Part 6
_Natural appetites_, such as are implanted in our constitution by the Author of nature, _do not by their gratification increase in their demands_. What satisfied them years ago, will satisfy them now. But _artificial appetites_, which are formed by the wicked practices of men, are _constantly increasing in their demands_. What satisfied them once, will _not_ satisfy them now. And what satisfies them now, will not satisfy them in future. They are constantly crying, "_Give, give._" And there is not a man, who is in the habitual use of ardent spirits, who is not in danger of dying a drunkard. Before he is aware, an intemperate appetite may be formed, the gratification of which may prove his temporal and eternal ruin. And if the practice should not come to this result with regard to himself, it may with regard to his children, and children's children. It may with regard to his neighbors, and their children. It may extend its baleful influences far and wide; and transmit them, with all their innumerable evils, from generation to generation.
Can, then, _temperate, sober men be clear from guilt_, in continuing a practice which is costing annually more than $30,000,000; increasing more than threefold the poor-rates, and the crimes of the country; undermining the health and constitution of its inhabitants; and cutting of annually thirty thousand lives!
There is tremendous guilt somewhere. And it is a truth which ought to press with overwhelming force upon the mind of every sober man, that a portion of this guilt rests upon _every one_ who, with a knowledge of facts, continues the _totally unnecessary and awfully pernicious practice of taking ardent spirits_. Each individual ought, without delay, in view of eternity, to clear himself, and neither by precept nor example, ever again encourage or even connive at this deadly evil.
ADDRESS ON THE EFFECTS OF ARDENT SPIRITS.
BY JONATHAN KITTREDGE, ESQ.
[Illustration: Drunk man arriving home to impoverished family]
FELLOW-CITIZENS--That intemperance, in our country, is a great and growing evil, all are ready to admit. When we look abroad, and examine into the state of society, we find the number of those who are in the constant and habitual practice of an excessive use of ardent spirits to be alarming. We see the effects that they produce among our friends and our neighbors, but the evil is so common, and it is so fashionable to drink, and I had almost said, to drink to excess, that the sight of it has lost half its terror, and we look upon an intemperate man without those feelings of disgust and abhorrence which his real situation and character are calculated to produce. This is the natural result of things. The mind becomes familiar with the contemplation, the eye accustomed to the sight; we pay but little attention to the object--he passes on--we laugh at the exhibition, and grow callous and indifferent to the guilt. Our pity is not excited, our hearts do not ache at the scenes of intoxication that are almost daily exhibited around us. But if for a moment we seriously reflect upon the real situation of the habitually intemperate; if we call to mind what they have been--what they now are; if we cast our eye to the future, and realize what, in a few years, they will be; if we go further, and examine into the state of their families, of their wives and their children, we shall discover a scene of misery and wretchedness that will not long suffer us to remain cold, and indifferent, and unfeeling.
This examination we can all make for ourselves. We can all call to mind the case of some individual, whom we have known for years, perhaps from his infancy, who is now a poor, miserable drunkard. In early life his hopes and prospects were as fair as ours. His family was respectable, and he received all those advantages which are necessary, and which were calculated to make him a useful and respectable member of society. Perhaps he was our school-fellow, and our boyhood may have been passed in his company. We witnessed the first buddings of his mental powers, and know that he possessed an active, enterprising mind. He grew up into life with every prospect of usefulness. He entered into business, and, for a while, did well. His parents looked to him for support in old age, and he was capable of affording it. He accumulated property, and, in a few years, with ordinary prudence and industry, would have been independent. He married, and became the head of a family, and the father of children, and all was prosperous and happy around him. Had he continued as he began, he would now have been a comfort to his friends, and an honor to the community. But the scene quickly changed. He grew fond of ardent spirits. He was seen at the store and the tavern. By degrees he became intemperate. He neglected his business, and his affairs went to gradual decay. He is now a drunkard, his property is wasted, his parents have died of broken hearts, his wife is pale and emaciated, his children ragged, and squalid, and ignorant. He is the tenant of some little cabin that poverty has erected to house him from the storm and the tempest. He is useless, and worse than useless: he is a pest to all around him. All the feelings of his nature are blunted; he has lost all shame; he procures his accustomed supply of the poison that consumes him; he staggers through mud and through filth to his hut; he meets a weeping wife and starving children; he abuses them, he tumbles into his straw, and he rolls and foams like a mad brute, till he is able to go again. He calls for more rum--he repeats the scene from time to time, and from day to day, till soon his nature faints, and he becomes sober in death.
Let us reflect, that this guilty, wretched creature had an immortal mind--he was like us, of the same flesh and blood--he was our brother, destined to the same eternity, created by, and accountable to, the same God; and will, at last, stand at the same judgment-bar; and who, amid such reflections, will not weep at his fate--whose eye can remain dry, and whose heart unmoved?
This is no picture of the imagination. It is a common and sober reality. It is what we see almost every day of our lives; and we live in the midst of such scenes and such events. With the addition or subtraction of a few circumstances, it is the case of every one of the common drunkards around us. They have not completed the drama--they are alive--but they are going to death with rapid strides, as their predecessors have already gone. Another company of immortal minds are coming on to fill their places, as they have filled others. The number is kept good, and increasing. Shops, as nurseries, are established in every town and neighborhood, and drunkards are raised up by the score. They are made--they are formed--for no man was ever born a drunkard--and, I may say, no man was ever born with a taste for ardent spirits. They are not the food which nature has provided. The infant may cry for its mother's milk, and for nourishing food, but none was ever heard to cry for ardent spirits. The taste is created, and in some instances may be created so young, that, perhaps, many cannot remember the time when they were not fond of them.
And here permit me to make a few remarks upon the _formation, or creation of this taste_. I will begin with the infant, and I may say that he is born into rum. At his birth, according to custom, a quantity of ardent spirits is provided; they are thought to be as necessary as any thing else. They are considered as indispensable as if the child could not be born without them. The father treats his friends and his household, and the mother partakes with the rest. The infant is fed with them, as if he could not know the good things he is heir to without a taste of ardent spirits. They are kept on hand, and often given to him as medicine, especially where the parents are fond of them themselves. By this practice, even in the cradle, his disrelish for ardent spirits is done away. He grows up, and during the first months or years of his existence, his taste and his appetite are formed. As he runs about, and begins to take notice of passing events, he sees his father and friends drink; he partakes, and grows fond of them. In most families, ardent spirits are introduced and used on every extraordinary occasion. Without mentioning many, that the knowledge and experience of every man can supply, I will instance only the case of visitors.
A gentleman's friends and acquaintance call on him. He is glad to see them, and fashion and custom make it necessary for him to invite them to the sideboard. This is all done in his best style, in his most easy and affable manner. The best set of drinking-vessels are brought forward, and make quite a display. The children of the family notice this; they are delighted with the sight and the exhibition; they are pleased with the manners, and gratified with the conversation of the visitors on the occasion. As soon as they go abroad, they associate the idea of drinking with all that is manly and genteel. They fall into the custom, and imitate the example that is set them. Circumstances and situations expose one to more temptations than the rest. Perhaps his resolution, or his moral principle, is not so strong; and in this way, one out of twenty-five of those who live to thirty years of age becomes intemperate. He becomes so, perhaps not from any uncommon predisposition to the vice, but is at first led on by fashion, and custom, and favorable circumstances, till at last he plunges headlong into the vortex of dissipation and ruin. Our natural disrelish for ardent spirits is first done away--a relish for them is then created. They next become occasional, next habitual drinks. The habit gains strength, till, at last, the daily drinker is swept away by the first adverse gale.
It is on this principle, and let the fact operate as a caution to those who need it, that many men of fair unblemished characters, who have made a temperate, but habitual use of ardent spirits in days of prosperity, have, on a change of fortune, become notorious drunkards; while those who have refrained in prosperity, have encountered all the storms of adversity unhurt. We frequently hear a man's intemperance attributed to a particular cause, as loss of friends, loss of property, disappointed love, or ambition; when, if the truth were known, it would be seen that such men had previously been addicted to the use of ardent spirits, perhaps not immoderately, and fly to them on such events as their solace and support. Intemperance requires an apprenticeship, as much as law or physic; and a man can no more become intemperate in a month, than he can become a lawyer or a physician in a month. Many wonder that certain intemperate men, of fine talents, noble hearts, and manly feelings, do not reform; but it is a greater wonder that any ever do. The evil genius of intemperance gradually preys upon the strength of both body and mind, till the victim, when he is caught, finds, that although he was a giant once, he is now a child. Its influence is seductive and insinuating, and men are often irretrievably lost before they are aware of it. Let them beware how they take the first step. It is by degrees that men become intemperate. No man ever became so all at once--it is an impossibility in the nature of things. It requires time to harden the heart, to do away shame, to blunt the moral principle, to deaden the intellectual faculties, and temper the body. The intemperance of the day is the natural and legitimate consequence of the customs of society--of genteel and respectable society. It is the common and ordinary use of ardent spirits, as practised in our towns and villages, that has already peopled them with drunkards, and which, unless checked, will fill them with drunkards. The degree of intemperance that prevails, and the quantity of ardent spirits used, in our most respectable towns, is almost incredible. Perhaps some facts on this subject will be interesting.
As it regards _the degree of intemperance that prevails_, it may be safely said, that one out of a hundred of the inhabitants of this part of the country is a common drunkard. By a common drunkard is meant one who is habitually intemperate, who is often intoxicated, and who is restrained from intoxication neither by principle nor shame. Of such there are from ten to twenty, and upward, in every inhabited township. There is another class who are intemperate, and many of them are occasional drunkards. This class is more numerous than the former, and one out of about forty of the inhabitants belongs to one or the other class. Is not this a horrid state of society? But any one can satisfy himself of the truth of the statement, by making the examination himself.
The quantity of ardent spirits yearly consumed in our towns, varies from six to ten thousand gallons. It will answer the argument I intend to draw from it, to state the annual quantity in this town to be six thousand gallons, although short of the truth. This would be three gallons to every inhabitant, or twenty-one gallons to every legal voter. The cost of this liquid, at the low price of fifty cents per gallon, will be three thousand dollars, which will pay all your town, county, and state taxes three years, and is as much as it costs you to support and maintain all your privileges, civil, religious, and literary. In one hundred years you would drink up all the town in ardent spirits; or it would cost just such a town as this, with all your farms, stock, and personal property, to furnish the inhabitants with ardent spirits, at the present rate of drinking, only one hundred years. But should the town continue to drink as they now do for fifty years, and in the mean time suffer the cost of the spirits to accumulate by simple interest only, the whole town, at the end of the term, could not pay their rum bills. It can be no consolation that all other towns would be alike insolvent.
But this is not all. Add to this sum the loss of time and the waste of property occasioned by it, independent of its cost, and it swells the amount to a monstrous size. Here you have an account of the cost of ardent spirits, calculated within bounds. At present there is a great complaint about the pressure of the times, and the complaint is doubtless well-founded. "Hard times" is in every body's mouth; but if you had for the last year only abstained from the use of ardent spirits, you would now have been independent and easy in your circumstances. Three thousand dollars, which you have paid for them, divided among you, would pay all the debts you are called upon to pay. I do not mean that no one wants more than his proportion of this sum, but there are some who want none of it, and who would circulate it, by loan or otherwise, among those who do want it, and it would relieve the whole town from the distress they are now in.
If this town had an income that would pay all its taxes, you would consider it a matter of great joy and congratulation. But if it had an income that would discharge all its taxes, and each man, instead of paying, should receive the amount he now pays, you would consider your situation highly prosperous and enviable. Discontinue the use of ardent spirits, and you have it. Use none, and your situation, as a town, will be as good, yea, far better than if you had an income of three thousand dollars yearly, to be divided among its inhabitants.
If we carry this calculation farther, we shall find, on the principle adopted, that there are in the state of New Hampshire 2,441 common drunkards, and 3,663 intemperate, or occasional drunkards--in the whole, 6,104; and that the state consumes 732,483 gallons of ardent spirits annually, which cost, at 50 cents a gallon, $366,241. In the United States, there would be 96,379 common, and 240,949 common and occasional drunkards; and the country would consume annually 28,913,887 gallons of ardent spirits, which cost, at 50 cents per gallon, $14,456,943--as much as it costs to support the whole system of our national government, with all that is laid out in improvements, roads, canals, pensions, etc., etc., and is more than one-half of the whole revenue of the Union for the last year. It must be remembered that this calculation embraces only the quantity and cost of the spirits, and is on the supposition that this town consumes only 6,000 gallons, at 50 cents per gallon, and is a fair criterion for the state and nation. As it regards this state, it would be safe nearly to double the quantity, and to treble the cost of the spirits; and as it regards the nation, it would be safe to double all my calculations. In the United States, the quantity of ardent spirits yearly consumed, may be fairly estimated at 60,000,000 gallons, the cost at $30,000,000, and the number of drunkards, of both kinds, at 480,000.
But we all know, and it is common to remark, that the cost of the article is comparatively nothing; that it hardly makes an item in the calculation of pernicious consequences resulting from the consumption of ardent spirits. Were we to embrace the usual concomitants, and estimate the value of time lost, the amount of property wasted, of disease produced, and of crime committed, where ardent spirits are the only cause, it would transcend our conceptions, and the imagination would be lost in the contemplation. The number of drunkards in the United States would make an army as large as that with which Bonaparte marched into Russia; and would be sufficient to defend the United States from the combined force of all Europe. Convert our drunkards into good soldiers, and one-tenth of them would redeem Greece from the Turks. Convert them into apostles, and they would Christianize the world. And what are they now? Strike them from existence, and who would feel the loss? Yes, strike them from existence, and the United States would be benefited by the blow.
But this is not half. I cannot tell you half the effects of ardent spirits. And yet ardent spirits are said to be useful and necessary. It is false! It is nothing but the apology that love of them renders for their use. There are only two cases in which, Dr. Rush says, they can be administered without injury, and those are cases of persons like to perish, and where substitutes may be applied of equal effect. What rational man would use them, for the sake of these two possible cases? As well might he introduce rattlesnakes among his children, because their oil is good in diseases with which they may possibly be afflicted.
The number of persons in the United States who are mentally deranged, I do not know; probably there are several thousands; and it is ascertained, that one-third of those confined in the insane hospitals of Philadelphia and New York, are rendered insane by the use of ardent spirits. Yes, one-third of the poor, miserable maniacs of our land, are made such by the use of that which, in the opinion of some, is a very useful and necessary article, and which they cannot do without. This article has deprived one-third of the crazy wretches of our land of their reason--of that which makes them men--of the very image of their God.
Out of the number of the intemperate in the United States, ten thousand die annually from the effects of ardent spirits. And what a death! To live a drunkard is enough; but to die so, and to be ushered into the presence of your angry Judge, only to hear the sentence, "Depart, thou drunkard!" Ah! language fails, and I leave it to your imagination to fill up the horrid picture.
This death happens in various ways. Some are killed instantly; some die a lingering, gradual death; some commit suicide in fits of intoxication; and some are actually burnt up.
I read of an intemperate man, a few years since, whose breath caught fire by coming in contact with a lighted candle, and he was consumed. At the time, I disbelieved the story, but my reading has since furnished me with well authenticated cases of a combustion of the human body from the use of ardent spirits. Trotter mentions ten such cases, and relates them at length. They are attended with all the proof we require to believe any event. They are attested by living witnesses, examined by learned men, and published in the journals of the day without contradiction. It would be unnecessary to relate the whole, but I will state one of them, and from this an idea can be formed of the rest. It is the case "of a woman eighty years of age, exceedingly meagre, who had drunk nothing but ardent spirits for several years. She was sitting in her elbow-chair, while her waiting-maid went out of the room for a few moments. On her return, seeing her mistress on fire, she immediately gave an alarm; and some people coming to her assistance, one of them endeavored to extinguish the flames with his hands, _but they adhered to them as if they had been dipped in brandy or oil on fire_. Water was brought and thrown on the body in abundance, _yet the fire appeared more violent, and was not extinguished till the whole body had been consumed_. The lady was in the same place in which she sat every day, there was no extraordinary fire, and she had not fallen."[B]
[Footnote B: Trotter on Drunkenness, pp. 78, 79.]
This, with nine other cases, related by the same author, was a consumption of the body produced by the use of ardent spirits. The horror of a drunkard's death beggars description. Need I point to yonder grave, just closed over the remains of one who went from the cup of excess to almost instant death? You all know it.
But this is not all. One half the poor you support by taxes and individual charity, are made poor by the use of ardent spirits. This has been demonstrated by actual inquiry and examination. In the city of New York, where there are more poor, and where more is done for them than in any other city of the United States, a committee appointed for the purpose, ascertained by facts, that more than one half of the city poor were reduced to poverty by intemperance. This is also the case throughout the Union. And here permit me to state a case, with which I am acquainted. I do it with a double object. I do it to show that the use of ardent spirits produces poverty and distress, and the disuse of them restores to wealth and comfort.