I do not fear to be accused of exaggeration by any who are conversant with the moral condition of this country, when I say, that the excessive use of ardent spirits is the most pernicious and extensive of all the vices whose sad consequences give occasion to most of the benevolent exertions of individuals and associations among us. From the single mendicant, whose trembling hand is stretched out for your passing alms, to the multitude of ruined and wretched beings, who crowd the houses of public charity, we may, almost without exception, trace all the sad variety of suffering which we are called on to relieve, to this one great and disgraceful cause.

So notorious, indeed, are the existence and calamitous consequences of this evil, that I should not feel authorized in dwelling on these points at all, were it not for the consideration, that the first step towards any well-directed efforts to check the progress of mischief, is to know and feel deeply its nature and extent; and that the very frequency with which we are compelled to witness this vice, is calculated to weaken our impressions of its malignity, and leave us indifferent to its pernicious power. Its frequency-for, with an effrontery peculiar to itself, in some one of its forms, its stages, or its consequences, it obtrudes itself on our notice, and abuses our sympathy, at every turn.

You may perceive its first withering attack, in the forsaken friendships, the slackening industry, and the altered countenance of its victim. You may trace its desolating progress in his fallen fame,

his ruined fortune, his disgusting deformity and imbecility; and the disastrous catastrophe of its reign is written in letters of ignominy, which swell the catalogue of self-created pauperism; or in letters of blood, on the records of public justice.

But, however severe and accumulated the sufferings of the transgressor himself, they constitute but a small part of the legitimate penalty of his perverse indulgence. Every individual is so connected with others, either in one or both directions in the course of his existence, that they cannot but participate, more or less, in the good or ill which awaits him. Perhaps he has parents, whose anxious lives had been devoted to his welfare, and who were comforting themselves in the prospect of his usefulness and respectability, with those hopes which are so near and dear to the parental heart. But he has yielded to the suggestions of an insidious appetite, and is lost. Untoward circumstances, or a propensity which might easily have been controlled at first, have led him on to excess, and he is become a drunkard. His heart is no longer alive to the sacred obligations of a child, and he has mingled bitterness in that cup, from which his parents had expected to have drawn the sustenance and solace of their declining years.

On the other hand, he may have assumed relations and obligations of a still tenderer nature, in becoming a husband and father. But how does he fulfil the duties which they impose? In the distracting vortex of dissipation into which intemper

ance, and its attendant vices have hurried him, he seldom thinks of home, or of the objects which ought to endear it to him. The quiet scenes of domestic duty and purity have lost their charm, and he prefers the boisterous revelry, the impure and profane jests, and the vulgar and licentious conversation of the club room, or the dram shop. Meantime, his deserted wife is left to grieve over her blighted prospects of happiness in his absence, and, on his return, to be the sport of his irritable temper, or the victim of brutal violence, from the cruelty of inflamed and unrestrained passion.

How completely has he disqualified himself also for the discharge of all parental duty. Himself the squanderer of his patrimony and former acquisitions, devoting the proceeds of the little industry, which his vicious expenditures compel him to observe, to gratify the insatiable demands of his growing appetite-how can he provide food, and raiment, and shelter, and fuel, for his neglected family? Himself, literally dead in trespasses and sins, can he do anything, or would he, if he could do anything, towards inculcating in them a respect for the obligations of religion or virtue, a regard for truth, honesty, honor, purity? Certainly not. Alas! then, for those children, if in their other parent, they have not a better one. The lessons of virtue and temperance, taught by the tender eloquence of maternal lips, and enforced by the sad contemplation of maternal wrongs, may save them from the corrupting influence of their father's example, and they may live to

bless and reward the saving care of their mother; while they must weep over the memory of their father's life, and blush at the mention of his name.

But the picture of distress and infamy presented by a single instance of this vice, however deeply coloured by the ruin of domestic hopes and happiness, which it involves, can, of course, give no adequate conception of the actual amount of individual and social unhappiness which it occasions in the community.

The extent of the evil, I apprehend, is much less generally understood, than its extremity in any particular case where it occurs. It has been ascertained by more than one method of calculation, proceeding on the most unquestionable data, that we have, in our nation, not less than three hundred thousand confirmed drunkards, in different stages of the vice. Considering the connexion which subsists between the different members of society, either by the ties of interest, friendship, or consanguinity, it is not unreasonable to assume, with an excellent writer* on this subject, 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 these three." If it be so, and there be now living in this country three hundred thousand persons devoted to this habit, then the unhappiness arising from it extends itself directly to a million of persons-one twelfth part of the population of the country. Yes, in this land, which boasts of a more * Rev. Mr Palfrey.

universal diffusion of intelligence, virtue, purity and happiness, than any other on the earth, one twelfth part of the inhabitants are doomed to suffer disease, poverty, infamy, or mortification, as the bitter fruit of this prolific and deep-rooted evil.

A few years ago, it was calculated from authentic returns made by responsible persons, situated in many different places, that intemperance was the immediate or remote cause of the death of three persons annually in every thousand. According to which it appears, that in the State of Massachusetts, eighteen hundred, and in the United States, thirtysix thousand lives are annually destroyed by this self-administered poison.

We shudder, at the thought of that dreadful idolatry, whose barbarous rites were celebrated by the recreant Jews, in the valley of Hinnom, and our hearts bleed over the affecting narratives we receive of the voluntary human sacrifices, which make a part of the religious observances of heathen people in our own time, while the fact passes almost unnoticed by us, that in this country, of which it has been said by an eminent jurist, that suicide may not be enumerated among its vices, a number of citizens is annually self-immolated on the altar of intemperance, compared with which, the victims of Moloch, and of Hindoo superstition dwindle into insignificance.

In adverting to the causes of the evil, I have attempted to describe, it will be convenient to divide them, into those which are remote, and those which are immediate. A brief consideration of both classes