Chapter V: Part 5

Not satisfied with filling jails, and hospitals, and graveyards, it must people hell. Every moral and religious principle is dissipated before it. The heart becomes, under its influence, harder than the nether mill-stone. It has gone into the pulpit and made a Judas of the minister of Christ. It has insinuated itself into the church, and bred putrefaction and death among the holy. It has entered the anxious room in seasons of revival, and quenched conviction in the breast of the distressed sinner, or sent him, exhilarated with a false hope, to profess religion, and be a curse to the church. It has accompanied men, Sabbath after Sabbath, to the house of God, and made them insensible as blocks of marble to all the thunders of Sinai and sweet strains of Zion. It has led to lying, profane swearing, Sabbath-breaking, tale-bearing, contention; and raised up an army, I may almost say, in every village, who wish for no Sabbath, and no Bible, and no Saviour, and who cry out with stammering tongues, "Away with him, crucify him." It has, without doubt, been the most potent of all the emissaries of Satan, to obliterate the fear of the Lord, turn men away from the Sabbath and the sanctuary, steel them against the word, the providence, and grace of God, stupefy the conscience, bring into action every dark and vile passion, and fill up with immortal souls the dark caverns of eternal night. Let a man, day by day, hover around a dram-shop, and sip and sip at his bottle, and the devil is sure of him. No ministers, no Sabbaths, no prayers, no tears from broken-hearted and bleeding relatives, can avail to save him. He holds that man by a chain which nothing but Omnipotence can break.

And look, too, at its waste of human happiness.

Yes, look--look for yourselves. The woes of drunkenness mock all description. Some tell of the happiness of drinking. O, if there is a wretched being on earth, it is the drunkard. His property wasted, his character gone, his body loathsome, his passions wild, his appetite craving the poison that kills him, his hopes of immortality blasted for ever; it is all

"Me miserable,
Which way I fly is hell, myself am hell."

And his family. I can never look at it but with feelings of deepest anguish.

"Domestic happiness, thou only bliss
Of paradise that hast escaped the fall,"

thou art shipwrecked here. Sorrow, woe, wounds, poverty, babblings, and contention, have entered in and dwell here. Yet we have 300,000 such families in the land; and if each family consists of four individuals, more than a million persons are here made wretched by this curse of curses.

And his death. O, to die in our houses, amid our friends, and with the consolations of religion, strips not death of its character as the king of terrors. But to die as the drunkard dies, an outcast from society, in some hovel or almshouse, on a bed of straw, or in some ditch, or pond, or frozen in a storm; to die of the _brain-fever_, conscience upbraiding, hell opening, and foul spirits passing quick before his vision to seize him before his time--this, this is woe; this is the triumph of sin and Satan. Yet, in the last ten years, 300,000 have died in our land the death of the drunkard; rushing, where?--"Drunkards shall not inherit the kingdom of God"--rushing into hell, where their worm dieth not, and their fire can never be quenched. And if the demon is suffered to continue his ravages, 300,000 more of our existing population will, in the same way, rush into eternal burnings.

And his funeral. Have you ever been at a drunkard's funeral? I do not ask, did you look at his corpse? It was cadaverous before he died. But did you look at his father as he bent over the grave and exclaimed in agony, "O, my son, my son, would to God I had died for thee, my son." Did you look at his widow, pale with grief, and at his ragged, hunger-bitten children at her side, and see them turn away to share the world's cold pity, or, perhaps, rejected and forlorn, follow the same path to death and hell?

Such are the ravages of the demon we hunt. Its footsteps are marked with blood. We glory in our liberties, and every fourth of July our bells ring a merry peal, as if we were the happiest people on earth. But O, our country, our country! She has a worm at her vitals, making fast a wreck of her physical energies, her intellect, and her moral principle; augmenting her pauperism and her crime; nullifying her elections--for a drunkard is not fit for an elector--and preparing her for subjection to the most merciless tyranny that ever scourged any nation under heaven. We talk of our religion, and weep over the delusions of the false prophet and the horrors of Juggernaut; but a more deceitful prophet is in our churches than Mahomet, and a more bloody idol than Juggernaut rolls through our land, crushing beneath its wheels our sons and our daughters. Woe, woe, woe to Zion. Satan is in Eden. And if no check is put to the ravages of the demon, our benevolent institutions must die, our sanctuaries be forsaken, our beautiful fields be wastes, and the church will read the history of her offspring in the third of Romans: _Their throat is an open sepulchre; their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood_--all, blasting our bright hope of the speedy approach of millennial glory.

There is cause, then, for the general alarm that has been excited in our country; reason for this extensive and powerful combination to hunt and destroy the monster. Much, by divine help, has been done. He has been routed and brought to the light of day; the mischief he has done has been exposed; his apologists have been confronted; he is driven into his den, and now how can he be destroyed? That he must be destroyed there can be no question. The man who does not wish for the suppression of intemperance must have the heart of a fiend; especially, if he wishes to grow rich on the miseries of his fellow-men. And he must be destroyed now. It is now or never. Men may say enough has been done, and talk about his being held where he is. He cannot be held there. He has the cunning of a serpent, and he will escape through some fissure in the rock. He is now in our power. The temperance movement, which has on it the impress of the finger of God, has brought him within our grasp; and if we let him escape, the curse of curses will be entailed upon our children. How then can he be destroyed? I answer, and thousands answer, by starvation. No weapon can reach him so long as you feed him. But who has a heart so traitorous to humanity as to feed this monster? Every man who now, in the face of the light that is shed upon this subject, distils, or vends, or uses intoxicating liquor; every distillery, and every dram-shop in the land, nourishes this foe to human peace; every man who takes the alcoholic poison into his system, or imparts it to others, except as he takes and imparts other poisons to check disease, gives life to the beast. I need not stop to prove it. It is manifest to the child. Let every distillery in the land cease, and every dram-shop be closed, and total abstinence become the principle of every individual, and the demon will be dead; yes, take away from him his wine, his brandy, and his whiskey, and he will perish for ever. But here is the very brunt of the battle. We have hunted the monster through the land, and driven him into his den; and now we must stand at the very mouth of the cavern, and contend with our fellow-men and fellow-sufferers--yes, and fellow-Christians too--who are either afraid to attack the monster, or are determined he shall live.

And first, we are met by a body of men who tell us that alcohol is useful. And what if it is? What if every benefit that the moderate and immoderate drinker can think of, flows from it? What will this do to compensate for its giant evils which are desolating our land? Is man so bent on self-gratification that he will have every sweet, though it be mingled with poison? Will he exercise no reason; make no discrimination between unmixed good and good followed by desolating woes? Tea was good. But, said our fathers, if with it we must have all the horrors of British tyranny, away with it from our dwellings. My countrymen, "the voice of your fathers' blood cries to you from the ground, 'My sons, scorn to be slaves!'" Away with the shameful plea that you cannot do without an article which subjects you to an evil ten thousand times worse than all the horrors of British tyranny. You kindle the fires of liberty by pointing to the woes of the prison-ship, and the bones of your countrymen whitening on the shores of New Jersey. O, crouch not to a tyrant who binds a million in his chains, and demands thirty thousand annually for his victims. I blush for the imbecility of the man who must have an article on his farm which eats up his substance and his vitals, and may turn his son into an idiot and a brute. Better have no farm. Better go at once, with his family, into the poor-house, and be supported by public charity.

Next comes canting Hypocrisy, with his Bible in his hand, telling us that "every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving." What does he mean; that ardent spirit is the gift of God? Pray, in what stream of his bounty, from what mountain and hill does it flow down to man? O, it is in the rye, and the apple, and the sugar, and the Mussulman has taught us Christians how to distil it. And so the poet tells us Satan taught his legions how to make gunpowder. "There are," said he,

"Deep under ground, materials dark and crude,
Of spirituous and fiery spume.
These, in their dark nativity, the deep
Shall yield us, pregnant with internal flame;
Which, into hollow engines, long and round,
Thick ramm'd, at th' other bore with touch of fire
Dilated and infuriate, shall send forth
From far, with thundering noise, among our foes
Such implements of mischief as shall dash
To pieces and o'erwhelm whatever stands
Adverse.
Th' invention all admired; up they turn'd
Wide the celestial soil; sulphurous and nitrous foam
They found, they mingled; and, with subtle art
Concocted and adjusted, they reduced
To blackest grain."

And now, to carry out the argument, gunpowder, and guns, and swords, are the gift of God, and men must needs use them, and kill one another as fast as possible.

But nothing, it is plead, was made in vain. Spirit is good for something, and to banish it from use, and promise that we will "touch not, taste not, handle not," is contempt of the works of God. I should like to have seen what the Pomfret hero would have done with a man who should have stood before him, and said, Don't you destroy that wolf; God made it, and it may be good for something.

Next, we are checked in our principle of starvation by a set of thoughtless youth and presumptuous men, who say there is no danger from the demon if we keep him low. All his ravages have been occasioned by his being full fed. Let him sip but little, feed him _prudently_, and he will do no harm.

"Good," says the demon, growling in his den; "that is all I want. The doctrine of prudent use is the basis of my kingdom. Temperate drinking has made all the drunkards in the land, and keep it up in all your towns and villages, and I shall be satisfied."

O the delusion! Prudent use! What is the testimony of every chemist and physician in the land? Alcohol is a _poison_.

"Not a bloodvessel," says Dr. Mussey, "however minute, not a thread of nerve in the whole animal machine escapes its influence. It disturbs the functions of life; it increases for a time the action of the living organs, but lessens the power of that action; hence the deep depression and collapse which follow preternatural excitement. By habitual use it renders the living fibre less and less susceptible to the healthy operation of unstimulating food and drink, its exciting influences soon become incorporated with all the living actions of the body, and the diurnal sensations of hunger, thirst, and exhaustion, are strongly associated with the recollection of its exhilarating effects, and thus bring along with them the resistless desire for its repetition." More than fifty per cent. of common spirits are alcohol, this deadly substance, holding rank with henbane, hemlock, prussic acid, foxglove, poison sumach. Nausea, vertigo, vomiting, exhilaration of spirits for a time, and subsequent stupor, and even total insensibility and death, are their accompaniments. Broussais remarks, "A single portion of ardent spirit taken into the stomach produces a temporary phlogosis." Now, I submit it to every considerate man, whether there can be any prudent use of a poison, a single portion of which produces the same disease of which the drunkard dies, and a disease which brings along with it a resistless desire for a repetition of the draught.

Thoughtless, self-sufficient men say, they can control this desire, can govern their appetite, can enjoy the exhilaration of strong drink, and yet be temperate. Let them look at the poor inebriate wallowing in his pollution. He once stood just where they stand; boasted just as they boast; had as fair character, and as kind friends, and as precious a soul and bright hopes of heaven as they have. Let them tell why he does not control his appetite. Perhaps they say, he is a fool. Ah, what made him a fool? Or, his reason is gone. And what took away his reason? Or, he has lost his character. And what took away his character? Or, his sense of shame is departed. And what took away his sense of shame? Ah, here is the dreadful secret, which it may be well for all, boasting of their power of self-control, to know. At the very moment when the man thinks he stands firm, and reason can control appetite, his moral sense departs, his shame is gone, and he turns, through the power of his morning bitters and oft-repeated drams, into the brute and the maniac. With the moral sensibilities laid waste, reason here has only the power of the helmsman before the whirlwind. "Twenty years ago," says Nott, "a respectable householder came in the morning with a glass of bitters in his hand, and offered it to his guest, saying, 'Take it; it will do you good. I have taken it for some years, and I think it does me good; and I never want any more.' Time passed on, and presently the bottle of bitters in the closet was exchanged for the barrel of whiskey in the cellar; and the poor man was often at the tap for just as much as would do him good, and he never wanted any more. Time passed on, and a hogshead was needful; and its contents were exhausted with the same intent, and the same self-deceivings. At length the home of his family was relinquished to his creditors; his polluted body was lodged in a jail, from which he presently issued a drunken vagabond, and wandered a wretched being, until he found a drunkard's grave." It is but the history of thousands. No laws of nature act with more uniformity than the laws of intemperance. No inoculation sends with more certainty disease into the system than drinking strong drink. Hundreds have made an agonizing struggle to escape from perdition. They have seen their sin and danger; they have walked the streets in agony; they have gone to their homes and looked at their wives and children, and into the pit of despair. But their feverish stomach has cried, Give, give! and they have drank often and often, with the solemn promise that it should be the last time; until they have exclaimed, with a once interesting youth, "I know I am a ruined man, but I cannot stop."

Some, indeed, through much care and strength of constitution, may escape; but the plague, if it appear not in their skin and their bone, may break out in their children. "I will drink some," said an aged deacon of a church of Christ; "for it does me good." God was merciful, though he tempted Heaven, and it is said that he died with his character untarnished; but six loathsome sons drank up his substance, with the leprosy in their foreheads. What a meeting must there be between that deacon and his sons on the judgment-day! The doctrine of prudent use must be abandoned. It can have no standard. Every man thinks he drinks prudently, whether he takes one glass a day or five, and is just as much excited and just as liable to drunkenness as all drunkards were when they stood where he now stands. He only that entirely abstains can properly be called a temperate man. And he only is clear from the guilt of spreading intemperance through the land. Moderate drinkers are the life of this bloody system which is wringing with agony the hearts of thousands. Did all at once drink to excess, alcohol would be viewed with dread, as is laudanum and arsenic. Better that all who tasted it were at once made drunkards; then, drunkards would be as scarce as suicides. But men now sip moderately and are reputable; they think themselves safe, but one in every forty sinks to drunkenness; and thus, among twelve millions of people, drinking moderately, the demon has perpetually 300,000 victims. And for these, while all are thus paying homage to the bottle, what is the hope? The lost wretch may wake from his brutality and crime, and resolve that he will reform, and his broken-hearted wife may hope that the storms of life are over, and his babes may smile at his strange kindness and care; but the universal presence of the intoxicating fluid, and the example of the wise and the good around him, will thwart all his resolutions, and he will go back, like the dog to his vomit. All the drunkenness, then, that shall pollute our land, must be traced to moderate drinkers. They feed the monster. They keep in countenance the distillery and the dram-shop, and every drunkard that reels in the streets. Moderate use is to this kingdom of blood what the thousand rivulets and streams are to the mighty river. O how have we been deceived. We long searched for the poison that was destroying our life. The drop said, It is not in me--I am but a drop, and can do no harm. The little stream said, It is not me. Am I not a little one, and can do no harm? And the demon Intemperance, as she prowled around us, said, Let my drops and my rivulets alone; they can do no harm. Go stop, if you can, the mighty river. We believed her. But the river baffled our efforts. Its torrents rolled on, and we contented ourselves with snatching here and there a youth from destruction. But we now see that the poison is in the drops and the rivulets; and that without these, that river of death, which is sweeping the young and the old into the ocean of despair, would cease for ever. And we call upon these self-styled prudent, temperate drinkers, to pause and look at the tremendous responsibility and guilt of entailing drunkenness upon their country for ever.

But we are met with more serious opposers to the plan of starvation. They are, they say, the bone and muscle of the country. They come from the farms, the shipyards, and workshops, and say, If you starve out this monster, _we_ shall be starved out, for we cannot do our work and get a living without rum or whiskey; though, according to their own confession, they have found it hard living with. Their rum and their whiskey have cost them double and treble their other taxes--their sons have become vile, their workmen turbulent, their tools have been broken, and many of themselves are already sinking under its enfeebling influence.

With such it is hard to reason. They have tried but one side, and are incapable of judging the case. We can only tell them there is no danger. Not a particle of nourishment does spirit afford them. The hard drinker totters as he walks. The poor inebriate can neither stand nor go. We can point them to hundreds and thousands of their own profession, honest men, who solemnly testify that they are healthier and stronger, can perform more labor, and endure the frosts of winter and heat of summer better without it than with it. We can ask them whether they fully believe that the God of heaven, a God of love, has put them under the dire necessity of using daily an article which, with such awful certainty, makes drunkards; and whether, when he has said, Woe to him that giveth his neighbor drink, he has said, too, you must all drink it; it is necessary for you. But such never can be taught and convinced but by experience; and to such we would say, Try it for yourselves.

Our next opposition, gentlemen, is from a band clothed in white--professors of our holy religion--enlisted soldiers of Christ, engaged to every work of benevolence: they come--O tell it not in Gath!--to intercede for the monster, and oppose our enterprise. Is not this, you ask, a libel? Alas, too often, reports of temperance societies tell of opposition from professors of religion.

What can be the meaning of this? Has not intemperance been the greatest curse to the church? Has it not caused her to bleed at every pore? And have not her members cried to heaven that the destroyer might perish? And now, when God has put into their hands a weapon by which it may at once be exterminated, will they hesitate? Will they hang back? Will they say, we cannot make the sacrifice? O where lies this astonishing witchery? What has put the church to sleep? What has made her angry at the call to come out from the embrace of her deadliest foe? O what has he, who drinks the cup of the Lord, to do with the cup of devils? Does he need it to make him serious or prayerful, or to enable him better to understand the word of God, or bear reproach for Christ, or discharge his Christian duties, or open his heart in charity? Does it not palsy the heart, quench the spirit of prayer, seal up every holy and benevolent feeling, and turn many from Christ, that they walk no more with him? What can a professor mean who refuses to enlist under the temperance banner? Does he really want the monster to live? Does he pray that he may? Will he stand aloof from this conflict? Is he determined to deny himself in nothing? To care not if others perish? To risk shipwreck of character and conscience, and to keep in countenance every drunkard and dram-shop around him? Is it nothing to him that intemperance shall spread like a _malaria_, to every city, and village, and neighborhood, until the land shall send up nothing but the vapors of a moral putrefaction, and none shall here pray, or preach, or seek God; but ignorance, and crime, and suffering, withering comfort and hope, shall go hand in hand, until we can be purified only by a rain of fire and brimstone from heaven? O for shame, for shame! Let the Christian, pleading for a little intoxicating liquor, be alarmed; let him escape as for his life from the kingdom of darkness. "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues."

Next to diseased appetite, the love of money is the most potent principle in the breast of depraved man. Thirty-six thousand distillers, and eighty-five thousand venders of ardent spirits in our land, form a tremendous host in opposition to our enterprise. They live everywhere.

"Pass where we may, through city or through town,
Village or hamlet, of this merry land,
* * * * every twentieth pace
Conducts the unguarded nose to such a whiff
Of stale debauch, forth issuing from the sties
That law has licensed, as makes Temperance REEL."

They live wherever the demon has his haunts. Or rather, he lives where they live; for they feed him. And while he fattens on the article they make and vend, they receive in return the silver and gold of his deluded victims. Now, how can this formidable host, who cry out, Our craft is in danger, by this demon we have our wealth--how can they be met? Can they be met at all? Yes, they can--for they are men; generally reputable men; in cases not a few, pious men; and all have consciences, and may be made to feel their accountableness to God. Now let them be told that they keep this monster alive; that to their distilleries and shops may be traced all the poverty, and contention, and tears, and blood, which drunkenness produces; that their occupation is to poison the young and the old; and by dealing out gallons, and quarts, and pints, and gills, they fill up, with drunkards, the highway to hell; that they do all this to get the money of the wretched victims; that the tears of broken-hearted widows and orphan children are entering into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, and that neither God nor their consciences will hold them guiltless in this thing, and sure I am that they will be filled with horror at their own doings, and quit their business.

If there are some so hardened and dead to all the best interests of men as to persist, against the light of the age, in the business of making drunkards, let public indignation burn against them till they can no longer stand before its fires. Let a distillery be viewed as a man would view the inquisition, where the racks, the tortures, and the fires, consume the innocent. Let the dram-shop be ranked, as Judge Dagget says it should be, with the haunts of counterfeiters, the depositories of stolen goods, and the retreats of thieves; and over its door let it be written, "The way to hell, leading down to the chambers of death." The time has been when a vender could deal out, day by day, the liquid poison to the tottering drunkard, attend his funeral, help lay him in the grave; then go home, post up his books, turn the widow and her babes into the streets to perish with hunger or be supported by charity, and yet sustain a good reputation. But in future, whenever the community shall stand around the grave of a drunkard, let the eyes of all be fixed on the inhuman vender; let him be called to take one solemn look into the grave of the slain and the pit of the damned; and if he will return to the ruin of his fellow-men, let the voice of his brother's blood cry to him from the ground, and his punishment be greater than he can bear.

Perhaps some reputable vender is offended at the freedom of these remarks. I would ask him if he has never been offended at the smell of that filthy drunkard who has hung around him? I would ask him if his conscience has never stung him as ragged children have come to him in bleak November to have him fill their father's bottle? I would ask him if his soul has never shook within him as he passed, in the darkness of night, the graveyard where three, four, or five of his neighbors lie without even a tombstone, who found their death at his counter? His traffic may be profitable, but let him beware lest while he feeds the monster it turns and devours him and his offspring. At least, let him solemnly inquire, before God, whether he can be a virtuous man and knowingly promote vice; or an honest man, and rob his neighbor by selling an article which promotes sorrow, disease, and death.

I congratulate you, gentlemen, on the stand which you have taken against the monster Intemperance, and on the success with which your efforts have been crowned. You are doing a work for this country for which future generations will call you blessed. Let your watchword be onward, extermination, death; and victory will be yours. Our weapons are simple, but mighty. O what a discovery is this principle of entire abstinence! Let the name of its author be embalmed with that of Luther, and Howard, and Raikes, and Wilberforce. What has it not already done for our suffering country! What a change meets the eye as it wanders from Georgia to Maine--from the Atlantic to our western borders. Here we see farms tilled; there buildings raised; here churches built; there vessels reared, launched, and navigated too; manufactories conducted; fisheries carried on; prisons governed; commercial business transacted; journeys performed; physicians visiting their patients; legislators enacting laws; lawyers pleading for justice; judges deciding the fate of men, and ministers preaching the everlasting Gospel--without intoxicating liquor. Here we see importers unwilling to risk the importation of spirituous liquor into the land; there distillers abandoning their distilleries as curses to themselves and the community; and merchants, not a few, expelling the poison from their stores, and some pouring it upon the ground, choosing that the earth should swallow it rather than man. And all this in the short space of three years. What has done it? Entire abstinence. What then will not be done, when, instead of 50,000 who now avow it, 500,000 shall give their pledge that they will abandon a kingdom founded in blood. And can they not be found in this land of humane men, and patriots, and Christians? Yes, they can. Onward then, gentlemen. Listen not to those who say you are carrying matters too far. So said the wolf. She loved life, and she loved blood. But did she ever regard the cry of the sheep? The monster Intemperance has been glutted with blood; and never spared, and had no pity. He still howls for blood; and many plead that he may have some. But depend upon it, their pleas are only those of debased appetite and avarice. Rally the community against them. Enlighten the public mind. Collect facts. Let your towns and villages be searched with candles. Go into the dens. Bring the monster and his suffering victims to light, and the public indignation will no longer slumber.

Of one thing I will remind you. The demon will daunt the timid. It is noisy and fiery. Attack it, and it will roll its eyes, and snap its teeth, and threaten vengeance. Attempt to starve it, and it will rave like the famished tiger. Thousands have fed it against their consciences, rather than meet its fury. But fear not. The use of ardent spirit meets no support in the Bible or the conscience, and the traffic meets none. Be firm. Be decided. Be courageous. Connect your cause with heaven. It is the cause of God; the cause for which Immanuel died. O, as men and patriots, banish intemperance, with all its sources, from your country and the land. As ministers and Christians, banish it for ever from the churches of the living God. Let the demon no longer hide in the sanctuary. Let ENTIRE ABSTINENCE be written in capitals over the door of every church. Expel for ever the accursed enemy, that the Spirit of the Lord may descend and bless us with life and peace.

To those not connected with the Temperance Association, I would say, Look at this enterprise. It injures no man, wrongs no man, defrauds no man, has no sectarian or political object in view; it would only relieve our infant nation of a burden and a curse which is fast placing it side by side with buried Sodom. As wise men, judge ye of its importance and merits. As men hastening to judgment, act in relation to it. A solemn responsibility rests upon you. Shall the land now be rid of intemperance? You reply, Yes--and talk of wholesome laws, and high licenses, and prudent use. Three green withes on Samson! _Entire abstinence_ is the only weapon which will destroy the monster. "But we can practise that without giving our pledge." True. But until you give it, he will count you his friend and haunt your dwelling. In this cause there is no neutrality. Have you supported this cruel kingdom of darkness and death? Will you do it longer? Shall conscience be riven by the act? Shall the land that bears you be cursed; the young around you be sporting with hell; the awakened sinner be drowning conviction at his bottle; the once fair communicant be disgraced; the once happy congregation be rent; its ministry be driven from the altar, and its sanctuary crumble to ruin? Shall our benevolent institutions fail, and our liberties be sacrificed? Shall God be grieved? Shall wailings from the bottomless pit hereafter reproach and agonize you as the cause of the ruin, perhaps of your children and children's children? Methinks one common pulsation beats in your hearts, and you answer, No--no. Methinks I see you rising in the majesty of freemen and Christians, in behalf of an injured country and church, and destroying at once the demon among you.

ARGUMENT AGAINST THE MANUFACTURE OF ARDENT SPIRITS:

ADDRESSED TO THE DISTILLER AND THE FURNISHER OF THE MATERIALS.

BY REV. EDWARD HITCHCOCK, D. D.

A sense of duty impels me to address this portion of my fellow-citizens, in the hope that I may persuade them to abandon the employment by which they furnish ardent spirits to the community. I am not about to charge them as the intentional authors of all the evils our country suffers from intemperance, nor wholly to clear myself from the guilt; for some of these men are my neighbors and personal friends, and I know them to be convinced that the excessive use of ardent spirits is a frightful evil among us, and that they would cheerfully join in some measures for its suppression, though not yet satisfied that those now in train are judicious or necessary. Not long ago, I was in essentially the same state of mind, and encouraged these men in the manufacture of spirits, by the purchase and use of them. Now I would fain believe that the minds of all these individuals are open to conviction, and that the same arguments which satisfied me that I was wrong, will satisfy them.

In the first place, therefore, I would reason with these men _as a chemical philosopher_. The distiller is a practical chemist; and although he may never have studied chemistry in the schools, he cannot but have often thought of the theory of his operations. And the farmer who receives at the distillery, in return for his rye, cider, or molasses, a liquid powerful substance, obtained from them, will very naturally inquire by what strange transformation these articles have been made to yield something apparently so very different from their nature. Probably, some of them may have concluded that the spirits exist naturally in the grain, and apples, and sugar-cane, just as flour, and cider, and molasses do. And hence they have inferred, first, that God intended the spirits for the use of man, as much as the flour, the apples, or the molasses; and that it is just as proper to separate the spirits by distillation, as it is to obtain the flour by grinding and bolting. Secondly, that there can be nothing injurious or poisonous in the spirits, any more than in the apples, the grain, or the molasses; the only injury, in either case, resulting from using too much. Thirdly, that spirits must be nourishing to the body, constituting, as they seem to do, the very essence of the fruit, grain, and molasses, which are confessedly nutritious.

Now, these inferences are all rendered null and void by the fact that ardent spirits, or alcohol, which is their essence, do not exist naturally in apples, grain, or sugar-cane. No one ever perceived the odor or the taste of alcohol in apples, or the cider obtained from them, while it was new and sweet; but after it had fermented for a time, by a due degree of warmth, the sweetness in a measure disappeared, and alcohol was found to be present. And just so in obtaining spirits from rye, or any other substance; a sweet liquor is at first obtained, which, by fermentation, is found to be partly converted into alcohol. This sweetness results from the sugar which the substances naturally contain, or which is formed by the process. This sugar is next destroyed, or decomposed, by the fermentation, and its parts go to make up a new substance, then first brought into existence, called alcohol. If the fermentation be carried on still farther, another new substance is produced, viz., vinegar. Carried still farther, putrid, unhealthy exhalations are the result, such as we find rising from swamps and other places where vegetable matter is decaying. If, then, we may conclude, because alcohol is obtained from grain and other nutritious substances, that therefore God intended it for the use of man, the same reason will show that he intended man should breathe these poisonous exhalations. If alcohol cannot be poisonous or injurious, because derived from harmless and salutary substances, neither can these exhalations be so; nor, indeed, those more putrid and deadly ones arising from the putrefaction of sweet animal food. And if alcohol must be nutritious, because apples, grain, and molasses are so, it follows that these exhalations are nutritious.

Having thus explained the chemistry of this subject, I would, secondly, address these men as a _physician_. I mean merely, that I wish to present before them the views of the most distinguished and impartial physicians concerning ardent spirits. It is important, then, to remark, that physicians have decided that alcohol is a powerful _poison_. And how do they prove this? Simply by comparing its effects with those of other poisons--particularly the poisons derived, as alcohol is, from vegetables--such as henbane, poison hemlock, prussic acid, thorn-apples, deadly nightshade, foxglove, poison sumach, oil of tobacco, and the essence of opium. These poisons, taken in different quantities, according to their strength, produce nausea, dizziness, exhilaration of spirits with subsequent debility, and even total insensibility; in other cases, delirium and death; and alcohol does the same. These poisons weaken the stomach, impair the memory and all the powers of the mind, and sometimes bring on palsy, apoplexy, and other violent disorders; and so does alcohol. Do you say that ardent spirits, as they are commonly drank, do not produce these effects except in a very slight degree? Neither do these substances, when much weakened by mixture with other things. Even rum and brandy, of the first proof, contain only about fifty parts of alcohol in the hundred; and even the _high wines_, as they are called, are by no means pure alcohol; yet less than an ounce of proof spirits, given to a rabbit, killed it in less than an hour. Three quarters of an ounce of alcohol, introduced into the stomach of a large and robust dog, killed him in three and a half hours. In larger quantities, as almost every one knows, this same substance has proved immediately fatal to men. Do you say that many drink spirits for years, and are not destroyed; and do you hence inquire how they can be poisonous? So I reply, not a few take small quantities of other poisons every day for years, and continue alive. A horse, indeed, may take the eighth part of an ounce of arsenic every day, and yet be thriving. But how many are there, do you suppose, who habitually drink ardent spirits, and yet suffer no bad effects from it? Have they no stomach complaints, no nervous maladies, no headaches? Do they live to a great age? Not one out of a hundred of those who daily drink ardent spirits, escapes uninjured; though their sickness and premature decay, resulting from this cause, are generally imputed to other causes; and as many as this would escape if arsenic were used, in moderate quantities, instead of spirits.

Farmers and distillers, whom I address, pause, I beseech you, and meditate upon this fact. It is poison into which you convert your rye and apples; it is poison which, under the name of whiskey and cider-brandy, you put into your cellars; it is poison which you draw out from the brandy and whiskey casks for drink, and which you offer your children and friends for drink; it is poison which you sell to your neighbors; it is producing the same effects as other poisons upon you and upon them; that is, it is undermining your constitutions, and shortening your lives and happiness. You would not dare thus to manufacture and distribute among the community calomel or arsenic, if these were in use, leaving it to every man to determine how large doses he should take. Yet it would not be half as dangerous for men of all descriptions to deal out and administer these substances to themselves and others, for there would be none of that bewitching temptation to excess, in the case of calomel and arsenic, which attends ardent spirits. But if by carelessly distributing calomel or arsenic in society, you had destroyed only one life, your conscience would be exceedingly burdened with the guilt. And who is to bear the guilt of destroying the thirty or forty thousand who are cut off annually in this country by intemperance? Suppose the distilleries were all to stop, how many would then die from hard drinking?

But if alcohol is poisonous in a degree, yet it is often necessary, you say. Physicians say not, except in a very few cases as a medicine; and even in these cases it is doubtful whether they have not other remedies as good, or better. Spirits are necessary, you say, to enable a man to endure great extremes of heat, cold, fatigue, and in exposure to wet, and attendance upon the sick. If this be correct, farmers will sometimes need them. But many of the most hard-working and thorough farmers in the land have, within a few years past, tried the experiment of laboring without spirits; and their unanimous testimony is, that they are stronger, healthier, and better able to bear all extremes and severe fatigue without them. Have you ever tried the same experiment? Be persuaded to make the trial, at least for one year, before you reject so much substantial testimony.

If spirits are necessary for any class, we should suppose it would be the West Indian slave. But "on three contiguous estates," says Dr. Abbot, "of more than four hundred slaves, has been made, with fine success, the experiment of a strict exclusion of ardent spirits at all seasons of the year. The success has very far exceeded the proprietor's most sanguine hopes. Peace, and quietness, and contentment, reign among the negroes; creoles are reared in much greater numbers than formerly; the estates are in the neatest and highest state of cultivation; and order and discipline are maintained with very little correction, and the mildest means."

Sailors are another class who must sometimes need spirits, if they are needed in case of great exposure to cold and wet. But several crews have attempted to winter in high northern latitudes, and those furnished with spirits have nearly all perished, while those not furnished with them have nearly all survived. When exposed to cold and wet, and partially immersed in the sea for hours, those who have not used spirits have commonly outlived those who drank them.

Soldiers are exposed to even more and severer extremes and vicissitudes than sailors. But Dr. Jackson, a most distinguished physician in the British army, asserts that spirits are decidedly injurious to soldiers on duty, rendering them less able to endure labor and hardship. And a general officer in the same army thus testifies: "But, above all, let every one who values his health, avoid drinking spirits when heated; that is adding fuel to the fire, and is apt to produce the most dangerous inflammatory complaints." "Not a more dangerous error exists, than the notion that the habitual use of spirituous liquors prevents the effects of cold. On the contrary, the truth is, that those who drink most frequently of them are soonest affected by severe weather. The daily use of these liquors tends greatly to emaciate and waste the strength of the body," etc.

The Roman soldiers marched with a weight of armor upon them which a modern soldier can hardly stand under; and they conquered the world. Yet they drank nothing stronger than vinegar and water.

"I have worn out two armies in two wars," says the Dr. Jackson mentioned above, "by the aids of temperance and hard work, and probably could wear out another before my period of old age arrives. I eat no animal food, drink no wine or malt liquor, or spirits of any kind; I wear no flannel, and neither regard wind nor rain, heat nor cold, when business is in the way."

Those men in Europe who are trained for boxing-matches would require spirits if they were necessary for giving bodily strength and health, since the object of this training is to produce the most perfect health, and the greatest possible strength. But ardent spirits are not used by them at all; and even wine is scarcely allowed.

In protracted watching by the bed of sickness, food and intervals of rest are the only real securities against disease and weakness. Spirits peculiarly expose a man to receive the disease, if it be contagious, and if not, they wear out the strength sooner than it would otherwise fail.

The most exposed and trying situations in life, then, need not the aid of ardent spirits; nay, they are in such cases decidedly injurious. They are not, therefore, necessary, but injurious for men in all other situations. The distiller must, therefore, give up the necessity of using them in the community as a reason for continuing their manufacture.

But spirits, it may be said, do certainly inspire a man with much additional strength. Yes; and physicians tell us how. It is by exciting the nervous system, and thus calling into more vigorous action the strength that God has given the constitution to enable it to resist heat, cold, and disease. If this strength do not previously exist in the system, spirits can never bestow it; for they do not afford the least nourishment, as food does. They merely call into action the stock of strength which food has already implanted is the body. Hence the debility and weakness which always succeed their use when the excitement has passed by. Hence, too, it follows, that spirits can never give any additional permanent strength to the body.

But this is not all; for physicians infer from this statement, that the use of spirits, even in moderate quantities, tends prematurely to exhaust and wear out the system. It urges on the powers of life faster than health requires, and thus wears them out sooner, by a useless waste of strength and spirits. True, a moderate drinker may not notice any striking bad effects upon his health, from this cause, for many years; nay, the excitement it produces may remove, for the time being, many uncomfortable feelings which he experiences, and which are the early warnings that nature gives him that she is oppressed, for the secret poison is at work within; and if such a man is attacked by a fever, or other acute disease, physicians know that he is by no means as likely to recover as the water-drinker, because the spirits have partially exhausted the secret strength of his constitution, all of which is now wanted to resist the disease. Let every man who indulges in the use of spirits ponder well the declaration of a committee of one of the most _enlightened medical societies_ in our land: "Beyond comparison greater is the risk of life, undergone in nearly all diseases, of whatever description, when they occur in those unfortunate men who have been previously disordered by these poisons." Such men, too, it may be added, are much more liable to the attacks of disease than those who totally abstain from alcohol. In both these ways, therefore, the use of spirits, even in the greatest moderation, tends to shorten life.

Distillers of ardent spirits, I entreat you, think seriously of these things, as you tend the fires under your boilers. Farmers, as you drive your load of cider or rye to the distillery, meditate upon them, I beseech you. You have here the opinions and advice of the most able and impartial physicians in this country and in Europe. True, you may find here and there one, of little or no reputation and learning, who, either because he thinks it for his interest, or is attached to ardent spirits himself, will oppose such views of the subject. But no physician of distinction and good moral character would dare, at this day, to come out publicly in opposition to the principles above advanced, sanctioned as they are by the united testimony of science and experience. O, shut not your ears against this powerful voice.

In the third place, I would expostulate with these men _as a friend to my country_. Can it be that they are acquainted with the extent of the mischiefs which our country already suffers from intemperance? Do they know that fifty-six millions of gallons of ardent spirits are annually consumed in the United States, or more than four and an half gallons to each inhabitant; and that about forty-four millions of this quantity are prepared in the distilleries of our own country; that ten millions of gallons are distilled from molasses, and more than nine million bushels of rye are used for this purpose? Do they know that these forty-four millions of gallons, as retailed, must cost the community not less than $22,000,000; that they render from two hundred to three hundred thousand of our citizens intemperate; that in consequence of this intemperance the country sustains an annual loss, in the productive labor of these drunkards, of not far from $30,000,000; and a loss of more than twenty-five thousand lives, from her middle-aged citizens, who are thus cut off prematurely? That two-thirds of the pauperism in the country, costing from $6,000,000 to $8,000,000, and two-thirds of the crime among us, perpetrated by an army of eighty or ninety thousand wretches, result from the same cause; and that from forty to fifty thousand of the cases of imprisonment for debt, annually, are imputed to the same cause? That the pecuniary losses proceeding from the carelessness and rashness of intemperate sailors, servants, and agents, are immense; and that the degradation of mind, the bodily and mental sufferings of drunkards and their families, and the corruption of morals and manners, are altogether beyond the reach of calculation to estimate, and of words to express?[E]

[Footnote E: In order to obtain the result in this paragraph,
the well-established estimates that have often been made,
concerning the cost and evils of ardent spirits in our
country, have been reduced about one fourth or fifth part, to
make allowance for the amount imported from abroad.]