Part 12

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.]

Can it be that these men have ever soberly looked forward to see what must be the ultimate effects, upon our free and beloved country, of this hydra-headed evil, unless it be arrested? Can they be aware that, judging by the past proportion of deaths from intemperance in the most regular and moral parts of the land, one third of the six million adults now living will die from the same cause? Do they know how the intemperate entail hereditary diseases and a thirst for ardent spirits upon their descendants, and how rapidly, therefore, the bodily vigor of our citizens is giving way before their deadly influence? And can they doubt that vigor of mind will decay in the same proportion? Corruption of manners and morals too, how rapidly it will spread under the operation of this poison! Nor can religious principle stand long before the overwhelming inundation; and just in the degree in which alcoholic liquors are used, will the Sabbath, and the institutions of religion, and the Bible be neglected and trodden under foot. And when the morality, and religion, and the conscience of the majority of our nation are gone, what but a miracle can save our liberties from ruin? Corrupt the majority, and what security is there in popular elections? Corrupt the majority, and you have collected together the explosive materials that need only the touch of some demagogue's torch to scatter the fair temple of our independence upon the winds of heaven.

But admitting that this picture is not overdrawn, yet the distiller and the furnisher of materials may perhaps say, that all this does not

## particularly concern them. They are not intemperate, they force no man

to drink, or even to buy their spirits: nay, they generally refuse to sell to the intemperate. The intemperate are the persons to whom these expostulations should be addressed. As for the distiller and the farmer, who manufacture the poison, they are following a lawful calling, and have a right to the honest proceeds of their business.

The principle, then, which I understand you to advocate, is this: that provided your employment be not contrary to the laws of the state, you are under no obligation to inquire particularly as to its influence upon the public happiness after the products of your labor get out of your own hands. If this be a correct principle for your guidance, it is certainly a correct one for others. Let us apply it to the intemperate man.

I expostulate with him on the destructive influence of his habits upon his country. "But have I not a right," says he, "to use my own property in such a way as I choose, provided I do not violate the laws of the land? If I may not employ a portion of my money in purchasing spirits, neither have you a right to lay out yours for a carriage, or for painting your house, or for any thing else which some of your neighbors may regard as unnecessary. I buy no more spirits than my health and comfort require; and I have as good a right to judge of the quantity, as you have in respect to the needless articles of dress and furniture which you procure."

I urge the man who keeps a licensed gambling-house to abandon a pursuit that is ruining his country. "But I am not violating the laws," he replies, "nor compelling any man to gamble and drink to excess in my house. The whole responsibility, therefore, rests upon those who do it. Expostulate with them. I have a right to my earnings."

You see where this principle leads. Is it one that a true patriot ought to adopt? No: he alone is a true patriot who is ready to abandon every pursuit that is injuring his country, however profitable it may be to himself, and however tolerated by the civil law. Nor I would not attempt to extenuate the guilt of the intemperate man, nor of the merchant who sells him spirits; but I do say, that if those who distil, and those who furnish the materials, were to abandon the business altogether, it would almost put an end to intemperance in the land. For only a small proportion of the spirits used is imported; and its price must always continue so high that but few could afford to be drunkards were the domestic manufacture to cease. You have it in your power, then, to put a stop to this most dreadful national evil, and thus to save our liberties and all that is dear to us from ruin. Your fathers poured out their blood like water to purchase our independence, and to build up a bulwark around our rights. But the ten thousand distilleries which you ply are so many fiery batteries, pouring forth their forty-four million discharges every year, to level that bulwark in the dust. All Europe combined against us in war could not do us half as much injury as your distilleries are doing every year. Oh, abandon them--tear them down--melt your boilers in the furnace--give your grain and molasses to the poor, or to the fowls of heaven--make fuel of your fruit-trees, rather than destroy your country.

Some may say, that if they cease to manufacture spirits, others will take up the business and carry it on as extensively as they do. And since, therefore, the country will gain nothing by their discontinuance of distillation, they may as well have the profit of it as others. But what course of wickedness will not such reasoning justify? A highwayman robs you, or an assassin invades your dwelling at midnight and slaughters your wife and children. Now, would you think them justified, should they plead that they knew of others about to commit the same outrages, and therefore they thought their commission of these deeds was not wrong, since they needed the avails of the robbery and murder as much as any body? A man could pursue the slave-trade year after year on this principle, with no upbraidings of conscience, if he only suspected that the business would be carried on were he to stop. And a traitor might sell his country for gold, could he only ascertain that some one else was about to do it, and yet be exonerated from blame, if this principle be proper to act upon. Oh, how can any decent man plead a moment for a principle that leads to such monstrous results!

Some will say, however, that they sell the spirits which they manufacture only to those whom they know to be temperate, and therefore they are not accessory to the intemperance in the land; for they are not accountable for the sins of those who sell spirits to improper persons.

You supply them only to the temperate! The greater the blame and the guilt; for you are thus training up a new set of drunkards to take the place of those whom death will soon remove out of the way. Were you to sell only to the intemperate, you would do comparatively little injury to the community. For you would only hasten those out of the way who are a nuisance, and prevent the education of others to fill their places. But let not any man think that no blame attaches to himself because the poison goes into other hands before it is administered. _A man is to blame for any evil to his fellow-men which he could prevent._ Now, by stopping all the distilleries in the land, you could prevent men from becoming drunkards. The very head and front of the offending, therefore, lies with you. It is as idle for you to attempt to cast all the guilt upon others, in this way, as it was for Pilate, when he endeavored to fix the blood of Christ upon the people by washing his hands before them and declaring himself innocent, and then going back to his judgment-seat and passing sentence of death upon him. Good man! He did not touch a hair of the Saviour's head. It was the cruel soldiers who executed his orders, that, according to this plea, were alone guilty!

Some distillers will probably say that they cannot support themselves and families if they abandon this business; and some farmers will say, if we cannot sell our cider and rye to the distillers, the products of our orchards must all be lost, and rye is the only article which we can raise upon our farms with any profit. And if I were not to purchase these articles, says the distiller, their price must be so low that no farmer could afford to raise them. Thus to reduce a large class of the yeomanry of our country--its very sinews--to poverty, would be a greater evil than even the intemperance that is so common.

Is it indeed true, that in this free and happy country an industrious, temperate, and economical man, cannot find any employment by which he can support himself and family in a comfortable manner without manufacturing poison and selling it to his countrymen? In other words, cannot he live without destroying them? Is land so scarce, or so eaten up with tithes and taxes, that he cannot thence derive subsistence unless he converts its products into money at the expense of others' comfort, reputation, and life? Is every honest calling so crowded, or so unproductive, that every avenue is closed? Have the men who make this plea tried, even for a single year, to live without the manufacture of spirits? It may be, indeed, that for a time they will find other pursuits less productive than this. And is not this, after all, the true reason why they shrink from the sacrifice? But if superior profits be a sufficient reason for continuing distillation, it is a reason that will justify the robber, the thief, and every other depredator upon the rights of others.