate the fairest portion of God's heritage, is an outrage upon all principles, not only of patriotism, but of humanity, which bids defiance to parallel in the history of legislation. It is an outrage almost too gross for sober consultation. It would seem to be hardly possible, in view of its fruits, that it should be tolerated, we will not say in any christian, but in any civilized State. Even paganism, under the first rays of civilization, has almost instinctively denounced it.* And were it not for the pestilential moral atmosphere which it produces, and the deteriorating and stupifying effects which that atmosphere occasions, its continuance would seem to be hardly possible; or its removal need any thing more than its own doings.

It is now known from the evidence of facts, that more than one in ten over wide regions of country, who have used ardent spirit, and more than one in five who have mixed and sold it, have, themselves, become drunkards, and so wicked as often not to live out half their days. It is known also from the highest and most abundant medical authority, that more than one in five of the men who have habitually used it, have been killed by it; and that multitudes who were never intoxicated, and never thought in time past to be intemperate, by the habit of using it, even moderately, have shortened life many years; and that it tends in its whole influence from beginning to end, to induce and aggravate disease, and to bring all

* Appendix G.

T

who drink it to a premature grave. There is no reason to doubt, that of the last generation in the United States, it cut off more than thirty million years of human probation, and ushered more than a million of persons, uncalled, into the presence of God.

The last year its deadly influence has been still more strongly marked, especially over those regions which have been visited by the Cholera. In the city of Albany, with a population of about twenty-five thousand, of whom three hundred and thirty-six, over sixteen years of age, died of the Cholera, of the five thousand members of Temperance Societies there were only two deaths; showing that such persons were not one fortieth part as liable to death, by that disease, as other persons. Of the rest of the population one in sixty died, while of the members of Temperance Societies, only one in twenty-five hundred.

Of about six hundred who were brought to the Park Hospital in the city of New York, but about one in five called themselves even temperate drinkers. And many of them, after they recovered, were soon intoxicated. The number was extremely small, who died of that disease, who had not for two years used ardent spirit. Some such cases there were; but they were strongly marked exceptions to the general rule. Said a distinguished gentleman in that city, after paying special attention to this subject, "facts abundantly authorise the conclusion, that had it not been for the sale and use of spirit, there had not been Cholera enough in the city of New York to have caused the cessation of business for a single day."

And says another gentleman of that city, "a quantity of spirit was taken from a certain store in the morning, and distributed to a number of grogshops. In the evening the workmen assembled and received their accustomed quantity. The next morning one and another, and another were carried by my door to the hospital, and in the afternoon were taken to the Potters Field. And so from day to day, disease and death followed round after ardent spirit, seizing upon those who drank it, and hurrying them to destruction, till so obvious and striking was the connection, that some even of the sellers, seared as were their consciences, said, This will never do; the way from the grogshop to hell is too short;" and abandoned the business. Others shut up their shops and fled. "In my neighborhood," says another gentleman, "there was not a retailer left; they were actually afraid to encounter the dangers of their own business." It made the arrows of death fly so thickly around them, that they dare not risk it, Had they been sure that those arrows would strike only their neighbors, they might have been willing to stay and drive the business. But when there was danger that the shafts from their engines of death would strike themselves, they closed their doors and fled. How many lives had

been spared, how many families saved from ruin, and how many evils averted from the community, had they never returned, and their cholera manufactories remained closed forever.

How many who were consigned the last summer to an untimely grave, and we fear to a miserable eternity, had now been in the land of the living, and prisoners of hope, had none been found reckless enough to keep such establishments open. But some there were who professed to be friends of humanity, who continued with a steady hand to deal out the poison. And as their customers might not live to come again, they sold them instantly, on the spot, what they would buy. When the husband fell, and the children were seized, they sold his widow the cause of death; and when the neighbors came to bury the children, their widowed mother, with what the rum-seller furnished her, was found intoxicated on the floor. On the day that was set apart for humiliation, fasting, and prayer, that God would spare his people and not suffer the destroyer any longer to smite them, one, lest praying, though it should not make him leave off sinning, should at least for a day deprive him of its gains, kept his liquor store open, and sold to all who would purchase, till the time for public worship. He then hastened to be in his place, and join, apparently, with devout gravity, in supplication to the Lord, that he would keep off the Cholera; and when public service was closed, he hastened again, as if to make up lost time, to his store; and spent the day in furnishing a chief cause of Cholera to all who would buy. If he did not produce as much Cholera on that day as on other days, it may be att.buted, not so much to his prayers for its prevention, as to the time which they hindered him from furnishing its cause. prayers are answered, not according to words, but to deeds, instead. of having lessened the number of the dying and the dead, his may have increased it; and they may increase too the awfulness of his retribution, when he who, on probation sells death, shall, without repentance, reap also death.

And if

Were retailers of spirit in their own persons and families to bear all the evils which they occasion to others, they would soon close their business. Or were these evils all concentrated on the heads of legislators, they would cease to make laws which should authorise the business that produces them.

Instead of "An act, entitled an act, to regulate the sale of spirit for the public good," any longer disgracing the statute book and vitiating the community, they would see that the proper title for every such act, when determined by its consequences, is, "An act for the destruction of mankind." But would it be any more dreadful for the man who sells ardent spirit, or the man who makes the law which authorises the sale of it, to endure these evils, than it is for the community?

Suppose a man who buys a gallon of a man authorised by law to sell it, should under its influence go into the family of the man who made the law, and for a few days take the direction, and do what he now does in his own family; break the looking-glass, turn over the tables, strike the children with the tongs, and their mother with the chairs; and to save their lives, make them flee, naked and barefoot, through the snow, to the neighbors for help; and suppose that this is a common fruit of the law which authorises the business; would he make such a law again? And would he not raise both hands, his voice, and his heart, to have that which he has made repealed? or so modified as no longer to sanction such a business?

Or suppose again, that the intemperate appetites which the legal traffic forms, and the cases of drunkenness and death to which they lead, instead of being, as they now are, scattered through the community, should all be in the families of the legislators, of spirit venders and their nearest friends; and that they should have to endure all the sickness and sorrows, and heart breaking wretchedness, which they occasion, and which they will occasion to endless being, would they any longer sanction the cause? or would any one, because he could do it legally, perpetuate it? Though the evils would be no greater if they were all endured by them than when endured by others, yet who can doubt but that they would be great enough, and be felt to be great enough, to stamp the cause of them, and the sanctioning by law of the business which produces them, with everlasting abhorrence. Who can doubt but that the licensing of such a business would cease at once, universally and forever? Oh, if that would cause it to cease, and nothing else can, what an unspeakable benefit would it be to the world, and what an inestimable saving of property, character, health, reason, life and soul, to all future generations, could these evils, past, present, and to come be all concentrated, and poured out, for a time, in one dark, desolating current on the heads of legislators and venders of spirit. But the Committee, with all their hearts, would deprecate such a thing; and rejoice with inexpressible delight, that a fellow feeling for others' woes will certainly, unless this cause be abandoned of God, lead to the same glorious result.

VI. The traffic in ardent spirit, tends to derange the intellect, and to corrupt the morals of the nation.

In all cases in which ardent spirit deranges healthy functions of body, it tends also to disturb regular action of mind and to corrupt the feelings of the heart. It injures the one, not less than the other. This is the effect not only of a very free use of it, but of all use of it. It is its tendency from beginning to end, in proportion to the quantity taken, and to the power of the system, to withstand its natural effects. As it courses its way through the blood