Part 7

A gentleman in the city of New York, who carried on ship-building on an extensive scale, and employed a great number of hands daily, and paid them all in the same manner, and nearly to the same amount, was struck with the difference in their situations. A few, and only a few, were able, from their wages, to support their families; but these were out of debt, and independent in their circumstances. They always had money on hand, and frequently suffered their wages to lie in the hands of their employer. The rest were poor and harassed, the former easy and comfortable in their circumstances, and he resolved, if possible, to ascertain the cause of the difference. On inquiry and examination, he found that those of them who were above-board used no ardent spirits, while the others were in the constant and daily use of them. He satisfied himself that this use of ardent spirits was the only cause of the difference in their condition. He determined, if he could, to prevail upon them all to abstain altogether from their use. On a thorough and parental representation of the case to them, he succeeded, and they all agreed to make use of none for a year. At the end of the year they were all, to a man, out of debt, had supported their families in better condition, had done more work, destroyed fewer tools, and were hearty and robust, and enjoyed better health.

This fact speaks volumes, and needs no comment. Adopt the same practice in this town, and the result will be the same. "What, drink none?" Yes, I say, drink none--one gallon for this town is just four quarts too much. In addition to the miseries of debt and poverty which they entail upon a community, they are the parent of one half the diseases that prevail, and one half the crimes that are committed. It is ardent spirits that fill our poor-houses and our jails; it is ardent spirits that fill our penitentiaries, our mad-houses, and our state prisons; and it is ardent spirits that furnish victims for the gallows. They are the greatest curse that God ever inflicted on the world, and may well be called the seven vials of his wrath. They are more destructive in their consequences than war, plague, pestilence, or famine; yea, than all combined. They are slow in their march, but sure in their grasp. They seize not only the natural, but the moral man. They consign the body to the tomb, and the soul to hell.

While on earth, the victim of intemperance is as stupid as an ass, as ferocious as a tiger, as savage as a bear, as poisonous as the asp, as filthy as the swine, as fetid as a goat, and as malignant as a fiend. No matter what may be the original materials of the man; his figure may possess every grace of the sculptor; his mind may be imbued with every art and science; he may be fit to command at the head of armies, to sway a Roman senate, to wield the destinies of nations; his heart may be the seat of every virtue; but ardent spirits will strip him of the whole, and convert him into a demon. Need I tell how? Need I point out the change that ebriety produces in the moral and social affections? Need I present the sword red with a brother's blood? It was in a drunken revel that the infuriate Alexander slew his best friend and most beloved companion Clytus. And it was in a drunken revel that he proclaimed himself a god, and died.

"But have not ardent spirits one good quality, one redeeming virtue?" None. I say, none. There is nothing, not even the shadow of a virtue, to rescue them from universal and everlasting execration.

"But they are good as a medicine." No, not as a medicine. There is no physician, that does not love them, that needs them in his practice. There is no disease that they cure or relieve, that cannot be cured or relieved without them. They add to no man's health; they save no man's life.[C]

[Footnote C: The writer is aware that spirits or alcohol are necessary in some preparations of the chemist and apothecary. But it is the use of them as drinks which he is combating, and which, he is assured by respectable physicians, are not only unnecessary, but hurtful, in sickness and in health. Were they to exist only in the apothecary's shop in the state of alcohol, it would be all that the world needs of them. Some physicians, nevertheless, may think them useful in two or three cases or conditions of the body; but it is apprehended, that if they should discontinue the use of them altogether, except in certain tinctures, etc., they would be as successful as they now are. They are often used where they would not be, if they were not the most common thing that could be found.]

It is impossible to name a single good thing that they do. Give them to the divine; do they add to his piety, to his zeal, to his faithfulness, to his love of God or man? No; they destroy them all. Give them to the physician; do they increase his skill, his power to discriminate amid the symptoms of disease, his judgment to apply the appropriate remedies, his kind and affectionate solicitude? Nay, verily, they destroy them all. Give them to the legal advocate; do they increase his knowledge, his perception to discover the points of his case, his readiness to apply the evidence, his ability to persuade a court and jury? No; they destroy them all. Give them to the mechanic; do they assist his ingenuity, his judgment, or his taste? No; they destroy them all. Give them to the laborer; do they add to his strength? Do they enable him to bear fatigue, to endure heat and cold? Can he do more work, or do it better? No; they are the ruin of the whole. They reduce his strength, weaken his frame, make him more susceptible to heat and cold, disorganize his whole system, and unfit him for labor.

"But there are some men," say you, "who use ardent spirits, and who get along very well." Admitted. They endure it. So there are some men who get along very well with poor health and feeble constitutions. Are poor health and feeble constitutions, therefore, no evils? Is the prosperity of such to be attributed to them? As much as is that of the former to the use of ardent spirits. Was ever a man made rich by the use of ardent spirits? Never; but millions have been made beggars by it.

Yet some say, they _feel better_ by drinking ardent spirits. Let us examine this excuse. It is nothing but an excuse, and he who loves rum and is ashamed to own it, says he feels better to drink it. Let us inquire how. Are they conducive to health? On this subject let the physician decide. One, as great as this country has produced, Dr. Rush, says that the habitual use of ardent spirits usually produces the following diseases: A loss of appetite, sickness at the stomach, obstruction of the liver, jaundice and dropsy, hoarseness and a husky cough, which often ends in consumption, diabetes, redness and eruptions of the skin, a fetid breath, frequent and disgusting belchings, epilepsy, gout, and madness. This is the train of diseases produced by the use of ardent spirits, and the usual, natural, and legitimate consequences of their use. And now, I ask, can that which, of its own nature, produces these diseases, make a man feel better? Reason might answer; and were she on her throne, uninfluenced and unbiassed by the love of ardent spirits, she would unequivocally answer, No. And we find that those who say they feel better to drink ardent spirits, are those who are in health, but love rum, and it gratifies their appetite, and this is what they mean by feeling better.

I will examine for a moment the effect, the immediate effect of ardent spirits upon the man. I will take a man in health, and give him a glass of ardent spirits. The effect is, to produce mental derangement and false notions and conceptions. But one glass will not have much effect. I will give him another, and, if he loves rum, he feels better; another, and he feels better; another, better yet. By this time he has got to feel pretty well; quite happy. He has no fear or shame. He can curse, and swear, and break things. "He is fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils." He fears no consequences, and can accomplish impossibilities. If he is a cripple, he fancies he can dance like a satyr; if he is slow and unwieldy, he can run like a hart; if he is weak and feeble in strength, he can lift like Samson, and fight like Hercules; if he is poor and pennyless, he is rich as Croesus on his throne, and has money to lend. This is all a correct representation. It is what happens universally with the drunkard. I know one man who is intemperate, who is poor, and never known to have five dollars at a time, who, when he is intoxicated, has often, and does usually, offer to lend me a thousand dollars. Poor, miserable, and deluded man! But he feels well; he is one of those who feel better to drink. He is mentally deranged; his imagination is disordered. He fancies bliss, and felicity, and plenty, and abundance, which do not exist; and he awakes to misery, and poverty, and shame, and contempt. Yet this is the exact feeling of all those who feel better to drink spirits. He who drinks but a glass, has not the same degree, but precisely the same kind of feeling with the one I have described.

And this is all--this is all that rum does to make a man feel better. If his wife and children are starving, he feels it not. He feels better. If his affairs are going to ruin, or are already plunged into ruin, he is not sensible to his condition. If his house is on fire, he sings the maniac's song, and regards it not. He feels better.

Let him who likes this better feeling enjoy it. Enjoy it, did I say? No. Reclaim him, if possible. Convince him that he labors under a delusion. Restore him to truth, and to reason; banish the cup from his mouth, and change the brute into the man.

And now, need any more be said to persuade mankind to abandon the use of ardent spirits? the appalling facts, in relation to them, are known to all. Experience and observation teach us that they are the source of ruin, and misery, and squalid wretchedness, in a thousand shapes. They are the three-headed monster; they are the Gorgons with their thousand snakes; their name is Legion. And shall I yet find advocates for their use? Will this enlightened community yet say, they are useful and necessary? All those who have used them, and discontinued the use of them, say they are totally unnecessary and useless. We see that those who live without them enjoy more happiness and better health than those who use them--that they live longer lives. But oh, the folly, the stupidity, and the delusion of rum-drinkers!

But perhaps it may be said, that the effects and consequences that I have mentioned, result from the abuse, and not from the proper and moderate use of ardent spirits; and that on many occasions, in small quantities, they are useful. Let us examine the circumstances and occasions when they are said to be necessary; and perhaps I cannot do it better than in the words of another.

"They are said to be necessary in very _cold weather_. This is far from being true; for the temporary heat they produce is always succeeded by a greater disposition in the body to be affected by cold. Warm dresses, a plentiful meal just before exposure to the cold, and eating occasionally a cracker or any other food, is a much more durable method of preserving the heat of the body in cold weather." In confirmation of this, the case of the vessel wrecked off the harbor of Newburyport, a few years since, may be adduced. On an intensely cold night, when all the men of that vessel were in danger of freezing to death, the master advised them to drink no ardent spirits. He told them, if they did, they must surely freeze. Some took his advice, while others, notwithstanding his most earnest entreaties, disregarded it. The result was, that of those who used the spirits, some lost their hands, some their feet, and some perished; while the rest survived unhurt.

"They are said to be necessary in very _warm weather_. Experience proves that they increase, instead of lessening the effects of heat upon the body, and thereby expose it to diseases of all kinds. Even in the warm climate of the West Indies, Dr. Bell asserts this to be true. Rum, says this author, whether used habitually, moderately, or in excessive quantities, always diminishes the strength of the body, and renders man more susceptible to disease, and unfit for any service in which vigor or

## activity is required. As well might we throw oil into a house, the roof

of which was on fire, in order to prevent the flames from extending to its inside, as pour ardent spirits into the stomach, to lessen the effects of a hot sun upon the skin." And here permit me to add, that they are said to be necessary in cold weather to warm, and in warm weather to cool. The bare statement of the argument on these two points confounds itself.

"Nor do ardent spirits lessen the effects of _hard labor_ upon the body. Look at the horse, with every muscle of his body swelled from morning till night, in a plough or a team. Does he make signs for a glass of spirits, to enable him to cleave the ground or climb a hill? No; he requires nothing but cold water and substantial food. There is no nourishment in ardent spirits. The strength they produce in labor is of a transient nature, and is always followed by a sense of weakness and fatigue."[D]

[Footnote D: Dr. Rush.]

Some people, nevertheless, pretend that ardent spirits add to their strength, and increase their muscular powers; but this is all a delusion. They think they are strong when they are weak. Rum makes them boast, and that is all. The truth is, it weakens them in body, but strengthens them in imagination. Was not one reason why Samson was forbidden by the angel of God to drink either wine or strong drink, that he might thus increase and preserve his strength? When you hear a man telling how strong rum makes him, you may be sure he is weak, both in body and mind.

There is one other occasion for using ardent spirits, which it will be proper to examine. They are said to be necessary to keep off the _contagion_ of disease, and are recommended to attendants upon the sick. But the united testimony of all physicians proves, that the intemperate are first attacked by epidemic disorders. This is almost universally the case in the southern states, and in the West Indies. Experience also proves that those attendants upon the sick, who refrain from the use of ardent spirits, escape, while those who use them are swept away. If facts could convince, the use of ardent spirits would be abolished. But the love of rum is stronger on the human mind than the truth of Heaven.

If, then, ardent spirits are not necessary in sickness; if they do not prevent the effects of heat and cold; if they do not add to our strengths, and enable us to perform more labor; when are they necessary? Why, people in health say, they want to drink them now and then--they do them good. What good? If they are well, why do they need them? For nothing but to gratify the taste, and to produce a feeling of intoxication and derangement, slight in its degree when moderately used, as they are by such people, but the character of the feeling is no less certain. It is the same feeling that induces the drunkard to drink. One man takes a glass to do him good, to make him feel better; another wants two; another three; another six; and by this time he is intoxicated, and he never feels well till he is so. He has the same feeling with the man who drinks a single glass, but more of it; and that man who, in health, drinks one glass to make him feel better, is just so much of a drunkard; one-sixth, if it takes six glasses to intoxicate him. He has one-sixth of the materials of a drunkard in his constitution.

But it is this _moderate use_ of ardent spirits that produces all the excess. It is this which paves the way to downright and brutal intoxication. Abolish the ordinary and temperate use of ardent spirits, and there would not be a drunkard in the country. He who advises men not to drink to excess, may lop off the branches; he who advises them to drink only on certain occasions, may fell the trunk; but he who tells them not to drink at all, strikes and digs deep for the root of the hideous vice of intemperance; and this is the only course to pursue. It is this temperate use of ardent spirits that must be discontinued. They must be no longer necessary when friends call, when we go to the store to trade, to the tavern to transact business, when we travel the road on public days--in fact, they must cease to be fashionable and customary drinks. Do away the fashion and custom that attend their use, and change the tone of public feeling, so that it will be thought disgraceful to use them as they are now used by the most temperate and respectable men, and an end is for ever put to the prevalence of the beastly disease of intoxication. Let those who cannot be reclaimed from intemperance go to ruin, and the quicker the better, if you regard only the public good; but save the rest of our population; save yourselves; save your children! Raise not up an army of drunkards to supply their places. Purify your houses. They contain the plague of death; the poison that, in a few years, will render some of your little ones what the miserable wretches that you see staggering the streets are now. And who, I ask, would not do it? What father, who knew that one of his sons that he loves was, in a few years, to be what hundreds you can name are now, would hesitate, that he might save him, to banish intoxicating drinks from his premises for ever?

But if all will do it, he is saved; and he who contributes but a mite in this work of God, deserves the everlasting gratitude of the republic. If the names of a Brainerd, of a Swartz, of a Buchanan, have been rendered immortal by their efforts to convert the heathen to Christianity, the names of those men who shall succeed in converting Christians to temperance and sobriety, should be written in letters of ever-during gold, and appended by angels in the temple of the living God. The sum of their benevolence would be exceeded only by His, who came down from heaven for man's redemption. Then banish it; this is the only way to save your children. As long as you keep ardent spirits in your houses, as long as you drink it yourselves, as long as it is polite and genteel to sip the intoxicating bowl, so long society will remain just what it is now, and so long drunkards will spring from your loins, and so long drunkards will wear your names to future generations. And there is no other way given under heaven, whereby man can be saved from the vice of intemperance, but that of _total abstinence_.

And, if ardent spirits are the parent of all the poverty, and disease, and crime, and madness, that I have named, and if they produce no good, what rational man will use them? If he loves himself, he will not; if he loves his children, he will not; and as Hamilcar brought Hannibal to the altar, at eight years of age, and made him swear eternal hatred to the Romans, so every parent should bring his children to the altar, and make them swear, if I may so speak, eternal hatred to ardent spirits. He should teach them by precept and example. He should instil into his children a hatred of ardent spirits, as much as he does of falsehood and of theft. He should no more suffer his children to drink a little, than he does to lie a little, and to steal a little.

And what other security have you for your children, or for yourselves? Yes, for yourselves. I knew a man who, a few years ago, was as temperate as any of you; was as respectable as any of you, as learned as any of you, and as useful in life as any of you; I have heard him from the sacred desk again and again; but by the same use of ardent spirits that most men justify and advocate, under the mistaken notion that they were beneficial to him, he has at last fallen the victim of intemperance. And this is not a solitary example. I had almost said, it is a common example. I could easily add to the number.

And now, what security have you for yourselves? You have none but in the course I have recommended. If it is necessary for the intemperate man to write on every vessel containing ardent spirits, "Taste not, touch not, handle not," and to brand them as full of the very wrath of God, it is also necessary for the temperate man to do so, to save himself from intemperance.

But the difficulty on this subject is to convince men of their individual danger; that intemperance stands at their own doors, and is knocking for an entrance into their own houses; that they and their children are the victims that he seeks.

But if the places of the present generation of drunkards are to be supplied, whence will the victims come but from your own children? And who knows but that the infant the mother is now dandling upon her knee, and pressing to her bosom, however lovely he may appear, however respectable and elevated she is, will be selected to be one of that degraded, and squalid, and filthy class that, in her old age, will walk the streets as houseless, hopeless, and abandoned drunkards? You have no security, no assurance.