TWO LECTURES
ON
INTEMPERANCE.
I.- THE EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE ON THE POOR
AND IGNORANT.
II.- THE EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE ON THE RICH
AND EDUCATED.
BY HORACE MANN,
THE FIRST SECRETARY OF TIlE MASSACHUSETTS BOARD OF
EDUCATION.
SYRACUSE:
HALL, MILLS. AND COMPANY.
BOSTON: W. J. REYNOLDS & CO.
1852.




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by
HORACE MAANN,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
STEREOTYPED AT THE
BOSTON STEREOTYPE          FOUNDRY.
GEO. C, R.AND, PRINTER, CORNHILL.




PUBLISHERS' NOTICE.
THE First of the following Lectures was published several
years ago, and has long been out of print. The Second was
delivered last winter, in Metropolitan Hall in the city of New
York, at Syracuse, Rochester, and elsewhere in the state, during the excited struggle in the legislature for and against the
"Maine Law," so called. The effort to pass the Maine Law
will doubtless be renewed at the ensuing session of the
New York legislature, and the friends of Temperance have
thought that the publication of these Lectures may serve to
promote so beneficent and world-renovating an object.
SYRACUSE, N. Y., September, 1852.








LECTURE I.
THE EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE ON THE
POOR AND IGNORANT.
IN that most impressive passage of all the
Savior's teachings, contained in the twentyfifth chapter of Matthew, he presents a test
of human virtues and vices, and establishes a
condition of reward and punishment. He prefigures himself as descending from heaven, and
as sitting upon a throne of glory. Holy angels
are attendant upon him. Past ages give up
their countless dead, now summoned into his
presence. You and I, too, my hearers, must be
there, - not as idle observers of a wondrous
spectacle, but as parties having an infinite interest in the glories or the catastrophes of the
scene. Suddenly a voice commands, and the
mighty multitude is separated to the right
hand and to the left. Above the former are
golden portals, opening into realms of bliss.
Around the latter, clouds and the blackness




6       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
of darkness premonish an unspeakable doom.
And whether any one may deem this detail of
circumstances to be literal or allegorical, the
mighty moral is the same.
And what is the criterion on which the Savior makes this infinite difference in results to
depend? Is it that of birth, or affluence, or
worldly celebrity, or temporal power?  Are
the high-born, the opulent, the founders of
political or intellectual dynasties, the disciples
of this or that party or school, conquerors,
priests, and prelates, - are these alone found on
the right hand; while the poor and the ignorant,
the outlawed serf and slave, are ranged upon
the left? Is the one party composed of conformists, and the other of non-conformists, to
some government standard of truth or faith?
No! The sacred record contains no intimation
like this. Every thing is made to depend upon
good deeds originating in good motives; or
upon a bad life emanating from a selfish heart.
The instances put are such as every child can
understand.  The Hottentots in their kraal
may know them, as well as philosophers in their
lecture room. Did you feed the hungry; did
you give to the thirsty the waters of health,
and not the waters of destruction; did you
clothe the naked; did you visit the sick; did




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.      7
you seek out the prisoner in the solitude of his
confinement, to comfort him if innocent, to
reform him if guilty? Ah! in the delineation
of that august scene, attended by cherubim and
seraphim, no topics of vexed philosophy, or of
polemical theology, are introduced; but these
few and simple questions, level to the capacity
of a child, are made the tests of character. In
all the cases enumerated, the poor, the homeless,
and even the offending, are introduced as the
objects of virtuous benevolence or of criminal
neglect.
I do not, however, suppose this enumeration
to be exclusive, but only illustrative. It gives
the most beautiful examples of the virtues,
though it does not complete their circle; and
we learn the importance of the duties referred
to, from their being selected as specimens. An
equitable interpretation or construction would
doubtless include all kindred duties, and condemn all kindred vices. Emphatically would
it include whatever directly or indirectly tends
to increase or to diminish the evils of poverty, homelessness, and crime.  I think, therefore, that we have the most direct and positive authority of the Savior for saying, that
when we are engaged in staying the ravages of
Intemperance, we are, in a high and peculiar




8        EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
sense, doing a work commended and commanded by him. I believe this, because, among
all the gigantic vices and calamities that have
ever scourged mankind, this vice of intemperance is super-gigantic and calamitous.
Among the remarkable features in the account to which I have referred, the most remarkable of them all is Christ's identification
of himself with the sufferer, in each case he
particularizes. He feels so deep a personal
interest in all their sorrows and their privations,
as to declare himself to have been the victim.
It was I, he says, who was an hungered; it
was I who was thirsty; it was I who was a
stranger; it was I who was naked; it was I
who was sick; it was I who was in prison.
When you were feasting upon the richest
viands, and quaffing the costliest beverages
from the wine cup, I was famishing of hunger
and of thirst, in the neighboring street or in the
neighboring hdvel, within the sound of your
revelries. When you barred your doors against
me, with all your suites of richly-furnished
apartments vacant, I had not where to lay
my head. When your wardrobes were filled
with superfluous apparel, when you profusely
squandered the means and appliances of health
and ease, I was naked and sick, and laid me




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.       9
down, in friendlessness and solitude, to die.
When misfortune and imprisonment befell me,
you roamed the world in freedom, but brought
no ransom for my body, nor consolation for my
spirit. Surely, in all the other records of mankind, whether real or romantic, there is no
pathos like this. Religion has had its martyrs;
nations their self-immolating patriots; maternal
affection has bled out its heart for its offspring;
even private friendship has sometimes sacrificed
itself for an earthly friend; but where else can
be found this union, this oneness, this identification of feeling, with all the distressed and the
sorrowing, of all countries and of all centuries,
of all the regions of the earth, and of all the
generations of men? I say, then, that in chaining down the fiend of intemperance, that he
may no longer spread devastation over the
earth, we are not only doing a work commanded by the Savior, but, according to that beautiful identification, by which he puts himself in
the place of the sufferer, we are doing it for him
and to him. To the eye of the Christian,
Christ is personally present with all the lost
children of the earth; and his true disciples
have closer and more intimate communion
with him, when they succor the poor, the
friendless, the degraded, and the criminal, than




10       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
when they minister in his temple, or sit around
his altar. In checking any form of suffering or
of wrong, they pour ointment more precious
than that of Mary upon his head,-ointment,
whose perfume fills, not only the house, but the
heavens.
My object, on the present occasion, is to show
the relations of intemperance to the poor and
the ignorant, and to those who fall into crime,
through the temptations of poverty and ignorance.
I know it may be said that, in my public
addresses, I should restrict myself to the subject
of education, or at least to topics allied and
kindred to it.* It may be averred that, however
deeply I may sympathize with those great
reformatory movements which characterize our
age, I am bound not to awaken jealousies, or
inflame hostility, by any direct or indirect interference in behalf of any one of them; but, by a
development of the intellect, by a training of
the conscience and the formation of exemplary
habits, to aim at more broad and general results in establishing the great principles on
which they all depend. I acknowledge, to no
inconsiderable extent, the justness of this view.
* This Lecture was delivered while its author was Secretary
of the Massachusetts Board of Education.




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.      11
But while I admit its applicability to many, if
not most of the benevolent enterprises of the
age, there are powerful reasons which seem to
me to make the subject of temperance an exception to the rule. In the march of universal
improvement, education must lead the van;
but, in certain passages of this march, temperance must be the pioneer of education. On
human beings as nature leaves them, education can do a transforming work; but, on
human beings as intemperance leaves them,
education falls as fruitless as water upon flint.
Before education can prosper, there must be a
desire of improvement and of knowledge; the
intemperate man hates both, and stifles the love
of them in his children. Before education can
prevail, the natural appetites of hunger and
thirst must be satisfied; the intemperate man,
who has no resource but his labor, experiments
upon his children to find the minimum of possible subsistence.  No child can learn while
half naked and shivering with the cold; the
intemperate man not only burns his own vitals,
but takes the raiment of wife and children to
kindle and to feed the flame. The acquisition
of knowledge requires books and apparatus;
the intemperate man wears deeper and deeper
his crooked path to the dram shop, but he can




12      EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
never find his way to the book store. Education demands and supposes school time; the
intemperate man, whenever he can find an infamous purchaser, sells his children to labor,
through all their years of nonage, and converts
their immortal capacities of usefulness and enjoyment into part and parcel of the wheel-work
of a mill. Intemperance is a upas tree planted
in the field of education; and before education
can flourish, this tree must be cut down. Were
all the inhabitants of a village to become intemperate, a schoolhouse would remove from it,
of itself.
To the Poor, —the destitute, the ill clothed,
and the half sheltered, — to those, also, who
have never enjoyed the blessings of a good education themselves, and who are sending their
own children into the world, with no lamp of
knowledge to guide their feet, -to those whose
lot is so much more severe than the general lot
of mankind, -to them, with a heart full of
regard, and with the deepest sympathy for
their fortunes, I wish to address a few considerations.
I do not speak here so much of mere almshouse paupers as of those who are one step
removed from this degree of destitution. The
boundary lines which include the class I refer




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.     13
to may be drawn with sufficient distinctness.
If we exclude all those who have added actual
guilt to their misfortunes, and who are therefore expiating their offences in the gloom and
solitude of a prison; if we exclude, also, all
those who, having consumed their own resources, have at length cast themselves upon
public charity, there will still remain a large
class who are out of the receptacles of poverty and crime, on the one hand, and, on the
other, are below the line of comfort and competence, and so are pinched and straitened in
all their circumstances, and thwarted in all
their plans for improvement; a class whose
shoulders are always loaded with a burden
which it is galling to bear.
These lines of demarcation embrace a wide
and populous region. Its inhabitants suffer
in their health through an insufficiency of
wholesome and nutritious food.  They suffer
in their persons, because they cannot get ready
for the seasons as they revolve. They suffer
in their feelings, because they are hourly conscious of not being treated with the respect
which they see accorded to others, who are
not better, but only more fortunate, than themselves.  They suffer in their minds because
they are ignorant, or, what is worse than igno



14       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
rance, they are a little instructed only upon
one side of all the great questions of life, and
because they cannot command the common
means of intelligence.  They suffer in their
manners and habits, because through the pressure of outward circumstances they have become less observant of the common decencies
and proprieties of life, and because they are
debarred from associating with persons of elevated and refined feelings. They suffer often
and most unjustly in the estimation of others,
because they are obliged to do a thousand
things, and to omit a thousand things, which
can only be justified by the necessities of their
condition, and these necessities they cannot
explain. They all suffer in the noblest capacities of their nature,-in their moral and religious sentiments, -because they have fewer
restraints from vice, and fewer incentives to
virtue, than other men. This class is entirely
surrounded, its whole mass is penetrated, by
these adverse influences. Whatever the laws
of the land may declare, whatever the profounder and juster laws of nature may ordain,
the members of this class feel that they do not
stand upon the same platform as other men.
This truth is thundered in their ears, and it
flashes, vivid as lightning, before their eyes,
wherever they are, and wherever they go.




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.      15
By far the greater portion of all this endurance and privation I believe to be unnecessary and avoidable. The poor suffer hardships
which are not of nature's appointment. They
bear privations which I cannot believe to be
permanently involved in the system of divine
Providence. They are out of their place in
the social system; fallen from that sphere of
dignity and happiness which Heaven has prepared them to occupy, and in which they may
yet be reinstated.
Observe, for a moment, the scene of things
in which we are placed. Mark the infinite
profusion which is spread out around us, and
the supremacy of man's intellect, which can
make it all subservient to his welfare. See the
myriads of beings, whose existence has been
given them for his raiment and sustenance.
The beasts of the forest yield him their furs;
the birds of the land and of the sea, their
genial covering; the flocks, their fleece; the
cotton plant, its cold-resisting filaments; the
worm, its beautiful silk. All these productions
are converted by machinery, with comparatively little of human labor, into garments and
coverings for his protection. Look at these,
and then say whether this is a world in which
human nerves should be shrinking, and human




16       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
beings actually perishing with cold. Has not
enough been provided for all, -not only for
those whose abounding health makes labor a
sport, but for infancy, before its capacities of
industry are developed, and for age, after its
ability to labor has been exhausted?
Look, again, at the abundance which has
been provided for the food of man. The rivers
and the great oceans swarm with life that has
been created for him; the hills and the valleys
fatten their thousand herds; the luxuriant soil,
absorbing the rain and the sunshine, gives back
its harvests in generous requital; gardens and
orchards observe the calendar of the year, and
supply its changing seasons with their timely
varieties; tropical climes send out the redundancy of their delicious fruits; and into so
small a neighborhood has the world been
brought by the facilities of intercourse, that
if any one spot is visited with barrenness, its
wants may be.supplied from the superfluities
of others. Look at this profusion, and then
say whether this is a world where hunger
should ever rack the body with pain, or incite
the mind to crime.
Look, once more, at the fountains of instruction which are open, and whose waters
may be easily made to overflow the land. In




ON TIHE POOR AND IGNORANT.     17
New England, every child is born close by a
schoolhouse.  In this nursery for the mind,
such an education is gratuitously given as
will enable him, in after-life, to extend his
knowledge as much as he pleases. Books are
cheap and abundant; lyceums do or may exist
in every village; churches, for public moral
and religious instruction, are within the sound
of each other's bells. Consider these, and then
say whether this is a land where a single native-born citizen should ever be ignorant of
the glorious history of his own country, untaught in the sources and reasons of moral
obligation, devoid of a knowledge of his relation to his Maker and his duties to his fellowmen, or a stranger to that in which he must
eternally possess the deepest interest, - to his
own spiritual nature, its powers of good and
of evil, and its capacities of happiness and of
misery.
Yet, in the midst of all this munificence and
prodigality of Heaven, a degree of want and
suffering abounds.  Thousands and tens of
thousands, who in point of property are above
the grade of poorhouse inmates, still sit down
to too frugal a meal; cannot clothe themselves
according to the exigencies of the season or
the demands of decency; feel unable to incur,,




18       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
the expense of instructive books or newspapers; are sorely tempted to keep their children
from the day school, for the value of their
labor, and from the sabbath school, on account
of their dress; and are, in some way, or in all
ways, forbidden to indulge their desires for innocent recreation or for laudable self-advancement. Nor are such persons scattered here and
there with such wide intervals between, that
their unwonted fate excites wonder and astonishment. More or less, they are all around us
and in the midst of us. But would society remove the causes of impoverishment, which it
has hitherto so diligently encouraged, the number of this class would be almost indefinitely
diminished, and it would be no burden to give
a comfortable support to all the remainder. I
admit that, if compared with any other country in the world, these cases are comparatively
few; but I am comparing our condition with
a desirable and an attainable standard.
If we are to understand Christ as saying
that we shall always have a class of poor on
earth, I believe he referred only to a few extraordinary cases of poverty, - to such as may
originate from imbecility of mind, from deformity or malconformation of body at birth,
from disabling accident, or from some analo



ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.     19
gous cause. Neither from the terms of the
declaration, nor from its context, can I suppose
that it requires for its fulfilment either the
immense pauper roll of Ireland, or the far less
numerous tenants of American almshouses.
Almost all these are supernumerary victims;
they are proofs of an unnecessary failure in
the working of the social machine; they are
gratuitous offerings of society to sorrow and
shame.
Should any one, in his astonishment, inquire,
What fell agents of destruction, what host of
strong fiends, let loose upon the earth and suffered to torment it for a season, had been equal
to all this havoc of human welfare, had vanquished the beneficent energies of nature, and
checked the current of Heaven's bounties where
it flowed broadest and deepest over the earth,
let him not seek the mighty cause in any vast
apparatus of means, organized and operated
by supernatural and infernal agencies. The
process by which this immense evil is wrought
out is as simple as it is fatal and terrible.
With the encouragement of society, and under
the sanctions of law, some of the most salutary and nutritious products of nature, -the
elements of vigorous health and of long life,are changed by the action of fire into a poison,




20       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
compared with which the sting of the adder
and the venom of the asp are harmless. It
is true that, as this poison first flows from the
caldron of the distiller, and is transported by
sea or overland to the place where it is to be
consumed, and is itself to consume not only
the consumer, but all around him, its fatal
energy is undeveloped. It is as inoffensive as
gunpowder before it is touched by a spark, or
as the fire-damp of the miner ere the contact
of flame buries all around it in undistinguishable ruin. It then holds disease, and shame,
and death, and guilt in a powerfully-concentrated but latent form, and quietly awaits the
moment when, being received into the human
organism, it shall set the blood on fire, and infuriate the soul.
These woes of intemperance concentrate and
expend themselves in a peculiar manner upon
the poor. Vastly different would be the condition of this class of our fellow-beings, if the
attributes of evil which belong to the distiller's work should display themselves equally, at
all times and under all circumstances; if the
effects of its malignant energy were fairly divided and apportioned amongst all the capitalists, and laborers, and carriers, and venders who
are employed in its preparation and distribu



ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.     21
bution, until its whole resources of woe were
by slow degrees exhausted. Suppose, in the
morning of life, the health of one distiller to
be suddenly wasted away, and the strong reason of another to totter and sink, and the
bosom of a third to be invaded by fierce and
gloomy passions, until he thirsted for a brother's or a father's blood; suppose one importer
of ardent spirits invariably to lose three fourths
of the vessels which he employed in the traffic
by their foundering at sea, and another to go
home, from counting up the gains of a prosperous voyage, to witness the decline of a
lovely wife or a beautiful daughter, dying of
secret shame, and a third to be stricken down
on his own threshold by a son who, in his childhood, had promised to be the pride and support
of his declining years; suppose the retailer,
when at night he retires to his chamber for
rest, should see the image and hear the echo
of the thousand-shaped and thousand-voiced
misery which his " BUSINESS  during the day
had sent round the wide circle of desolation
of which he is the centre; -suppose, I say, the
retributions for this manufacture and traffic
were to fall thus equally and diffusively upon
all who are engaged in them, we should then
have far less reason to commiserate and succor




22       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
the poor, upon whose heads is now poured out
so large a portion of the weight and fury of
the tempest.
Four fifths of all the sufferings endured by
the poor are caused, directly or indirectly, by
the use of ardent spirits. Such sufferings never
come in the course of nature, nor are they any
necessary part of the dispensations of Providence. It is true that, in the natural order of
events, devastation does sometimes impress
deep memorials of its power upon the face of
the earth. In tropical climates, an earthquake,
in a single hour, has reduced a populous city
to a ruin, and converted the theatre of busy life
into a stagnant pool. This, however, even in
tropical regions, has occurred but a few times
since the earliest periods of the world's history.
Occasionally, too, a storm will overcome a ship
at sea, and hide it forever beneath the waves,
or surprise one upon a lee shore, and dash it
in pieces like glass. But such a loss may be
repaired by the labor of a few men for a few
months. A hurricane sometimes sweeps along
a narrow strip of country, and prostrates every
thing in its path; yet another spring will obliterate, with its returning verdure, all traces of
the desolation. Sometimes, too, a noble spirit,
attuned to the finest sensibilities, and formed




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.     23
for greatness and for universal love, occupies
such a position in the social system, that some
fierce moral shock crushes his intellect at once,
and, instead of the beaming eye and the eloquent tongue of genius, there are left only the
mindless gaze and the senseless mopings of
idiocy. But probably this does not happen to
more than one individual in fifty thousand of
our race. And even when human life does
perish in the throes and paroxysms of nature,
the victims are taken away without any change
in their moral condition; they are not tortured
for years, and then disgustingly sacrificed; they
are not debased and corrupted by crime, and
then snatched away from all opportunity of
earthly repentance. Their friends and families
may lament their loss, but not their shame;
tears may fall upon their grave, but they are
not tears of blood; for years of wickedness were
not made the tardy instrument of death. So,
too, it has beenr when the Omnipotent has
dealt personally with obdurate offenders, and
smitten them with his own arm for unrepented
sins. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were
consumed in one day, and the hosts of Sennacherib perished in a single night. Fire was
not rained upon one member of a family, or
upon one individual in a circle of friends, after




24       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
another, while the rest looked on with unavailing sorrow. The angel of death that entered
the Assyrian camp did not torture his victims,
year after year, with the fever and the madness
of the drunkard's thirst, or the remorse of a
drunkard's conscience, before he destroyed
them. No! It is the accursed fiend of alcohol
alone, that spares to torment; that postpones
the day of death, to fill with wretchedness the
interval of life; that commands the debasement
of the worshipper as preliminary to the worship;
and dooms its victims to live to all purposes of
disgrace and suffering, after they are dead to
all of usefulness and honor. Intemperance is
the only curse ever known upon earth, which,
at one and the same time, assails a man in all
his interests, in all his endearing ties and relations, in all his capacities of bliss, and all his
susceptibilities of woe. It hews him down on
every side; pursues his body in every step, and
his mind in every thought; and overwhelms all
of present possession and of future hope, in its
remorseless and horrible perdition.
All such misfortunes and discouragements
descend with tenfold severity upon the poor.
The consequences of intemperance, even upon
men of princely fortunes, need no coloring to
make a human heart shudder. Yet, so far as




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.     25
property is concerned, the wealthy can afford
to be brutes; but to obtain prosperity and comfort, the poor must be men. And why should
any one think this a hard condition? It costs as
much, says Dr. Franklin, to maintain a vice, as
to bring up two children. He spoke, however,
of common vices. The expenses of intemperance would rear a whole family, and give them
respectability and happiness into the bargain.
A poor man is subjected to continual losses
and embarrassments, of which a man in competent circumstances knows nothing. He cannot seize the favorable occasions, nor avail
himself of opportune facilities, like the rest of
mankind. In regard to the performance of
labor and the acquisition of property, there is
as much difference between the poor man and
his well-conditioned neighbor, as between the
artisans and mechanics of a century ago and the
craftsmen of the present day. One must lift all
his weights with.his arms, while the other lifts
them by machinery. The hands of one must
do his work; the other makes wind, water, and
steam perform ninety-nine hundredths of his.
If I could have waited until the end of the year
for my pay, says the day laborer, I could have
had constant employment. If I had possessed
an appropriate set of tools, says the journeyman,




26       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
that profitable job would have been mine.
If my credit had been so good that I could have
hire4 men, or purchased teams and wagons, I
should have commanded such a lucrative contract. Had I owned stock for such a piece of
work, I should have been employed to make it.
And so it is through the whole catalogue of
opportunities. If a man without means endeavors to carry on any considerable work, he
is obliged to mortgage himself to so many men,
that it is scarcely possible for him to escape
foreclosure. There is, indeed, such a variety of
causes and circumstances that maim and cripple a poor man, that the fact of his being poor
is, in this country, the best possible excuse for
his remaining so. The Hebrew sage utters
no more pithy proverb than when he says, the
destruction of the poor is their poverty. A
tippler pays a barber six or seven dollars a
year, in fourpences, because the retailer never
allows him to get a dollar ahead to buy a razor.
Bodily health, a clear, quick mind, and that
good reputation which is universally won by an
exemplary life, are the poor man's stock in
trade. This stock he is bound to keep sacred
by every motive of interest and of duty; how
is it that he ever feels at liberty to squander
away this, his only capital?  The strength




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.     27
requisite for daily labor is the natural income
or interest of this capital, and this income may
be regularly received for thirty or for forty years
without diminution.  But intemperance not
only stops the interest; it also dissipates the
principal. The mere price of the drams amounts
to an incredibly large sum; but it is the drinking of them, after all, that causes the destruction. Were a man, instead of paying away his
money for rum, to fling the price of four or six
drams every day to the bottom of the sea, he
might still prosper; but when, in addition to
throwing away his money, he throws away his
time and his strength, his skill and his judgment, his good habits and his good name, he
becomes poor indeed. Then, if sickness or accident befalls him; if a change in fashions, or
an improvement in machinery, throws him out
of employment, what resource has he but to
cast himself upon public charity, or to barter
all personal independence for ignominious
bread? On the other hand, it is consoling to
know that good habits, and the health which
usually accompanies them, are more than a
match for any adverse fortunes that come in
the common course of nature. In the end they
tire out what is called bad luck, and are sure
to come off victorious.




28       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
Entire abstinence from all intoxicating drinks,
as a beverage, would, with its attendant blessings, in the course of a single generation, carry
comfort, competence and respectability, with
but very few exceptions, into all the dwellings
in the land. This is not a matter of probability and conjecture. It depends upon principles
as certain and fixed in their operation as those
which regulate the rising of the sun or the revolution of the seasons. We may calculate upon
such a result with certainty, if there be any
fidelity in the laws of nature. Let the poor
man look around upon his more fortunate
neighbors who began life in the same circumstances as himself; and let him candidly seek
the true cause for the present difference between them. He will find an answer in the
fact, either that they have enjoyed a better
character than himself for intelligence, industry,
and trustworthiness, or that they have had
sober relations,. from whom they received patronage, assistance, or property. And so, in almost all cases, would comfort and competence
have been his fortune, had not every stream of
prosperity, as it flowed towards him, been dried
up by the distiller's fire.
Again I say, let each individual of this class
of unfortunate persons, so many of whom are




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.     29
suffering, not from any fault or vice of their
own, but from the faults or vices of others with
whom they have been connected, ask himself
why it is that he is not able to command the
ordinary comforts of life; why it is that he has
not a little property laid up beforehand as a resource in sickness or misfortune, or, should he
fortunately escape these, then, to leave to his
children as a letter of introduction to the world;
why he has not the usual means of improving
his own mind, and of giving his children the
inestimable advantages of a good education;
why, in short, he has not a comfortable home
to dwell in, decent apparel for himself and his
family to go abroad in, a farm in fee simple to
cultivate, or some good trade with a complement of tools for carrying it on, books upon his
shelves, a right in some social library, and a
pew in the meeting house. Any true oracle
would give the response in one word, Intemperance, either in himself, or in some one with
whose fortunes his own were linked!
Or, to be more specific; - I believe that
almost every native-born, poor citizen of our
community would discover the cause of his
poverty in a true answer to one or more of
the following questions:Should I ever have inherited any property




30      EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
from any relative, or had it bequeathed to me
by any friend, had it not been lost or squandered
in consequence of the drinking of intoxicating
liquors?
Have I ever lost any debts due me from
intemperate men, who, had they been blessed
with sober habits, would have been able to pay
me all, besides having a competency left for
themselves?
Have I ever been bound or become surety
for other men, who became unable to pay their
debts in consequence of drinking, and who,
therefore, left those debts for me to pay?
What amount of taxes have I had to pay for
the support of intemperate paupers and their
families in poorhouses; or for the prosecution
of drunken offenders in courts of justice, and
for their maintenance in jails and prisons?
What would be the amount of all the money
I have expended for intoxicating drinks, had it
been saved and kept at interest until the present
time?
Have I ever injured my health by drinking,
so as to lose time, or to lessen the value of my
labor, or to incur the expenses of sickness; and
what would be the amount of all such losses,
with interest, up to the present time?
Has drinking rendered me less competent to




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.     31
manage my business, less judicious in my contracts, less skilful in my trade, less able to earn
the highest wages, or to offer the best manufactures or products in the market; or have
others, who would have employed me or purchased from me, ever acted upon such a belief?
Have I ever, in consequence of drinking, met
with any accident in my person or property,
which otherwise would not have befallen me;
or have I ever, from the same cause, been seduced into gaming, or buying lottery tickets, or
tricked into any other foolish bargains?
Have I ever, when in a state of excitement
from the same cause, been provoked into a
quarrel, or assailed an individual in his person,
property, or reputation, for which I have afterwards been compelled to make reparation in
damages?
Have I ever lost an agency, or forfeited my
chance for a profitable trust, in consequence of
habitual or occasional indulgence in liquor?
Have I ever spent time at the dram-shop or
tavern, which, had it been devoted to reading
and the cultivation of my mind, would have
stored it with useful information respecting
men and things; would have made my reflections happier when engaged in my ordinary
employment, and would have secured more




32      EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
respect and deference for my opinions among
neighbors and townsmen? Or, had I devoted
the time spent at the dram-shop to teaching my
children or encouraging them in their studies,
should I not have made them happier and better, and greatly increased their chances of prosperity in life?
In consequence of my appetite for liquor,
have I never been regardless of my language, my
manners, and my appearance, so as to produce
an aversion from mingling in the society of
respectable and pure-minded men, or so as to
repel such men from seeking association with
me; and thus, have I not lost the standing in
society which I once held, or been kept back
from that which I might otherwise have obtained; and have not my wife and children suffered, in the same way, from my misconduct?
Have I never, in consequence of rashness or
passion, occasioned by indulgence in drinking,
quarrelled with a friend and lost him, from
whose aid and influence in society I might
otherwise have derived assistance, employment,
and repute?
In consequence of habitual excitement from
drink, or the cravings and gnawings of an
appetite for it, has not my former control over
my temper been lost, my affection for my wife




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.    33
and family alienated or deadened; and have
not jealousy, discord and heart-burnings often
entered my dwelling, which should have been,
and which otherwise would have been, the
abode and sanctuary of happiness and peace?
And finally, has the intemperance of my parents or my children, of my husband or my wife,
of my brothers or my sisters, ever stripped me
of my property, or debarred me from accumulating more, or checked my advancement in
the world, or so imbittered all the joys of life
that I have been sunk in discouragement or
driven to despair, and have sought relief from
the anguish of contemplating their ruin by
madly braving the same perdition myself?
Now, I appeal confidently to every sensible
man's observation, whether these questions do
not indicate the true causes of ninety-nine
hundredths of all the poverty and the wretchedness known in our land. How many men, commencing life under the auspices of sober habits,
have married, and become the happy fathers
of happy children; and, for years, have added
something every day to the stock of their
knowledge, the amount of their property, and
the respectability of their good name; when, in
the midst of their prosperity, they have become
the prey of the spoiler? Suddenly, the process
3




34      EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
of decomposition begins in all places at once.
Bills of sale dispose of their goods. Mortgages
and executions seize upon their houses and
lands. Health, judgment, reputation, languish
for a little while, and die. Their daughters are
driven out to service, where their virtues are exposed to contamination, - having no longer the
counsels of a mother, who has gone brokenhearted to the grave. Like untimely fruit
shaken from the tree, their sons are sent abroad
with only a stinted education, and before their
principles are formed and confirmed; and, instead of carrying with them an elevation of
moral character and sentiment derived from a
father's instruction and example, they go with
the disheartening consciousness that they bear
a dishonored name. And when they arrive at
years of manhood, what can be more natural
than that some of them, who have been subjected to the most adverse influences, and who
are infinitely.more to be pitied than blamed,
should contemn the knowledge they do not
possess, should deride the civility of manners
they have never been taught to cultivate, and,
having no rational gratification in books or in
intelligent society, should seek the excitements
of the gaming-house and the dram-shop, and
should look, through life, with malign regard




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.      35
upon those civilizing and refining institutions
whose necessary effect is to render their inferiority more conspicuous?
This subject is so immensely important that I
wish to consider it in the intimate relation which
it bears to one of the most important business
departments in the community. Directly or
indirectly, the grocer or retail dealer supplies
the means of intemperance to the great majority of intemperate men. I believe the general
opinion has been, and, to some extent, still is,
that intemperate men are the grocer's or retailer's most profitable customers. Certainly, in all
the efforts which have been made for a reform,
whether by means of legal restraint or moral
suasion, the grocers and retailers, as a class,
have arrayed themselves among its opponents.
Now, I believe it to be perfectly demonstrable,
that they are losers instead of gainers by the
traffic they carry.on and defend. I believe the
profits of their business will be greater, just in
proportion as the community becomes more
sober. I therefore propose to devote the residue
of this Lecture to a consideration of the relation which they bear to the cause of temperance; for, by their cooperation, the number of
the poor can be rapidly reduced, while, at the




36       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
same time, this great blessing will redound
more and more to their own pecuniary benefit.
It is obvious that the grocer or retail dealer occupies a very important station in society. The
services of other citizens, - of the mason or the
housewright, the blacksmith or the whitesmith,
the physician or the lawyer, -we seldom need;
but we can scarcely have a comfortable meal,
unless the grocer furnishes some of its materials.
Nor is it for thanksgivings, weddings, or holidays alone, that we ask his permission for our
customary enjoyments. Rarely does any respectable family spread a table, morning, noon,
or night, which is not supplied with some of
the articles of his merchandise. The storerooms of thriving housekeepers abound in commodities purchased of him; and if the circumstances of any family are so improved that
they begin to live more generously and hospitably than before, the grocer knows it sooner
than the guest.
The grocer stations himself in the midst of
the populous village, or in some conspicuous
place on the city streets, and there, by his display of the rich productions of every quarter
of the globe, he tempts every man to become a
purchaser. While the watchmaker and jeweller
expect profits from those only who can wear




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.     37
watches and jewels, the chaise and carriagemaker only from those who keep up such expensive establishments, and the bookseller only
from persons of some literary or scientific taste,
the grocer expects profits from every body, because every body eats.
But as the articles consumed by different families differ greatly both in quantity and quality,
it is obvious there must be a great difference
in the profits which the grocer derives from
their custom. One man buys a bag of excellent
coffee; another, a few pounds of burnt rye or
peas. One buys loaves of double refined sugar;
another uses molasses, or, perhaps, indulges
occasionally in a little well-sanded Havana.
But no prudent man, no true son of New
England, ever purchases beyond his ability to
pay; and though an improvident man may
discard this standard, the seller always has, or
certainly always should have, especial reference
to it. The natural restriction is on the side of
the customer.  Every grocer could sell ten
times as much as he now sells; but, unfortunately for him, his customers have not the
ability to buy.
The amount of the grocer's profits, then, depending, not upon his ability to sell, but upon
the ability of his customers to buy, it would be




38       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
no proof of his being either a miser or a Jew, if
he should anxiously inquire, upon what this ability to buy depends.
In a climate and soil like those of New England, and, indeed, the greater part of the Northern States, where there are neither mineral
productions to be dug from the bosom of the
earth, nor spontaneous harvests to be reaped
from its surface, there are, so far as human
agency is concerned, only three primary original
sources of wealth.
1. Health, strength, skill, and intelligence.
2. Industry and perseverance in the application of them.
3. Frugality, economy, and sound judgment, in preserving, investing, and managing
whatever may have been acquired.
The possession of the above-named qualities
enables a man to buy, because they invariably
supply him with the means of buying. Is it
not too clear for argument, that a hundred
healthy, strong, industrious men, with the
steady eye, the true hand, and the intelligent
mind, will earn more, and therefore be able to
expend more, than an equal number of rumstricken wretches, with trembling hands, tottering limbs, and besotted intellects?
Whatever, then, wastes health, consumes




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.      39
strength, destroys skill, or substitutes indolent
for industrious habits, must necessarily diminish the wealth of the community; and therefore, just as necessarily, subtract from the
amount of the grocer's business.
The grocer stands between the producer and
the consumer. He is the agent through whose
hands exchanges are made of what others have
earned. He creates nothing. He adds no intrinsic value to his commodities. He does not
turn steel into watch-springs, nor mulberry
leaves into silk. He cannot work more hours
to make up for a bad day's business. When
he has received all that his customers are
able to pay, his day's labor is ended, whether
the sun has gone down or not. But let others earn more and he receives more, as the
river rises when its fountains are more copiously fed.
Though the patronage and profits of all
traders depend upon the prosperous or adverse
circumstances, the advancing or receding condition, of the community, yet the grocer's thermometer feels the expansion of prosperity or
the contraction of adversity earliest and most
sensibly. Look at the relation in which he
stands to the poorest families amongst us who
are out of the poorhouses. Whenever, by




40       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
good fortune or extra exertion, they get a few
shillings, before they go to the carpenter or the
mason to get a hovel built or repaired, before
they go to the cabinet-maker to procure any
article of furniture, before they go to the drygoods dealer to obtain any materials for clothing, before they pay any rent, or a tax, or the
doctor's bill, or a debt of any kind, they go to the
grocer to purchase sugar, coffee, tea, molasses,
rice, flour, butter, cheese, or articles of a similar
kind, if they are temperate; but rum, if they are
not. In either case, the grocer knows, better
than any other man, what their first acquisitions
amount to. And the articles in which the
dealing commences generally determines the
future character of that dealing. It determines,
also, whether they shall ever contribute any
thing to encourage and uphold the other classes
of traders, or the mechanics, or those who are
engaged in any other of the various vocations
of mankind. If the substantial aliments of
life are called for and supplied, the condition
of the family is, for a longer or a shorter period,
improved. Having tasted new gratifications,
they are encouraged to new exertions; and, in
this country, with but few exceptions, nothing
but proper exertion is required to raise men
from poverty, and to surround them at least




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.     41
with all the less expensive comforts of life. A
desire to obtain further supplies, I say, is excited.
Occasional exertion is matured into a habit of
industry. In the mean time, skill is improved.
More and better work is done, and in shorter
periods. Poverty begins to cast off its old skin.
They rise through the gradations <f labor, from
that which is less, to that which is more lucrative. The mind sympathizes with the body, and
takes an upward spring. Thus the very germ of
improvement is quickened. The secret source
of human happiness is touched; for such is the
nature with which divine Providence has endued the race of men, that their greatest good,
their highest happiness, depends not so much
upon their exemption from positive ill, nor
the magnitude of their desirable possessions,
nor the lustre of their talents or their wisdom,
as it does upon their constant improvement and
progression from day to day, -their conscious
ascension to a.better and a higher state of
being. To occupy one point in the scale of
being, however elevated, if one must be always stationary there, is far less conducive to
human happiness, than to be constantly moving upwards, though along a low point in the
scale.
But, on the other hand, if the poor man calls




42       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
for and receives ardent spirits, the stimulus of
the day becomes the torpidity of the week.
Exertion fails. The desire to improve his own
condition and that of his family, the desire to
educate his children, -in fine, all generous and
laudable desires, are swallowed up in the desire
to drink. He abandons the hope of rising to
an equality with his more fortunate neighbors.
He and his family remain fixed and stationary,
at the point of bare subsistence. Who ever knew
a laboring man, who, after having earned a
little property, and then becoming intemperate,
did not grow poorer and poorer, until all was
gone? Who ever saw the table spread in the
house of such a one, without witnessing, first
the irregular appearance, and then the regular
absence, of most of those articles of daily sustenance which the grocer furnishes? It is true that
some dealer in intoxicating drinks now gets all
which chance or fortune puts into his customer's hands. But the whole is far less than a
tithe of the gains of regular industry. Besides,
as the drunkard never pays any thing, or, at
best, but little, to the tailor, shoemaker, hatter,
bookseller, &c., &c., none of these persons are
enabled to purchase any more of the grocer than
if he had never existed. Indeed, they are far
less able, for, by and by, with the grocer's




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.     43
assistance, they have to pay all the victim's
taxes, to provide a school for his children, if
they have any, and to pay for their school
books, and often to support him in jail, and his
family in the poorhouse. Surely the profit account with such a customer must be now at an
end. When the eggs are addled, the prospect
for chickens becomes desperate.
But let me examine more minutely the relation of an intemperate and a temperate customer, as a mere source of gain, to the grocer
who supplies them. Take them from the same
condition of life. Suppose them to have been
possessed, originally, of equal capacities. Let
each be the head of a small family. I make no
reference to them here as moral and accountable agents, but propose to compare them with
each other, as mere instruments of gain. For
the present, I leave the soul out of the account.
Let this being of heavenly workmanship, " so
noble in reason, so infinite in faculties, in form
and moving so express and admirable, in action
so like an angel, in apprehension so like a God,"
-let him for a moment, I say, be regarded as
of no more intrinsic value than if he were
" made, after supper, of a cheese-paring." Hi is
not the swift ascension of his immortal naitrre,
through the bright scale of infinite improvermert;




44       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
that I would now contemplate; but only his
movements backwards or forwards along a
scale graduated simply for the measurement
of dollars, dimes, and cents.
There is one fact which can be proved in a
thousand ways, namely, that as soon as a man
becomes the slave of intemperance, his labors,
considering his intervals of idleness, his diminished skill, the subordinate kinds of employment to which he is put, and the mischiefs,
voluntary and involuntary, which he is perpetually committing, have not more than one third
part the value of those of a temperate man.
There are exceptions to this, I acknowledge;
but I speak of the average of drunkards and
hard drinkers. Taking into view the shortened
period of an intemperate man's life, and the
fact that, if he lives to advanced age, he is-disabled and broken down, I do not believe there
is an intelligent farmer or master mechanic,
of any kind, who would hire such a man, at
the age of twenty, thirty, or forty years, agreeing to take him for the rest of his life, and give
one sixth part so much for all his future services, as he would for those of a temperate
man. Now, pecuniarily considered, the commonwealth stands to these men in the relation of an employer. I will, however, abate




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.      45
but two thirds of the value of his future
labor.
Exclusive of Sundays and holidays, there
are about three hundred working days in the
year.  The temperate man will work three
hundred days, and earn three hundred dollars.
His wife can earn fifty more;- total, three hundred and fifty dollars. The drunkard earns one
third as much, - one hundred dollars. His wife,
driven to greater exertion, besides doing all the
harder work about the house, from which temperate and kind husbands always relieve their
wives, will earn seventy-five dollars; — total,
one hundred and seventy-five dollars.
Temperate man's income,..  $350.00
Expenses of do.:House rent,......... $40.00
Fuel,.........     25.00
Clothing,.........   50.00
Butcher's meat, &c.,......       70.00
Groceries, (no rum,)......       75.00
Horse and chaise hire, for health
or recreation, hospitable entertainment of friends, little extra articles
of dress or furniture, newspapers,
books, charity, &c., for all which
the drunkard expends nothing,. 60.00
$320-00




46       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
Excess of income over expense, or
$30 laid by,........              30.00
$350.00
Drunkard's income,.....    $175.00
Expenses of do.: -
House rent,......... $30.00
Fuel,.......          25.00
Clothing,..........                25.00
Butcher's meat, &c.,...  35.00
Groceries,* (except rum,).....     20.00
Four drams a day, at three cents
each, (or its equivalent in rum
bought by the quart or pint,)..  43.80
$178.80
Excess of expenses over income;
(and singularly fortunate for his
neighbors if this is all,)....  3.80
$175.00
It should be remarked generally, that the
proportion which these items bear, one to another, must vary considerably in different parts
* I suppose that, generally, the groceries of a good housekeeper would amount to one fourth or one fifth of his annual expenses; but a drunkard can afford but few, at any rate; and
when he goes to the store for necessaries, rum is so much more
necessary than butter, cheese, sugar, tea, coffee, flour, rice, &c.,
&c., that, in the competition between them, the latter must
always yield.
It will be observed that I have not taken the lowest class of
cases.




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.      47
of the country; but the above is believed to approximate to an average. In one section, there
may be a departure from exactness in some
items of the above estimate; but it may be
balanced by a different condition of things in
another section. The disposition, too, of the
drunkard will vary the mode of his expenses.
If he be social and companionable, he will be
more of a tavern-haunter, and spend more
money there; but if he be a selfish, solitary sot,
he will hie away with his bottle to some secret
nook or corner, where, in solitude and in darkness, abandoning the companionship and sympathies of men, he will draw closer the bonds
which bind him in alliance with devils.
To all this it may be replied, on the part of
the grocer, that the profit of a small capital invested in ardent spirits is much greater than
that of an equal capital invested in other
things. This is undoubtedly true, and, if the
drunkard's money would only hold out, like that
of the sober man, the answer, to one who regards money &lone, would be complete. But if
the grocer receives one fifth, or about that proportion, of the annual expenditures of a thriving and industrious citizen, each year, then, in
every five years, he will receive from each citizen an amount equal to his whole annual




48       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
expenditure for one year. But supposing for
a moment that profits are equal on the different
articles of traffic, he must receive a hundred
dollars, or any other given sum, from the
drunkard, three times every five years, in order
to derive the same profit from his whole custom
as from that of a temperate man. If the drunkard earns but one third as much as the temperate man, those who deal with him must either
make three times the profit from his custom, or
they must have that custom three times as
often, in order to obtain the same amount in
the same time. To a very great extent, however, the fact of higher profits derived from dealing with the drunkard is counterbalanced by
the correlative fact of bad debts. In the country,
where traders suffer so much less from fluctuations in business, and from the guilt of lotterylike speculation, than they do in cities, almost
all bad debts originate with intemperate men.
With the exception of their rum debts, this
class of men is always very remiss in making
payment, and oftentimes debts cue from them
are not only wholly lost, but money derived
from sober men is taken to pay a lawyer's bill,
a sheriff's bill, and costs of court. More than
four fifths of the insolvent estates settled in the
country probate offices are made insolvent by




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.     49
this energetic cause of impoverishment. Upon
these a small dividend is sometimes received,
and sometimes not. This taking a dividend of
twenty-five per cent. is as though a farmer
should sow a bushel of grain, and, after all his
own labor, should harvest from it only a peck.
But the argument has not yet laid hold of its
strongest supports. If a grocer be made richer
by changing one customer from temperate to
intemperate habits, he would be made a hundred fold richer by thus changing the characters
of a hundred. Give, then, to a grocer a monopoly of the trade of a hundred families, in common circumstances as to property, for twenty
years. In return for this monopoly, however,
let him be bound to remain among them for
twenty years, to share their fortunes, pay taxes
according to his property, &c., &c. Invest him
with some despotic power, or some devilish art,
by which he can transform them all into drunkards in a week.. What will be his condition, I
will not say at the end of twenty, but at the end
of five years? Even before half this time has
elapsed, he will find bad debts multiplying upon
his books. If he applies to an attorney for coercive
assistance, he will have occasion to take receipts
for costs paid much oftener than to give them
for debts collected. His taxes will soon double,
4




50       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
treble, quadruple, although the public school
will not be kept so long, nor the public roads
be so well repaired. His utensils will be borrowed and broken, or never returned. The
chaise or wagon he has lent will be overturned
and damaged, perhaps destroyed. His oxen
and his horses will be lamed, wind-broken, or
maltreated. Assaults, batteries, and riots will
be committed about his premises, and he will
be summoned to court as a witness, and
obliged to leave his business for a week. His
money drawer will be rifled, and he must prosecute the offender. Some of the neighboring
children will become beggars, and extort his
property. Others will turn thieves, and purloin
it. One of his debtors will move away or abscond; one will die from some debauch, or
rum-produced accident; one will break a limb,
and be carried to the poorhouse; one will become insane; one commit suicide; one be
sentenced to imprisonment, leaving his wife and
family upon the town; and another will expiate
his offence upon the gallows! What will be
the real value of the monopoly of such a set of
customers, at the end of twenty years!
But it may be asked, How can all this be
without great profits? How can property, once
in being, be lost by the intemperate without
being gained by the temperate?




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.            51
The drunkard realizes the fable of the Upas
tree. Destruction is all around him. The house
in which he lives descends with a swifter decay. The farm he manages forgets to bear the
life-sustaining harvest, and is luxuriant only in
briers and thorns. Weeds choke out the grass
in his fields.  Insects consume his orchards.
His garden is smitten with barrenness. His
fences fall, and lay open his crops to depredation.  His cattle become like the "lean kine"
of Pharaoh. If he is engaged in trade, his calculations always err. His means prove inadequate to the execution of his plans. He consorts with rogues and sharpers, who defraud
him. He seeks to retrieve his fortunes by gaming or buying lottery tickets, and that is only a
shorter course to inevitable ruin.* If he be a
mechanic, his right hand forgets its cunning.
He frames a house whose parts will not go together. If a tailor, he spoils the cloth he would
cut into garments. His work, of whatever kind
it may be, ceases to be inquired after, and bears
the lowest price in the market. In fine, what* It has been truly said that the number of persons annually
destroyed by lightning is greater than the number of those who
draw any considerable prize in a lottery; so that every man
who buys a lottery ticket may have the comfortable reflection
that, whatever chance he has of drawing a prize, he has a still
greater chance of being killed by lightning.




52       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
ever the occupation of an intemperate man
may be, disaster attends him. His rashness
upsets a stage. His negligence explodes a powder-mill or a steamboat.  His foolhardiness
wrecks a ship. Out of the countless millions
of wealth which are every year cast into this
ocean, a few dollars may fall upon the shallows or near the shore, and be reclaimed; the
rest sinks into unfathomable depths, and is lost
forever.
But now let us suppose the grocer or retail
dealer to commence business in the midst of
only one hundred families of temperate habits,
each of them earning from three hundred to
six hundred dollars annually. Within these
limits, as to income, it is presumed a great majority of the citizens of this state would be
found. The average is four hundred and fifty
dollars each.  Suppose each family to spend
only one fifth part of its income for groceries,
rum always excepted. Each one would then
carry to the grocer ninety dollars a year, or the
whole of them nine thousand dollars. A net
profit of fifteen per cent. on this sum would be
thirteen hundred and fifty dollars. A profit of
ten per cent. would be nine hundred dollars.
With the preservation of temperate habits, all
would gradually advance in wealth, and be




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.     53
able to live better and spend more; —making
use, not only of greater quantities, but of superior qualities of flour, rice, sugar, coffee, tea, &c.,
with some of the fruits of Italy, France, or the
Indies. Each family now becomes tributary
to the grocer's prosperity. The streams all run
to his reservoir, and yet the fountains are not
exhausted, but rise higher and higher. Each
one is able to take a newspaper, to purchase a
few new and valuable books every year; and,
together, they can constantly improve their public schools, and form school district and social
libraries. The fathers can settle their sons
upon a farm, in business, or in a profession, and
give their daughters a dowry in marriage.
Peace abounds. Crimes are unknown. The
aged descend to the grave with honor. The
young rise up, happy in the ability, and more
happy in the desire, faithfully to perform their
part of the great duties of life. At the end of
twenty years, though all would have a competency, and many, what would, in such a place,
be called wealth, yet the gains of the grocer
would probably be equal to those of any other
man. There would be but one house in the
village with failing revenues, and exhibiting
symptoms of desertion and decay,-the village poorhouse.




54       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
In fairness, however, it should be admitted,
that there is one combination of circumstances,
in which the grocer would enhance his profits
by changing the character of his customers.
If he had a hundred sober customers, and knew
that he should live but two years to trade with
them, it must be admitted that he would gain
money faster, could he turn them all at once
into drunkards; but would a man who knew
that he should die at the end of two years do
this?
The grocer sustains incalculable loss in another way.  In every circle of society, there are
constantly rising up a few men, who, from extraordinary enterprise, skill, or talent, soon accumulate large fortunes, and, for the last half
of their lives, make his most profitable customers. When such men become intemperate, their
tendency to descend is as much stronger than
that of other men as was their ability to rise.
Great energy resides in them, and it will propel them rapidly one way or the other. To
create or foster habits of intemperance in such
men is to pursue and exterminate the most active agents of his prosperity. It would be less
improvident in the mechanic to break in pieces
the most ingeniously wrought tools of his craft,
or in the farmer to give his best seed grain to




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.     55
his cattle, or to cut down for fuel the finest
fruit trees in his nursery.
There is also an indirect way in which the
grocer loses custom and profit, which, I apprehend, has been altogether overlooked. Drunkards will pay for rum when they will pay for
nothing else; for the plain reason that they
love rum better than they love any thing else.
Hence other men are more exposed to direct
loss from their inability or disinclination to
fulfil their engagements than the grocer. But
when an insolvent drunkard borrows his neighbor's horse, and kills or disables him; hires his
carriage, and destroys it; gets a friend or relative to indorse a note, and leaves him to pay
it; borrows money, and never returns it; —in
all these cases, those who suffer by him, if they
are themselves prudent and thriving men, will
curtail their own expenses, until they have made
up the loss; and the grocer probably suffers
more from this curtailment than any other man;
because a temporary diminution in the use of
his commodities can be borne without any
change in the outward style of living; and because high-spirited men will always stint themselves in their private indulgences rather than
in those which are open to general observation.
Many of the above remarks have a more




56       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
especial reference to the grocers or retail dealers in the country than to those who belong to
a city, - especially if the city is a port of entry
and a place for the manufacture of alcoholic
drinks.  There are other views which apply
with peculiar force to the residents of cities.
Many city grocers, besides supplying a circle
of customers around their own doors, furnish
country traders with their assortments, and thus
become a kind of wholesale dealers. If one
grocer in the city supplies, in this way, the
commodities sold by ten grocers in the country,
every change in their business will be felt by
him in a tenfold degree. If they extend or contract their business to the amount of a hundred
dollars each, it is an extension or contraction
of a thousand dollars to him. To his profits,
it is the difference between multiplication and
subtraction.
If there be any veracity in experience, one
other fact is certainly true, namely, that almost
all the losses sustained by city merchants and
traders from dealing with country customers,
bear the same relation to intemperance that an
effect does to its cause. If another drop of ardent spirits never crossed the boundary line of
the city to blast the fair fields of the country,
the gold and silver of the country would then




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.      57
come to the city purified from almost all its
dross.
In fine, there result from intemperance a
perpetual havoc and destruction of property
already earned, and also of the natural elements and economical practices from which
property is created. Both in city and in country, health is prostrated, strength paralyzed,
skill deadened, talent extinguished, habits of
industry and perseverance annihilated, the lessons of frugality and economy contemned and
forgotten, and all the noble capacities of man
made to counterwork their natural aptitude to
promote his welfare. Were the use of intoxicating drinks, as a beverage, entirely and forever discontinued, the grocer or retail dealer
would, of course, lose the difference between
the greater profits accruing from their sale, and
the smaller profits accruing from the sale of
other commodities; but, in generous requital
for this loss, he would receive his customary
gains upon the many millions of property,
whose very existence depends upon that discontinuance.
With two brief considerations, I will bring
this Lecture to a close.
The first pertains to the relation which all
the various producing classes in society bear to




58       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
the manufacturer and the vender of intoxicating
drinks. What effect have the importer and
seller of alcoholic liquors upon the dry goods
dealer, the baker, the butcher, the tailor, the
hatter, the shoemaker, the mason, the house
builder, the cabinet maker, the upholsterer, the
gardener, fruiterer, and farmer, in all their various productions; the bookseller, the newspaper
editor, and even upon the watchmaker, the jeweller, the sculptor, painter, or other workmen in
the fine or ornamental arts? Is not the business of the former a perpetual blight upon that
of all the latter,- worse than excises or monopolies, than taxes or imposts? The vintage,
cultivated by the dealer in intoxicating drinks,
sucks all the fertility out of the earth, and absorbs all the nourishment out of the atmosphere, for miles around him. At the liquor
dealer's approach, nature withers, man mourns,
society sickens, civilization countermarches.
All men engaged in all other kinds of business
whatever, have a common interest to unite in
abolishing this kind.  They should marshal
themselves against it as against a common
foe, - as against one whose overthrow is their
success, whose destruction is their prosperity,
whose triumph is their ruin.  Compare, or
rather contrast, the pecuniary benefits which




ON THE POOR AND IGNORANT.     59.
tradesmen and mechanics, of every kind, receive
from a company of a thousand squalid and
destitute immigrants, however much these may
need for food, clothing, or shelter, with the
profits which the same classes would derive
from a village of a thousand educated, industrious, and temperate people; and see how
deeply all are interested in stopping this prodigious leakage from their common reservoir
of gain.
My second and closing remark is, that all
political economists, all philanthropists, all
moral reformers, and pioneers of human progress, all ethical and religious teachers, whether
they lean more to the side of speculation or of
practice, are related by the closest moral affinity
to temperance reformers; because there will,
always and necessarily, be a limit to the successes of the former, until the latter have
achieved a universal conquest. Emphatically
is this true of all teachers and friends of universal education, and of the spread of Christianity. Temperance must dispossess the demoniac of all his devils, before education and
Christianity can take him into their sacred
keeping, and become ministers for restoring to
hiq mind the lost image of his Maker.








LECTURE      II.
THE EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE ON THE
RICH AND EDUCATED.
THERE are different classes of truths, belonging to the subject of Temperance, which are
respectively applicable to all the different conditions of life.
On a former occasion, I solicited the attention of the Poor and the Ignorant to some considerations deemed particularly applicable to
their condition. I trust I succeeded in demonstrating that either their own use of ardent
spirits, or, - as it much more frequently happens, - the use by those for whose indulgences
they are made to suffer, is the grand procuring
cause of their misfortunes and their social inequality. I trust it was proved to the satisfaction of every reflecting mind, that if this one
source of poverty and degradation could be
dried up, the great majority of the poor would
rise to the possession of competence, the igno(61)




62      EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
rant would share in the blessings of knowledge,
and both would be delivered from those beguiling temptations which now so often seduce
them into dishonor and ruin.
On the present occasion, I solicit the attention of those favored individuals in society
who possess a full mediocrity, or more than a
mediocrity, of property and of intelligence, and
who, therefore, according to the commonly received notions of wealth and of attainment,
can be denominated neither poor nor ignorant.
As contrasted with the poor and ignorant, this
portion of the community may be called Rich
and Educated. There is a class of truths on
the subject of temperance, vital alike to their
pecuniary prosperity and to their social wellbeing, and bearing with great efficiency upon
the character and condition of that society,
which they, in common with all other men,
must leave as an inheritance to their children.
I say, which they, in common with all other men,
must leave as an inheritance to their children;
for, in this respect, no choice is left even to the
most affluent or the most powerful. A man
may modify, at pleasure, the form in which he
will leave his estate to his offspring. He may
give to one child houses, to another lands, and
to another money, or books, or works of art; or




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.     63
if he will begin early and conduct judiciously,
he may, so to speak, spiritualize his worldly
goods, and bequeath to his children the precious
legacy of education instead of the grosser one
of gold.  But the condition of society,- its
upward or its downward tendencies, its probity
or its profligacy, - he must leave, whatever it
may be. Here he has no option; and when
the hour of death comes, he may as well attempt to change the order of the seasons, by a
provision in his last will and testament, as to
remove the moral dangers or increase the moral
guaranties of that state of society to whose
tender mercies his children are committed.
I am not about to contend that intemperance
is the cause of every evil which the more favored classes of society may feel or fear. Should
this terrible scourge cease its inflictions, at
once and universally, I have no belief that the
earth would be forthwith Arcadianized, or that
the millennium would no longer delay its coming; but still I do believe that the depths of the
misery of this vice are yet as far from ever
having been fathomed as the deepest parts of
the ocean; and that those who have pondered
upon it longest and most profoundly have only,
as it were, explored a few leagues along the
wreck-covered coast of a mighty continent
of evil.




64       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
Although addressing myself, on this occasion,
to men xwho enjoy both the means and opportunities of understanding and appreciating the
highest truths, yet I do not propose to appeal,
to any great extent, to those eternal and unchangeable principles which lie under the whole
length of existence. Such topics, oppressively
weighty, I leave to another profession, or at
least to other occasions, - happy if I can now
bring a few considerations of a social, political,
and economical nature to bear upon the cause
of temperance, and can enforce its importance
by some of the merest commonplaces of morality.
The man who possesses property presents a
broader mark to be struck by the shafts of misfortune or malice. The ears of the poor man
are not quick to hear the midnight alarm bell;
for he has no warehouses or manufactories in
danger of conflagration; and with whatever
fury storms may rage along the shore, he has
no dread that they will sink any argosies of his.
But whenever a man adds new territory to his
possessions, he forthwith sends out a colony of
hopes and fears to people it.'It is as true of
any augmentation of wealth as it is of the
natural growth of the human body; however
much we may increase in size and stature, the




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.     65
living nerves go out to the surface. As an old
man dotes upon a child born to him in his decrepitude, so a rich man dotes upon his latest
acquisitions of property.
It is obvious that every rich man has the
same kind of interest in the future condition of
the community, which a merchant has in the
freedom from pirates of those seas through
which his treasure-laden vessels are sailing.
So the value of princely mansions and of insurance stocks must depend somewhat upon
the number and pyrotechnic skill of the incendiaries who hold their night-watches in the
city. The opulent father leaves, not a blessing,
but a curse, to his offspring, if their great patrimony only makes them more obnoxious to
general envy, and sharpens a common appetite
for plunder, of which they are the objects.
Even the blessings of education are but an imperfect boon, if children are to grow up in a
community where knowledge is scoffed at,
and refinement only provokes insult and libel.
What heavier doom could strike a parent's
heart than to know that, as soon as he draws
his last breath, his children will be banished
from their native land, and forced to dwell in
some foreign community of lawlessness and
profligacy; and yet what is the value of the
5




66      EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
choice, whether that community shall be abroad,
in some foreign realm, or at home, in the next
generation? Amid corruption of sentiment, and
depravity of morals and of manners, a virtuous
man is an exile though he remains at home.
Surely it is not only one of the highest social
duties, but it must be one of the strongest impulses of an intelligent parental affection, to
provide a state of society for children, in which,
if they prove to be honorable men, they may
be honored; and if they prove to be benefactors of their race, they may be revered while
living, and mourned when dead. The condition of society which men bequeath to their
children gives value or takes it away from all
their other bequests.
Look at the relation in which men of eminent talents and genius stand to the present
and the coming generations; and see how deep
is their interest in the general enlightenment
and rectitude of the people. Who are to be
their judges and rewarders in a community
where all things are decided by the popular
voice? Is it not most desirable for such men
to live amongst people who measure merit by
a scale of truth; who can discern, and will
reverence, moral intrepidity and self-sacrifice;
who honor mental rather than animal endow



ON THE RICH AND DDUCATED.      67
Inents; and who can and will make their best
men their first men? Is it nothing for the orator at the capitol, or the author in his closet, s'o
know that he needs not to circumscribe his
powers in order to be intelligible to his hearers;
but that he addresses a nation for an audience,
whose millions of hearts are so many censers,
standing always ready to be lighted by the
hallowed flame of eloquence? Is it nothing
for the poet or the artist to know that the more
exquisite and perfect is his work, the more, and
not the less, myriads of voices will be added to
his fame? Now, all these natural and laudable
desires are defeated, to an immense extent, by
the wide-spread vice of intemperance. With
the rapid decay of all talent, and the extinction of virtuous emotions, in themselves, intemperate men lose the power of appreciating
intellectual and moral greatness in others.
Their spiritual nature becomes sensualized.
Their appetite.scourges away every exalted
sentiment. Whoever will provide means to
slake their thirst; whoever will pervert reason
to vindicate their indulgence; whoever will
beat down their sincerest well-wishers with the
most truculent rage, will be their chosen leaders.
Let intemperate men witness a discussion in
the forum or the senate, and you will always




68      EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
see them captivated by the dross of thought,
rather than by those golden treasures of wisdom
which meditation coins from experience and
knowledge. In books, they will generally prefer the obscene blasphemies of Paine to the
serene and pious philosophy of Watson. Is it
such a tribunal as this which men of talent
and genius wish to install or perpetuate?
In all the great questions pertaining to social
reform, do not intemperate men almost invariably espouse the side of demoralization? In all
efforts for the adornment of society, for the advancement of art, literature, or science, they are
antagonist forces. They gravitate towards barbarism. Should they ever obtain a numerical
ascendency in any part of our country, they
would demolish the temples of science and religion, and banish the priests that minister at
their altars. Even now, every intelligent man
knows that if the wealth squandered upon this
enormous vice were appropriated to the purchase of social libraries, to the founding of
mechanics' institutes and supplying them with
philosophical apparatus, and to establishing
cabinets of the arts and of natural history; and
if the time, —that element of priceless value,
now a thousand times worse than lost in the
haunts of dissipation,-could be devoted to




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.     69
reading well-selected books, to improving conversation, to lyceum exercises, to music and
other refining arts, it would, in ten years, give
to this republic a new social and political sensorium.
Men of mechanical science and skill are delighted with all new inventions in the useful
arts, and are admirers of all new discoveries
or applications of philosophical principles. The
slightest improvements, - greater simplicity in
the construction of a machine, or diminished
friction in the revolutions of a wheel, - are
sought after with avidity, printed in journals,
circulated through the civilized world, and,
every where, there is an immediate desire to
reduce the improvements to practice. We honor those men whose inventive talents have given,
as it were, new organs to mankind, - powers
of locomotion by which we travel a hundred
times faster and farther than we can with our
natural limbs, and a telescopic eye, by which
we see objects a million times more remote
than with the natural vision. Why do we feel
emotions of pride and exultation as we gaze
upon those Titan laborers in the service of man,
which cleave their " arrowy way " through the
sea, from port to port; or, upon the land, take
up the burden of ten thousand men, and speed




70       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
with it, from horizon to horizon, like the horses
of the sun? Is it not because they have the
power of subserving human interests, of contributing to human amelioration, and of adding,
as it were, new capacities to the natural endowments of the race? As a mere matter of
taste, how can an intellectual man feel regret
at the accidental destruction of an ingenious
toy, but experience no sadness at the ruin of
the noble faculties of the human mind? How
can the merest utilitarian look with sorrow
upon the devastations occasioned by an earthquake or a tornado, but regard with indifference the prostration of the lofty capacities of a
soul?  The spirit of man has been formed in
exact correspondence to all the beauty and sublimity of the external world; it has been attuned with divinest skill to all the sacred symphonies of domestic life; it has been made
capacious of virtue and happiness. How, on
the lowest principles of economical policy, can
we see all these divine arrangements baffled,
this utility and beauty marred and lost, these
heavenly purposes thwarted, without rushing
to the rescue, and engaging, if need be, in a lifelong struggle to avert so deplorable a catastrophe?
Behold the lover of the histrionic art, -- whose




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.     71
mind has been stored by careful study and contemplation, with all the archetypes of dramatic
excellence. He sees, on the stage, a type of
life, a miniature of the world; and night after
night he repairs thither, to witness, perhaps for
the hundredth time, a representation of the same
scenes, - amply rewarded if he can discover
some new beauty in gesture, emphasis, or reading. Here he sets up, in his own mind, a standard of perfection, and demands conformity.
Nay, his refined taste is pained at aught that
is unartistic in plan or execution. The miscasting of a part, by which genius is degraded
from its sphere; the suppression of a kindling
thought; an emotion lost in a hasty cadence;
or even the inelegant elision of a letter, wounds
his desire for perfection. As a mere matter of
consistency in his own character, and without
any reference to duty or principle, how can such
a man witness, with indifference, this disorganized, and I might almost say, this intoxicated
and besotted drama of human life, as he sees it
daily enacted;- the orderly progression of its
parts deranged, its pathos made ridiculous and
its mirth mournful, its noblest heroes sinking to
clowns and fools, and its catastrophes such as
nature abhors! One master vice has invaded
the scene, and spread disorder through all its




72      EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
parts; and where that vice controls, no noble
passages are spoken, no holy sentiments are
breathed, no sweet melodies are sung; but
chaos reigns, and the brightest stars are stricken
down and quenched forever, midway of their
glorious course!
When men of education and taste, generalizing their ideas of propriety and beauty, and
applying the same rules of judging and of acting to the supreme, that they now apply to the
subordinate affairs of men; when they shall
look upon the well-ordering of society as they
now look upon an improved machine or a wellexecuted work of art, or even upon a skilful,
scenic exhibition of what never existed, then
will all the means by which intemperance is
diffused or countenanced become the disgust
and scorn of mankind. The spreader of pestilential diseases will be esteemed a more tolerable member of the community than the manufacturer or vender of alcoholic drinks.
Addressing myself particularly, on this occasion, to men of intelligence, I may pass unnoticed such facts and considerations as are
now familiar to every person of common information. I may therefore abstain from dwelling
upon such truths as that three fourths of all
the crimes with which society is tormented are




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.     73
caused by intemperance; that we are indebted
to the same inexhaustible source of evil for
three fourths of all the paupers whose harsh
demands have wearied and sickened the spirit
of public charity; and that three fourths at
least of all those cases of imprisonment for
small debts, which, but a few years ago, were
so common, and whose aggregate of time would
amount to more years than the world has existed, either originated in debts for ardent spirits, or in debts which would have been readily
paid but for the disabilities and poverty resulting from their use.
All these, however, and many similar considerations, I shall here omit. Yet what a case
it must be, which allows its advocate to forego
arguments of such weight and conclusiveness
as these! Nor shall I stop to compute the number of persons whom intemperance has incited
to dreadful crimes, or bereft of reason, or from
whose souls it has, as it were, carved out and
cast away all noble qualities, and filled up the
vacant spaces with satanic instincts.  The
squalid throngs whom it daily sends to the receptacles of poverty and revolting wretchedness; the felons, formed of sterner elements,
who by violence and midnight depredation earn
their sad years of solitude and bondage; the




74       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
tormented maniacs who rave and howl in their
gloomy cells; and the malefactors who crown
a life of guilt with a death of ignominy; - these
are only a few choice cases, -finished or pattern specimens, —upon whom intemperance
has done its perfect work. These are the swiftest runners in the race, who have reached the
goal and received the prize. All these victims,
with the wretches whom we encounter in our
daily intercourse with the world, whom intemperance has clothed with its vassal livery, and
taught to gibber in its un-human language,
whose flesh it has gangrened to the bone, and
whose souls it has corrupted to the core, - all
these are but a part, and the smallest part, of
the sacrifices offered by society upon the altars
of this vice. And yet, in what pagan nation
was Moloch ever propitiated by such an unbroken and swift-moving procession of victims,
as are offered to this Moloch of Christendom.
It is by the. diffusive action of intemperance
that I propose to show how society suffers
through its whole frame and organization; how
the poison of this vice flows through all its circulation, and destroys vitality and joy in all its
organs. Intemperance squanders an enormous
portion of the resources of the country. The
capital spent in the preliminary operations of




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.    75
producing the materials and of manufacturing,
purchasing, and vending intoxicating drinks has
exceeded the whole civil list expenditures of all
our governments, state and national. After
having cost so much for production and distribution, its consumption generates a class of
persons whose support and punishment equal
the amount of the primary outlay. And the
value of productive labor annihilated, and the
aggregate of losses occasioned, by this consumption, subtract from the available resources of
the community a third sum, probably not inferior in magnitude to each of the others. The
arm of national industry in agriculture, manufactures, and the mechanic arts, strong and
effective as it now is, has neither the powerful
enginery of means, nor the mental or muscular
vigor to direct and to wield them, which it
would otherwise possess. Suppose Robert Fulton had been a sot. Suppose the long, laborious, and secluded period spent by Eli Whitney, in inventing and perfecting the cotton-gin,
had been spent in a tap-room! Yet who can
doubt that intemperance has robbed our country of many Fultons and many Whitneys?
We know that the brightest minds are most.subject to its diabolical seducements. Who,
in the circle of his own acquaintance, does not




76       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
remember some shining intellect, some bright
orb of mind, rising in splendor, and rapidly
ascending to a refulgent day, but suddenly
shrouded in everlasting night? Our country
owes its incomparable prosperity vastly more
to the development of its mental than its physical resources. Indeed, the development of mental power is a prerequisite to the development
of physical power. Our territory has limits;
improvement through increased intelligence is
illimitable. The fertility of the earth is great,
but the fertility of the human mind is a thousand times greater. Compared with the riches
of the latter, the exuberance of the globe is barrenness.  Our advancement in the arts and
comforts of life springs not from material resources nor from numbers, - not from luxuriant
valleys and exhaustless mines, and a redoubling
population, - so much as from mental activity,
from a general arousing of the intellect of our
people. It is the application of intelligence to the
mighty agencies of nature, and the enterprise and
thrift with which proceeds, when obtained, are
reinvested as capital, and thus their reproductive or accumulating powers brought into use;
- it is by these means, and such as these, that
our country is carried forward in its magnificent career of improvement. But alas! how




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.     77
many thousand sources which would otherwise
have contributed to swell the stream of prosperity has intemperance dried up!
This vice has shed a Gothic influence on
manners and learning. The universal practice,
which heretofore existed, of considering ardent
spirits, or some other kind of intoxicating
liquors, as a luxury, and relying on their stimulus for excitement on all holidays and at all
festive meetings, not only impaired the culture
of all such arts and associations as cherish
elegance and propriety in manners, and benevolence in sentiment, but it generated positive
vulgarity in the intercourse between men, inflamed all combative and riotous propensities,
taught a corrupting licentiousness of speech,
and granted a monopoly to debasing topics of
conversation. Throughout the land, wherever
a young man has had a leisure evening or hour,
the tempting fiend has whispered in his ear the
seductions of the dram-shop. Often has this
been his resort, instead of being at home, reading some instructive book with mother and
sisters, or in a friend's house with such companions as are striving to obtain more knowledge,
and to behave more worthily. And what a large
portion of the public mind, as it now exists,
has been filtrated through these anti-clarifiers,




78       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
these anti-refiners, where all its gentleness,
its modesty, and purity, have been strained
off and sluiced away, and only a corrosive,
polluted, mephitic sediment preserved! Nor
has it fared better with the cause of learning,
than with elegance of manners or refinement of
feeling. No ray of it can ever penetrate the
opaque soul of intemperance. The desire of
knowledge is the magnet that attracts it.
Wherever this desire is craving, it will attract
knowledge into the mind through every obstruction, and even though the natural inlets of the
senses are closed against it. It seems to be
a law of nature, that wherever this desire of
knowledge can be excited, it is no longer possible so to insulate the human soul as to prevent
its access. It will find a conductor; or, if it
can find no conductor, it will, like the condensed electricity of a thunder cloud, leap a
vacuum to reach the object that attracts it.
But intemperance extirpates this desire. Under
its influence, the love of knowledge not only
ceases, but deceases; or, what is worse, its
nature is so transformed that it seeks only bitter
or pernicious knowledge.
Another idea seems not irrelevant to this
topic. Both men and children acquire with
great facility and rapidity until they rise about




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.      79
to the common level. There the mass stops.
Only minds of uncommon energy rise higher,
and those with difficulty. But transfer a common mind to a society where the general standard is higher than itself, and it will forthwith
rise to the common level again; and then it
will again cease its ascent. Whatever, then,
depresses the common standard of attainment
or intelligence, weighs down all that is above,
depresses all that is below, and causes an aggregate of loss which is incalculable. Not only
has general intelligence been circumscribed,
and general refinement debased, but the whole
circle of social, every-day virtues, - order, forbearance, sympathy, charitableness, conscientiousness, —have lost tone, wakefulness, and
decision. In myriads of hearts, the same cause
has baffled all the benign influences of Christianity. It is not extravagant to say that civilization, in this country, is now a century behind
what it would have been, if ardent spirits had
never been known amongst us. I do not mean
that species of civilization whose only evidences consist in a few prodigies of learning,
or a few great masters in the elegant arts, with
a small metropolitan circle of courtly gentlemen, while all around is passion, and ignorance,
and superstition. All this, where this is all, is




80       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
but mockery. But I mean the civilization
which consists in a love of order and of duty,
and in that recognition and sacred regard for
the rights of others which cannot be enforced
by law; in affectionate hearts, in active, truthloving minds, -all combining to make happy
families, brotherly neighborhoods, and a great
and incorruptible people. This kind of civilization has already been postponed a century,
in our land, by the barbarizing effects of intemperance.
Let me ask men whose reason has been developed and strengthened by education, for
what end that reason was given them. Is it not
one main office and function of reason to mark
the relation between Causes and Effects? Do
not talented and educated men value themselves, and does not the community, with one
consent, yield them deference and respect, because of their sagacity and foresight in predicting the future from a knowledge of the present?
Effects sometimes follow  causes instantaneously; sometimes effects are separated from
their causes by long intervals of time, or wide
regions of space. But, to the eye of reason,
these intervening periods or spaces, however
vast they may be, are nothing. IReason recognizes the effect as linked to the cause, and as




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.     81
happening in immediate succession to it, though
separated by the distance of centuries, or by
the circumference of the globe. It matters not
whether I fire a magazine by a slow match or
a quick one; the moment the explosion takes
place, I cannot deny that I caused it. Enlightened reason cannot help apprehending the
truth in an instant, that whoever is responsible
for the origin is responsible for the result; and
that a man who occupies a period of five or of
ten years in turning his neighbor into a devil, is
as really guilty of effecting the diabolical transformation of that neighbor, as though he had
put the horns and hoofs upon him at one
operation.
In the present state of our experience on this
subject, every intelligent man foreknows the
fatal consequences of importing, manufacturing, selling, and drinking ardent spirits, with as
much certainty as an astronomer foreknows an
eclipse. When I was a practitioner at the bar,
I well recollect that, in three counties of Massachusetts, during a period of about six months,
three murders were committed, and two men,
one of them having a wife and children, were
executed for the crime of arson. In each case,
the perpetrator was in a state of intoxication;
and, humanly speaking, not one of these crimes
6




82      EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
would have been perpetrated, but for the intoxication. But the terrors of these few, though
awful crimes, do not bear comparison with
the nameless and innumerable sufferings and
wrongs which, during the same period, were
inflicted upon the innocent members of society
by the same cause.
And by what means do all this guilt and
woe come upon mankind?    The answer is
plain. Some wealthy merchants import liquor
from abroad, that they may increase their
wealth. Some capitalists, from the nutritious
grains, and the cooling fruits of the earth, distil
it at home, that they may add to their capital. The legislature invests certain subordinate tribunals with discretionary power to grant
so many licenses, " as the public good, " - yes,
as the public aood, for such is the blasphemous
phraseology of the law, - may require. Some
owners of real estate, opulent and educated
men, because they can obtain higher rents, and
many men, because such has long been their
occupation, importune the municipal and county authorities to grant licenses, for one year
only. To men who are themselves comfortably
and happily situated, one year is not long, and
the licenses are granted.  Forthwith, every
licensed person repairs to his appointed place,




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.     83
opens the fountains of destruction, and the
work begins. In one region, a peaceful citizen
is butchered; in another, midnight blazes with
conflagration; in a third, the earthquake voice
of riot is heard, at its work of demolition;from all sides, a rushing sound of affright and
contention afflicts the ear, mingled with such
groans of agony as never came from the dark
temples of the Druids, where human victims
were sacrificed by hundreds.  This process
seems simple. And, my friends, it is simple,
yea, horrible in its simplicity. And it is as
fatal as it is simple. The death-warrant that
goes out from the executive chamber, under the
sign-manual of the governor, and authenticated
by the great seal of the state, commanding the
sheriff to do execution upon the body of a malefactor, is not more certain to be executed upon
that body, than, under our present laws and
usages, these evils are to be inflicted, with each
returning season, upon the body of society.
At that annual meeting of our city and county
officers, at which, according to law and custom,
licenses are generally granted, after the last
petitioner has received his charter of destruction, and retired, and while the official dignitaries who have granted it are left for a moment
alone, suppose their reason should faithfully




84       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
perform its office, by bringing causes and
effects together; —by presenting, in the very
room where the licenses had been granted, the
effect of those licenses for the coming year.
Suppose that, on closing the book where their
decisions are recorded, suddenly, quick as
thought, a terrific vision of the future consequences of their conduct should start into living
reality before them. Here, a murderer darts
athwart the room, and hews down his victim
before their eyes. There, the outbursting flame
reveals the flying incendiary. Here, caged beneath their feet, howl and shriek the victims of
delirium. On this side of the tribunal, the gray
hairs of a parent are brought down with sorrow
to the grave, by the worse than parricidal blows
of an impious son. On that side welters in
his own blood the desperate suicide. Apart
and alone, her frame convulsed with unspeakable agonies, and her tearful eyes covered with
her hands, kneels, and prays with unavailing
prayer, the once happy wife. Song and smile
no longer come unbidden to her lips. She
seeks seclusion; she flies from sympathy; for
the voice of the tenderest consolation tortures
her like fire. Where now are those burning
vows of love, those attestations of undying
fidelity, which imprecated the vengeance of




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.     85
Heaven on their violation? -vows and attestations which she had garnered in her heart's
heart, and made an idol-treasure. These priceless pearls, they too have been stolen and
melted in the cup of abomination. See, all
around, those groups of desolate children!
Hunger and nakedness have been their father's
love, and snow and winter's storms their mother's breast and song. But I will not, I cannot
delineate these intolerable realities. They cannot be spoken by mortal tongue; they cannot
be conceived by mortal mind; no, though all
that poets and divines have said of the place
of final retribution were concentrated in one
focal thought; - for neither in the Christian's
nor in the pagan's hell are the innocent made
chief sufferers!
Were intemperance stripped of every evil attribute, save its cruelty to children alone, how
could it then be tolerated, even for a day, by any
truly Christian people? The condition of the
children of intemperate parents seems, of itself,
an argument of sufficient power to revolutionize a world. Maternal nature has filled the
hearts of children full of happy promises. A
presentiment of love is a divine instinct in their
bosoms. They are created expectant of joy,
awaiting it as the new-strung AEolian awaits




86      EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
the zephyr. Nature enjoins no obligation upon
us with a more earnest and articulate voice
than when she commands and implores us
through the helplessness and trustingness of
infancy and childhood. Who needs an interpreter, to read in their feebleness the duty of
protection? Does not a child's proneness to
imitate whatever it witnesses, and to believe
whatever it is taught, admonish us, that it
should witness nothing unworthy of imitation,
nor be taught from the volumes of selfishness
and depravity? And when a sunny look so
fills the heart of a child with joy, that it overflows through the face and agitates the whole
frame, is it no revelation to us, that gentleness
should be its atmosphere, and smiles and caresses the ambrosial food of its spirit? Why,
then, when children first awaken to a consciousness of being, should they be seized in
the iron arms of pain! Why, even in the
dwelling of a parent, should their sweet affections be without a home! Why brand and
burn in upon the opening tablets of their minds
the characters of anger, and malevolence, and
impiety? What wild rebellion against every
impulse of natural affection, against every law
of God, to suffer that monster-parent, the drunkard, to pour out upon the tender fibres of their




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.     87
hearts his bitter and scalding wrath; to subject
their fragile and trembling frames to his explosive passions, and to the redoubled blows of
his iron hand! The every-day scenes enacted
in the home of a drunkard teach children, as
far as they can be taught, to think wrongly, to
feel wrongly, and to act wrongly; and what
else do we need to complete our idea of a
fiend?  This is indeed sacrilege; for it is a
desecration of the temple of the spirit. Why
do our unequal statutes punish infanticide, and
yet tolerate the infliction of this moral death?
How long before the laws of nature will cease
to be suspended; how long must the air remain
a non-conductor of sound; how long must
light cease to be reflected from suffering infancy
and childhood, so that we can hear their pleadings and behold their sorrows, as they exhibit
their wretchedness and pour out their supplications, by the side of our daily walks! To
what higher wrong could the Savior have referred when he said, rather than that a man
should offend one of these little ones, it were
better that a millstone were hanged about his
neck, and that he were cast into the depths of
the sea!
It is the opinion of many intelligent men
that the present times are full of evil auguries.




88       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
Violence, to a fearful extent, has usurped the
place of law. Many alarming cases have occurred, where fraud and perjury have invaded
the civil franchise, and suborned the ballot-box
to utter lying responses. The land-pirates whom
we call " lynchers  are multiplying.  That
hideous thing, a mob, more terrible than any
fabled monster of the ancients, has suddenly
appeared, in almost every city in the land,
committed its ravages, and then vanished, to
reappear for its work of havoc, we know not
where or when. These are evil portents. In
one respect, these harbingers of ill are most
unwelcome and ominous; for if they are not,
in themselves, greater enormities than ever
happened before, they have certainly followed
each other, within a few years past, with unprecedented frequency.  But I confess, I see
nothing in them all, which, if other things must
remain as they are, ought not so to be. I could
have no faith in the production of good results
by good means, if bad means did not produce
bad results. Whoever wishes consequences to
be changed, without a corresponding change in
antecedents, wishes a violation of the laws of
nature. There are but two methods of curbing or subduing the unlawful propensities of
men; either by an external or by an internal




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.      89
power; either by the law of force or by the
law of duty. In most of the countries of Europe, the rulers adopt the surgical system; and,
for that system, they use the appropriate instruments, - the horse-guards, the gendarmerie,
and the Siberian mines. Here we profess to
adopt the preventive system. Universal education is our theoretical substitute for standing
armies. Instead of policemen, traversing every
road and street, we propose the early inculcation of virtuous principles upon the minds of
the young. Schoolhouses are the republican
line of fortifications. And yet, in flagrant violation of all these pretensions and assumptions,
we legalize and uphold a system, in relation to
intoxicating drinks, which counterworks the
influence of all virtuous education, engenders
a spirit of universal lawlessness, and multiplies,
a thousand fold, the potency of all dissocial
passions. We seem to forget, that in a government like ours, it is, primarily, the condition
of the public mind that constitutes our weal or
woe. We forget that no external lawlessness
or anarchy can ever exist, without being heralded by lawlessness and anarchy in the passions of the people. The external is only an
embodiment or actualizingm of the precedent
internal. And yet, while we continue to apply




90       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
a stimulus by which the fever is aggravated to
delirium, we tremble at the consequences of
the insanity we are ourselves creating. Let
there be an entire abstinence from intoxicating
drinks throughout this country during the period of a single generation, and a mob would
be as impossible as combustion without oxygen.  In our now dishonored cities, history
alone would inform posterity, that, morally
speaking, they were dwelling within the crater
of extinct volcanoes.
There are fixed and immutable principles
which are applicable to the conduct of society,
not less than to that of individuals. These
principles the whole collected force of mankind
can neither annul nor suspend. We might as
well attempt to change the rising or the setting
of the sun by the major vote of the people.
Society, indeed, has an option whether to place
itself within the action of one class of principles or of another; but, once having chosen its
position, the wheel of destiny rolls on, and bears
it forward with inexorable force. If a community will make wise provision for that vast
influx of spiritual nature which flows in with
the birth of its children, and which is becoming
a part of its administrative authority, just as
fast as those children emerge from pupilage and




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.     91
assume the prerogatives of manhood; then
these silent forces of nature, -by a law as certain as that which sustains the ever-moving
spheres, -will bear it upward along a glorious,
ascending scale of grandeur and felicity. But
if society chooses to neglect the minds of children, and to infuriate the passions of men, its
years of tribulation and anguish are predestined
by an adamantine law of necessity. Our government could not survive for a single year
with such a population as exists in Italy or
Ireland. We have no artificial, graduated distinctions, among the members of our community, assigning higher platforms to higher classes,
where the one above is not only surrounded by
bulwarks of its own, but is placed, as it were,
beyond striking distance from the one below.
Our citizens, whether they regard substance
or not, are all educated to despise forms. All
our political and most of our social institutions
amplify and stimulate the feeling of self-importance in the individual, - a feeling of elevating
power, if properly balanced and controlled; but,
if unchastened and inflamed, the very instrument of aggression and lawlessness. Amidst
the general ignorance of Europe, the notions
about human rights cannot be so wrong as they
may be with us; for false conclusions which




92       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
have been arrived at through the forms of reasoning are infinitely worse than blind impulses.
The former have the force of all the propensities, sanctioned by the intellect. The uneducated millions of Europe are nothing to the
politician. Here they vote, and are, therefore,
the real Warwicks, or king-makers. There,
they are beneath the attention of the demagogues who flatter and inflame. Here, there
is a competition among miscreants to flatter
and inflame, in order that they may lead.
There, the flagitious are separate atoms, without cohesion or sympathy. Here, through our
political organization, though scattered over the
whole Union, they can concentrate their entire
force into one blow, and direct it to any point.
There, they suffer under the common paralysis
of despotism. Here, they are imbued with the
vigor of our free institutions, and are effervescent with the vitality of an intense life. There,
they are unarmed, and are outside of the citadel of government. Here, they are armed;
they are within the citadel; they help to name
the sentinels; they have access to the torch
r
and the magazine. If the more favored classes
of our society will do nothing to arrest the
progress of intemperance, which, more than all
things else, creates bad men, and makes bad




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.     93
men worse, they may well tremble for the institutions of their country, for their property,
and for their families. They occupy no such
high table-land of security, that the billows of
popular commotion will break below their feet.
The tumults, the outbreaks of violence, which
have already happened, are only tremulous
vibrations, foretokening the earthquake that is
yet to come. Fiercer paroxysms will ensue; —
such shocks from beneath as will upheave the
foundations of law and order, unseat the tribunals of justice, and dash the hostile masses of
society against each other, as though the steady
earth itself were unbalanced, and were rocking
and plunging in its orbit.
The past experience of mankind has not left
us without some fundamental axioms in social
economy. If there be any fidelity in the laws
of nature, we may rest assured that the mass
of citizens who possess comfort and competence, -the yeoman with his unencumbered
and well-stocked farm; the mechanic with his
profitable trade and his complement of tools;
and also all those engaged in mercantile pursuits, who can truly speak of their own shop
and their own goods, —will never knowingly
conspire to subvert the very laws on which
their right to their own property reposes. So,




94       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
too, all young men, who commence life without
property, but who are conscious of the habits
of industry, honesty, and temperance, which
will most certainly result in the acquisition of
property, will never offer themselves as recruits
at any agrarian camp. Neither will any intelligent and upright citizen ever claim an equal
share, by his vote, in regulating the machinery
of government, together with a reserved right,
that if, at any time, this machine does not
move to suit his fancy, he may violently wrest
it from its course, or dash it in pieces. We
know, too, that there can be no such security
upon earth as sober-minded, staid citizens,
capable of impartial thought, strenuous for the
right, and feeling that the maintenance of public order and justice is the only guaranty for
the well-being of themselves and of their children. On the other hand, too, we know that
the slaves of a selfish appetite, who have spent
all their own property in criminal indulgences,
occupy the same relation towards the prosperity of others, as, in the animal kingdom, the
vulture occupies towards the dove. Their beau
ideal of a republic is to divide all property
equally, and when they have spent their share,
to divide again.
But perhaps the more favored classes of




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.      95
society will say, We deplore the evil that surrounds us, but we are not responsible for its
existence; our advantageous position secures
us from the poverty and the wretchedness you
delineate, and we can maintain, within our
own charmed circle, the institutions and the
usages which will secure enjoyment and dignified ease amongst ourselves, as well as deference from without; and, should the hordes of
intemperance ever invade our sphere, we can
trust to our united power and to a sense of
common danger to repel them. But let these
classes scan their position more narrowly, and
see if, in truth, there is any barrier, any borderwaste, or sanitary cordon, between them and
those natural enemies to their welfare, whom
intemperance engenders. Some of the malefactors of past years, we know, have expiated
their crimes by an ignominious death, and others are now making penal atonement in the solitude of jails and prisons; but where now are
the malefactors of coming years? Where now
are the murderers, the incendiaries, the felonious
burglars or assaulters,-the wretched victims
of intemperance in all their hideous variety,
who are to make the year that begins to-day
like the years that are past? They walk the
streets by your side; they follow, at your heels,




96       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
into the crowd; they are now making themselves acquainted with your property and its
places of deposit, the better to mature their
schemes of plunder; they obtain their implements of mischief at the shops rented by yourselves; they drink in the depravity, prolific of
all their deeds, at places which you have opened
for its sale; and before to-morrow's sun shall
set, somebody will feel the blow, which they
will strike, in his property, or, it may be, in his
heart.
But outrage and violence are not invariable
concomitants of this enemy of mankind. Suppose jurors or witnesses become corrupt, or
vehemently prejudiced, because you are rich
and they are poor, or because you are learned
and they are ignorant; you may be plundered
through the forms of law as certainly as by a
body of Turkish Janizaries. Who can feel
secure, when his property, his life, or his reputation depends upon a witness from whose
mind intemperance has eradicated all moral
principle, as colors are extracted by chemical
agents? If a fact decisive of an important
cause is known to an intemperate witness, it
can be washed out of his mind by a quart of
rum; and if such a fact be wanted by a fraudful litigant, rum will give to such a witness




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.     97
an extemporaneous memory. Those conversant with courts well know that large amounts
of property have often been lost, and enduring
stigmas have been fixed upon pure characters,
by testimony wholly alcoholic in its origin.
Often, too, has the assertion of valuable rights
been foregone, because intemperance had besotted the witness by whose testimony alone
they could have been established. In commercial affairs, what vast amounts of property
frequently depend upon the evidence of men
whose powers of clear recollection and of precise and intelligent statement are wholly obliterated, though something of the moral sense
may have survived, or have been renovated in
them! We all feel that a reputation for honor,
and virtue, and beneficent action is the third
treasure in the universe, inferior only to the
smiles of Heaven and the approbation of conscience; and yet, when the profligate in principle or the dissolute in life are found contending with the sober and the upright, do not
the intemperate almost invariably espouse the
cause of the former? In some parts of our
country, numerous instances have already occurred where that sympathy with guilt, which
is generated by intemperance more than by all
other things combined, has filled the temples
7




98       EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
of justice with a rout of fraternal villains, rebelling against law, perplexing the minds of
witnesses with fear, and overawing the sworn
administrators of justice. Nor is it unworthy
of remark, in this connection, that the established and regularly-organized tribunals of the
land have jurisdiction of only a small part of
the controversies which arise among men. The
law takes no cognizance of innumerable questions which relate to the performance of domestic, social, or neighborhood duties. In these
cases, all persons are arraigned and tried, literally by the vicinagre.  Moral character, the
peace of individuals for life, the quiet of families, the fate of happy friendships, are often
involved in these extrajudicial adjudications
from which there is no appeal. And what is
the part which the intemperate enact in these
local controversies? Are they not pretty surely to be found speaking with lying tongues,
maligning all -men who oppose the system
which feeds their appetites, placarding their
assassin handbills at the corners of the streets,
and profaning the sacred reputation of mothers
and daughters?
In treating so solemn a subject as this, I
utterly disclaim even the remotest allusion to
partisan politics or partisan leaders; and yet I




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.      99
may be permitted to appeal to the observation
of every honest man of all parties, whether, in
our general or local elections, - those for governor and legislators, or those for county and
municipal offices, -in cases, too, where success or defeat will stand as the verdict of the
public, convicting or acquitting of some great
moral or political delinquency, the intemperate
man will not always vote for the candidate who
will bribe him with a glass of rum, or who will
promise to use his influence in favor of the
system which will give him a glass of rum,
rather than for his sober competitor, who advocates the cause of temperance as the only foundation of law and order. So, too, if there be
a newspaper, which advocates all crimes by
advocating an increase of the cause of all
crimes, which scoffs at religion in the pulpit,
libels justice on the bench, and merges the
moral welfare of the state in the success of a
party, or the triumph of its candidate at an
election, that newspaper is sure to be the intemperate man's oracle. And it is only because
the intemperate are so numerous and powerful
as a party, that here and there a sober miscreant places himself at their head, and defends
them and their cause, because such an employment is a safer, though not a less ignominious




100     EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
method of obtaining his daily bread, than highway robbery or passing counterfeit money.
It can never be sufficiently impressed upon
those who are prone to feel that they have no
direct interest in the general condition of the
community, that when they have seen all poorhouses, all jails and prisons, and the gallows
itself, they have not yet seen a hundredth part
of the diffusive evils of intemperance. These
outward and visible evidences of crime are but
topical inflammations, cutaneous eruptions, exhibiting themselves on the surface of the body
politic only after a mortification, which began
at the vitals, has reached the circumference. In
the social state, not even the purest virtue
can secure happiness, or an immunity from
danger, to any one class, while vice abounds
in another. There are nerves which extend
through the whole body politic, and when any
member is wounded, the pain will circuit the
whole body politic. The favored classes may
think they occupy favored apartments in the
ship; but, if it does founder, the state-room
will go down with the steerage. Every man,
though living in his own dwelling, with his feesimple deeds under Hobbs's lock and key, is a
mere tenant at will of the incendiary. It is
of the very nature of malice, and envy, and




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.    101
revenge, that they claim to be rightful owners of
all property and character, and to destroy either
at their own good pleasure. How can any
merchant feel secure, in committing his deepfreighted vessels to the sea, if intemperance is
to preside at the helm or command from the
quarter deck? Is not the ocean already inlaid
with treasures, - ay, and with human sacrifices
too, - which intemperance, more remorseless
than tempests and hidden rocks, has sent down
to its unapproachable garners?
Nor let the wealthy and the talented flatter
themselves that they can purchase any amulet
whose potent charm shall save their own households from the common destroyer.  Should
they escape themselves, have they made any
covenant with the demon that he will spare
their children? A rich inheritance will only
make the means of destruction so much the
more accessible. The wealth which the merchant or the professional man is toiling to amass,
in order that he may bequeath it, may only buy
the sparkling wine in which his children will
dissolve the pearl of reputation, or may only
purchase the golden goblet from which they
will drain perdition. In the whole circle of
human calamities, what more mournful spectacle are we compelled to behold, than to see the




102      EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
sons of opulence, just as they are emerging into
manhood, when their hearts should glow and
burn to run the race of usefulness and honor;
- what spectacle, I ask, is more mournful, than
to see them, as we sometimes do, torn from a
father's care and from a mother's love, and
actually exiled from home and country, that
they may be subjected to the stern discipline of
a whale ship, or a man-of-war, because they
cannot walk unharmed amid the burning
ploughshares with which we have tessellated
the soil of the pilgrims? Nor even in exile
are they safe. Some have perished vilely in
a drunken brawl upon a foreign shore, and
strangers' hands have dug their unhallowed
grave. The lofty and indomitable spirit of
others has dashed them to death against the
bars of their iron cage. Some return, but with
extinguished faculties, now alike incapable of
good or ill. Human guilt has carbonized the
diamond, but from the ashes no human skill
can rekindle its pristine fires. But, as sometimes happily has been true, should the wanderer, after years of absence and harsh discipline, return, to cause the sun, as it sets after a
life of storm, to shine brightly upon his father's
house, - is it nothing that, for years, a whole
family have nightly laid their heads upon a pil



ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.    103
low of thorns, and that daily their hearts have
yearned as they beheld the vacant seat at the
table and at the fireside? Is it nothing that
he, for years, has been a wanderer from the
paths of rectitude? And though a reascension
to virtue may gain the forgiveness of men and
of God, yet is it nothing that, in his own
memory,-that Book of Judgment for us all,
-the indelible record of his sins will remain
forever? Blame not these youthful victims of
our cruel institutions. The sin is ours. I repeat it, the sin is ours. It is we who dig the
pitfalls, amongst which their impetuous and
inexperienced feet cannot safely walk. Alas!
i'i what a world do we live, that neither in the
land of our nativity, nor any where on the
broad surface of the globe, is there any refuge
or hiding-place from this all-ingulfing ruin!
Surrounded as the young men of the present
day have been by perpetual and domineering
temptations to fall into intemperate habits, is
it to the uncertain tenure of their honor and
fidelity that refined and educated parents can
confide the worldly happiness of their daughters, without a fear? Though all earthly auspices smile propitiously upon their happy nuptials, what angel has lifted up the curtain of
the future, and assured their eyes that, suddenly,




104     EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
upon the paradise of wedded love there shall
not arise the hell of domestic discord? Why
do parents gather together all the riches of their
own happiness, and treasure them in a beautiful
daughter's life; why do they spend uncounted
wealth to give her a dowry, gemmed with
every personal and moral attraction; why strive
to encompass herwith a celestial atmosphere
of purity and faith; why set an angelic guard
of watchfulness and love around her daily
steps, and yet remain wholly insensible to that
condition of society where the deadliest enemies
to her future happiness are lying in ambush?
No father, no mother, loves son or daughter, -
not any man loves any child, with an intelligent
and forecasting love, who does not feel it to be
as important to diminish the temptations of
that state of society, into which these children
must soon enter, as it is to arm them with
moral strength to resist those temptations.
Every mani who prefers any claim to the
courtly title of gentleman, has an indispensable
duty to perform on the subject of temperance.
There have been ages of the world when great
physical hardihood, and a general predorinance in men of the animal nature over the
spiritual, made habits of intemperance infinitely less hideous and repulsive, than they are in




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.    105
these days of comparative mental progress and
social refinement. Every ray of moral and intellectual light that beams upon society makes
the contrast more palpable between the loathsome exhibitions of this vice, and that elegance
and dignified simplicity of manners which belong to a truly civilized life. Conduct which
was then only a fault is now a disgrace. What
then excited but little more than rebuke is
now worthy of penal retribution and consuming scorn.
The semi-barbarism, sometimes seen at the
present day, whenever it is the effect of hereditary ignorance, rudeness, and poverty, is entitled
to an indulgent judgment. I feel a sentiment
of pity overmastering that of indignation, when
I see the poor and ignorant seeking, through
the indulgences of appetite, a transient oblivion
of their cares and sorrows. They do not at all
comprehend the magnitude of their error. Human nature demands excitement.   Of this
they are conscious, while they know but imperfectly of any other resource save animal pleasures. But there is no such palliation for the
wealthy and the educated. They are relieved
from all the ignoble necessities of existence.
They have ten thousand captivating resources
at command. The lessons of wisdom which




106     EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
blaze forth on every side of the universe summon them to high contemplations and noble
deeds, as with the voice of the seraphim. Their
just sphere is more and more distant from all
low and animal indulgences. Is that a gentleman, who, but an hour ago, seemed worthy to discuss immortal themes of philosophy
with Plato, or Socrates, or Bacon, but whose
collapsed frame now falls to the earth, whose
mind and heart sink into regions of stupidity,
and drivelling folly, and profanity, and all
hateful and vile impurities, until the foul spirit
of drunkenness, as though, at last, disgusted
with its own foul work, hides itself in a mimic
death? How hateful and irredeemable such a
transformation! And how suddenly and certainly every intemperate man, whatever may
have been his education and sphere of life,
will discard all rules of propriety and decorum
for the indulgence of his appetite! For what
is fitness of time, of place, or of occasion;
what is cleanliness of person or of garb; what
is dignity of manners; what are beauty and
adaptation of language, to him who hesitates
not to wallow with the swine; and who, out
of the noble and godlike faculty of speech,
has not preserved so much as the swine's power
of articulation?  "Drunk," says Shakspeare,




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.    107
"drunk, and speak parrot, and squabble, swagger, swear, and discourse fustian with one's
own shadow. - To be now a sensible man, by
and by a fool, and presently a beast!"  Suppose, at the close of that procession of all living
animals which passed in review before Adam
to receive their respective names, that a hurdleful of these "drunken gentlemen" had been
drawn along; would not the father of our race,
smitten with disgust at the objects, and with
indignation at the insult, have rushed away
and committed suicide, to prevent the possibility of any such monsters ever proceeding from
himself?
And is the legislation which tolerates, is
that administration of the law which encourages, are those departments of business and
those usages of society which inflict this reeking abomination upon mankind, - are these
the boasted fruits of six thousand years of experience and of progress? Who dares to teach
children, at home or at the Sabbath school,
that it is eighteen hundred- years since the commencement of the Christian era, when we all
know that the Sabbath is the benefit-day of
the rum-seller, and the very Saturnalia of drunkenness? Is it from its preeminence in crimes
and debaucheries, and in thousand-tongued




108      EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
blasphemy, that the Sabbath is called the first
day of the week? It almost seems as though
it were by way of insult and mockery that, in
some of our states, in the very chapter of the
statute book, which sustains the whole scheme
of rum-selling, the Sabbath is called the Lord's
day. Consult the records of the Police Court,
ask the officers of justice on Monday morning,
and they will tell you whose day the Sabbath
has been, in facts that leave no doubt about
the patron's name.
And now, my friends, in view of these appalling evils, which make our past history look
black, and threaten to blacken our future history also, what is to be done? I speak as a
practical and religious man, to practical and
religious men; and, in profound anxiety, I
ask, What is to be done? We have a right to
expect the blessing of God upon all our wise
efforts for reform; but we have no right to expect reform through a miracle of God, superseding our own exertions. Governments have
essayed to stop the ravages of this enemy, but
they have hitherto failed. It is more than two
centuries since Massachusetts commenced the
method of regulating or licensing the sale of
intoxicating drinks. In this she has been followed by the other states; but during all this




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.    109
period, drunkenness, with all its woes, has
abounded; and probably its victims at ihe
present time are relatively more numerous
than when the first licensing law was enacted.
Regulation has not regulated it.  Licensing
for the " public good" has proved to be licensing for both public and private evil. And besides, this system has given birth to a vast
amount of collateral crime. Evasions of public law, always to be deprecated, perjury, tampering with jurors, and corrupting the pure
channels of justice, have been its constant and
woful retinue. Because, then, its concomitants
have been evil, and its results inefficient for
good, I hold that, after an experiment of two
hundred years, we are admonished, nay, required to adopt some other plan.
Some philanthropists, — among whom was
that excellent man, Dr. Woodward, late superintendent of the Worcester Hospital, who wrote
a series of essays on the subject for the press,
— have proposed the erection of a Hospital
for Inebriates, like a hospital for the insane,
where the victims of intemperance can be sequestered from the walks of men, until the fire
which alcohol has kindled in their bodies can
be quenched. While honoring the benevolence
of this suggestion, I have never seen reason to




110     EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
adopt it. Why incur vast expenditures for
machinery to inject disease into the body politic, and then repeat the expenditure to apply a
remedy? Instead of the unnatural process of
turning sober men into drunkards, at an immense outlay of human happiness and wealth,
and then attempting to turn the drunkards
back again into sober men by anothernoutlay,
why not keep the sober men sober, in the first
instance, and thus save all cost of the machinery, partial losses in all cases, and total
loss in many? I would not contract a consumption, even if an experimenter could prescribe a certain, instead of his uncertain nostrums for my cure. I would not melt a purse
of gold and mingle it with dross, even on the
mint-master's assurance that he would refine
it and coin it for circulation again. And for
better reasons than these, I would not consent to forfeit years of happiness, and incur
loathsome degradation and consuming pain,
even though God himself would assure me
by one miracle that he would restore me by
another.
My friends, the only true and proper Asylum
for Inebriates has been constructed. It was
constructed in the year 1850, in the state of
Maine. Neil Dow was the builder, - a nobler




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.    11l
architect than Sir Christopher Wren, or those
who poised the dome of St. Peter's in the
upper air. It is the grandest Asylum ever
erected or conceived; for its base embraces the
whole territorial area of the state; its walls are
coextensive with the boundaries of the state,
and it has a dome no less lofty and resplendent
than the arch of heaven above. Wherever the
means of inebriation are excluded, there is
the true asylum for inebriates. Massachusetts
and Rhode Island have spread the protecting
arches of this roof over their soil. The youthful territory of Minnesota has already done the
same, - like a young man resolved to be strong
and great, and therefore taking the early vow
that promises wisdom and length of days. I
trust that the " Excelsior " State of New York
is about to follow their example, and to become
an Empire State in morals as well as in power;
and then, from the ocean to the great lakes,
water, and not fire, shall be the nourisher of
man, and joy, and not woe, the companion of
his household.
The meeting of two conditions is always
necessary in the formation of a drunkard,Appetite and Opportunity. Take away either
of these conditions, and a drunkard is impossible. Remove appetite, and a man may dwell




112     EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
his life long, unharmed, amid the flowing and
ubiquitous ruin. On the other hand, though
the appetite exists, yet if the opportunity for
indulging it be taken away, it will soon cease
its cravings, and then die out. Now, the old
license system took away neither opportunity
nor appetite. Not taking away the opportunity, it left the appetite the means of self-perpetuation; not extinguishing the appetite, the
opportunity became a certain peril. The hospital system proposed to take only the victims
already made, and place them for a time out of
the way of opportunity; but, at the end of the
curative process, it proposed to place them back
within the danger of the opportunity;-into
the very mouth of the lion from whose jaws
they had been plucked; and what was worse
still, it left opportunity and appetite to work
their ruin upon the other members of society.
The Maine law removes opportunity from all,
not only from -those who are whole, but from
those who are sick, and is, therefore, at once
both prevention and cure.
Take another view of the subject: It is not
within the powers or functions of government
to foresee who will commit murders and arsons,
who will destroy the peace of families and of
society, who will arouse shrieks of woe and




IN THE RICH AND EDUCATED.   113
lamentation in hearts of innocence and love,
and then, having foreseen who these enemies
are, to collect them all into one great Aceldama,
or Field of Blood, and there destroy them, for
prevention's and for humanity's sake; instead
of waiting till their cup of crime is full, and
then destroying them through retribution. But
it is within the proper powers and functions
of government to search out those fatal beverages which stimulate to all crimes and inflict all sufferings, and give them to destruction. If we would not doom the one to the
gallows, let us doom the other to the gutter.
If we recoil from taking human blood, we can
take the blood of the vine before it maddens
the human. If we may not dash out a man's
brains in order to destroy a passion that lurks
in his mind, we may dash in the heads of rum
puncheons and brandy casks. It is terrible to
inflict capital punishment on a fellow-creature,
but mere pastime.to inflict it on a gin barrel.
The ever-living beauty and excellence of the
Maine law is, that it is prevention instead of
cure, - that it kills the fiend before he gets into
the man, instead of waiting till we have to kill
the man in order to expel the fiend.
And further; this law digs up the Upas tree
by the roots, while all our previous laws only
S




114      EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
trimmed off a few of its leaves. Taking the
whole history of our country, I cannot doubt
that, for every glass for which the illicit trader
has been punished, he has sold hogsheads with
impunity. The fines on the unsuccessful violations of law have been compensated more
than a hundred times over by the profits on the
successful. If so, then the force of the temptation has been to that of the restraint as more
than a hundred to one; and surely, incitements
far less urgent than these are sufficient to tempt
bad men to destroy their fellow-men, and to
stab society in its vitals. But under the ampler protection of the new law, if one gill be
sold by the owner, from a warehouse or a ship
load, the whole stock or cargo may be confiscated and destroyed. The importer or vender
may refuse to take the pledge of teetotalism
himself, but we can administer it to his premises.
Ask the agonized Laocoon, - and every father
of an intemperate child is a greater sufferer than
Laocoon, - what is the difference between killing the serpents after they have strangled his
children, and crushing them in the egg!
Objection has been made that the Maine law
invades natural rights.  It restricts natural
powers; but I deny that it invades natural
rights. In a state of nature, men have the




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.     115
power to do wrong; but neither in a state of
nature, nor in society, can any man have a right
to do wrong; and if the evil consequences of
actions are any test of their moral quality, what
greater crime or calamity has ever existed
amongst us than the unrestrained traffic and
use of intoxicating drinks?
It has been further objected to this law that
it permits sales for certain purposes, while it
prohibits them for other purposes; as though
there were any necessary contradiction or inconsistency in this. Those who make this objection must judge of the moral quality of conduct by looking at the outward act, instead of
inquiring into its object or motive. Our statute book, the common law, and the divine law
abound in precedents, and principles too, which
refute so obvious a fallacy. We are surrounded
by precedents and principles which allow acts
under one set of circumstances, that they prohibit and punish under another set of circumstances. The manufacturer of gunpowder may
make it in the country, but he cannot make it
in the city; and the dealer in this article may
store it in the former place, but not in the latter. I believe all the states have licensed lotteries and the sale of lottery tickets; while, at
the same time, they forbid the sale of tickets




116      EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
of unlicensed lotteries; and now, a few states,
having awakened to a more adequate sense of
their mischiefs, prohibit all lotteries and all
sales of lottery tickets whatever. New York
has incorporated such a provision into her state
constitution. For medical and scientific purposes, the physiologist describes the human
form in words, and delineates it in pictures;
and his books are found, without offence, on
the shelves of the professional man and in public libraries; but if the selfsame plates are put
into obscene books, accompanied by such descriptions as may excite impure imaginations
or corrupt the mind of youth, they may be lawfully seized and destroyed. The cohabitation
of unmarried persons is one of the gravest of
moral offences; but the moment the ceremony
of marriage is performed, this impure relation
is converted into one of the holiest on earth.
Here is the same external state of life in both
cases; yet the.one is hallowed and the other
punished, because of their different object and
motive. God discriminates in the same way.
The fourth commandment in the decalogue
says, " Six days shalt thou labor;" but on the
seventh, " thou shalt not do any work." WVhy
cannot the objector meet this with the exact logical formula of the liquor dealer's sophistry, and




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.    117
say, - Work is right, or it is not right; if right,
why prohibit it at all; if not right, why command
it at all?
Our justifying analogy is plain and complete.
Intoxicating liquors, for certain purposes, mechanical and medicinal, are good, and may be
used; but for the human organism, and to be
taken as beverages, they concentrate all evil,
and are therefore abolished.
I have heard it further alleged that the law
is unequal, as between the rich and the poor;
because the former can appeal and give bonds,
while the latter, not having the pecuniary ability to give bonds, must be committed. But
why is such an argument urged against this
law, when, if it has aught of validity, it would
overthrow every law of the land, of which bail
is an incident? In all cases whatever, whether
criminal or civil, where bail can be demanded,
the rich man can give it, while the poor man
may be unable to do so. If this be a hardship
and an inequality, then, it belongs not to this
law, but grows out of the state of society, and
is involved in the administration of all laws.
The poor man cannot command the services
of eminent counsel as the rich one can; but is
this a good reason why he should not be tried
for the offences he may commit? This misfor



118      EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
tune of poverty, the Maine law will lift, as a
heavy burden, from the shoulders of the poor;
and it is, therefore, emphatically, the poor man's
friend. And hence I invoke the poor, by every
motive of self-interest as well as of duty, to
unite in introducing a great public blessing,
of which more than a common share will be
their own.
Under the auspices of this beneficent law,
I trust the time has now come, when the importer of intoxicating liquors will discover some
other stream of wealth than that which flows
to him from ten thousand fountains of sorrow;
when the distiller will no longer seek to get his
fine gold by casting human hearts into fires
hotter than those of his own caldrons; and
when the wealthy owners of real estate will
feel that they are abetters and accomplices in
the guilt of this inhuman traffic, so long as
they derive revenues from marts where men
exchange health for disease, reason for insanity, innocence for remorse, and happiness and
length of days for misery and an ignominious
death. In the promise and prospect of the
healing of millions of wretched hearts, there is
a foretaste of divine and eternal joy which
must enkindle the fervor and combine the energies of all men who ask for themselves a respectable name and place in society.




ON TIE RICH AND EDUCATED.    119
It is too plain for argument, that the suppression of intemperance is a preliminary process
in every social amelioration  What useful or
desirable end can ever be subserved by the
intemperate? Will they help to advance the
progress of any science, of any kind of art or
literature, or to promote a single rational pleasure or comfort of any man's life? Would not
the United States be a far richer and a far
happier nation, if the four hundred thousand
drunkards it is said to contain were to be laid
in their graves before another setting sun?
And what a heaven of blessedness to them and
to all it would usher in, were they to be visited
by the angel of reformation instead of the angel
of death! What can Bible or Christianizing
Societies do with the intemperate? At best,
they can only address moral and religious sentiments whose animation is suspended. -All
the Benevolent Associations formed for the
relief of orphans and widows, and for clothing,
feeding, and educating the children of the intemperate poor, have no resources commensurate with the victims of orphanage, widowhood,
and penury, whom intemperance is constantly
throwing upon their hands. And how can the
patriot forefend the evils which the suffrages
of intemperate men will inflict upon his coun



120     EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
try? We know that, on all moral and social
questions, this class of men is prone to vote for
the retrogradation of society; and to attempt
to prevent it, while they remain intemperate, is
like an attempt to stop ocean tides with a bulrush. Let, then, every man who feels himself
connected with the human race by any tie of
interest, pride, honor, patriotism, philanthropy,
or religion, join in one sovereign effort to cast
from mankind this mountain weight of iniquity.
In an especial manner, let the prosperous and
the gifted, —the favored of fortune in their
ample stores, and the beloved of nature in their
lofty endowments, -fulfil the great mission of
beneficence to which they have been appointed,
- their superior gifts being their charter. Let
them embrace the inspiring idea of leaving the
world better than they found it, and of giving
scope to the sublime law of Human Progression. jLet the good and the great, wherever
found, send abroad thoughts and words of
electric power, till the nation shall be roused
from its lethargy, and the awakened earth shall
shake itself free from this unnatural thraldom.
Nowhere can the lovers of their kind discover
a nobler field for benevolent exertion. In no
other theme can the Christian orator find arguments of such resistless power to awaken the




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.     121
dormant, or to overawe and reclaim the wicked.
Nor is there aught in the enchantments of
immortal verse like the uplifting music of the
song with which the ransomed captive celebrates his deliverance from guilty bondage.
I invoke the sons of genius, through the sure
promotion and supremacy of this cause, to add
a lustre to their names which the highest perfection of their own beautiful arts can never give,
and which no corrosions of time can ever impair. Painters! Sculptors! representatives of
a race whose eldest born dwelt amid forms
of eternal beauty, and whose hallowed spirits,
in every age, have presided over the sanctuaries
where genius has worshipped; know you not
that there are forms of loftier beauty than any
which ever shone in the galleries of art; -
souls! souls, created in the very likeness of
God! but now faded, blackened, defiled, deformed,-yet still capable of renovation, still
capable of being. apparelled in such celestial
coloring, and of bearing such a divine impress
as no skill of human artist can ever emulate!
I know that the out-raying gladness of the
forms which quicken beneath your plastic skill
betoken to the eye of sense a living spirit
within; yet reason assures us that, though we
call them "divine," they are still unconscious.




122      EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
They are not happy, nor can you breathe
into them  the Promethean fire.  However
deeply they may thrill or ravish us, we know
their charms are external only; that no immortal spirit is enshrined beneath their surface;
that conscience, benevolence, and joy are not
their attributes. Spare, then, a brief hour, to
shed actual blessedness on bosoms whose heavings and anguish are no illusion of the senses.
Leave, for a time, the dead marble and the
insensate canvas; mount up to higher conceptions of art than to give coloring, however brilliant, or shape, however exquisite, to inanimate
forms; go from perishable matter to the imperishable spirit, and pour blissful feelings deepinward, along the agonized nerve and the quivering heartstrings. You shape the semblance
of divinest contour and features, but they are
cold and motionless; their very existence to
themselves is death, and day and night are alike
darkness to them; -is it not nobler to waken,
all the day long, in redeemed households, such
spontaneous songs of joy as the statue of
Memnon never uttered, and to send dreams of
paradise, by night, to visit the once thorny pillow of wife and children? Rise, then, from the
feigned to the real, and by reluming the human
countenance with the light of long-departed




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.    123
joys, convert your own loveliest emblems into
glorious realities. As you await a happy moment of inspiration to give the last, lighting-up
touches to your own choicest works; so seize the
higher inspirations of benevolence to solace the
disconsolate, and thus give a hallowing finish,
an unfading halo, to your own fame, and consecrate the immortality you win.
Ministers! Evangelists! you, who claim to
be messengers of peace on earth, and heralds
of glad tidings to men; you, to whom are given
the motives of two worlds to guide the conduct
of one! Are not all the truths, whether of time
or of eternity, your willing auxiliaries in this
cause; and, with heavenly combatants, can
you not subdue an earth-born foe? Until this
great crime is exterminated, your divine work
is scarcely begun. Rocks of adamant will heed
your mission sooner than the rebel heart of intemperance. The former are passive, the latter
is aggressively hostile. Intemperance goes before you, sterilizing the earth. It follows your
footsteps, uprooting whatever you may have
transplanted from heaven. It seduces the unconscious young into guilty beginnings. It
stands at every crossing in the highways of life,
and points the unwary the road to death. All
who are enthralled by its power, it corrupts,




124     EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
maddens, demonizes; and every day, while
you are delaying, it gathers new strength, and
meditates bolder rebellions against the Most
High. So far as you do not vanquish this
enemy, you and your cause are vanquished.
Hasten, then, to the work of reform. Be disquieted and inconsolable. Sorrow for an erring
brother will supply the energy to reclaim him.
Admonish, persuade, supplicate, in words of
wisdom, and in the spirit of an all-comprehending sympathy. Remember that love is a universal solvent, and that wise actions are prayers
which Heaven always answers. Rest not, cease
not, until every captive is unbound; until,
within your several spheres of action, there shall
not be one father whose gray hairs are brought
down with sorrow to the grave by an intemperate son; nor one son who shall not be able
to say, in language as touching as that of the
parable, My father was dead, and is alive
again, was lost,.but is found.
I invoke also the loveliness and the energies
of Woman for this holy work. Let her pour
her tenderest pathos into the ears of men until
the hardness of their hearts shall be melted
away. Let mothers and sisters combine, and
create a social power more formidable and pervasive than the ballot, -a power that shall




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.    125
reach the spreaders of human ruin, not only on
election days, but on all days; and baffle not
only their political ambitions and hopes, but
all their ambitions and hopes, until they shall
abstain from so mighty a wrong. As a Sister
of Charity, woman has so long sought, with
unavailing effort, to succor the multitudinous
victims of intemperance, that we wonder that
ere this she has not turned Gorgon, to avenge
the woes which have proved too manifold and
deep for mortal sympathy to compass or to console. In the natural world, there is a law of
storms, which directs their course, and determines the point of their direst intensity. The
more desolating tempests of this vice have also
their law; and it is, that wherever the wife
and the mother may be, there is always the
centre of the storm; there its rage beats fiercest,
and its howlings are most terrific.
Young men, -you last, you chiefest, let me
implore! You, whose precious privilege it
still is, to make life long by commencing the
performance of its duties early! Where lie
your own welfare, your own honor, your own
blessedness?  Lie they not in that future
course of life which is to flow out of your
own minds and hearts, and which your own
hands are to fashion, as the temple is fashioned




126     EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE
by the builder? The Future, that greatest heritage on earth, is all your own. Dilate, expand
your thoughts to some comprehension of its
value. Each day is a tablet which is put into
your hands, unmarked by a single line. Your
thoughts, your resolves, your deeds, for that
day, are engraven upon it; it is then taken
away and deposited in the chambers of the indestructible Past. There, by an irreversible law
of God, it must remain forever; nor time, nor
decay, nor man, nor angels can ever obliterate
a word of its eternal record. Let that record be
your glory, and not your shame, forever. You
have the ladder that Jacob only dreamed of.
When a Roman youth passed from minority
to manhood, -when he ceased to be a child in
the family, and became a pillar of the state,the day of his emancipation was celebrated
with solemn services. The ceremony of putting
on the graceful garment of manhood, in token
that the duties of manhood were then to be
assumed, was performed on some great festival
day of the nation, amid crowds of assembled
friends, and under the auspices of his household gods. Thence, in long procession, they
moved to some public temple, where, with
songs and vows, they implored the divinities to
crown with honor and usefulness the life of the




ON THE RICH AND EDUCATED.    127
new-born citizen; while he himself was commended, and, as it were, apprenticed, to the
example of some of the city's illustrious men.
Such were the solemn rites and aspirations
which ushered a young man into life in pagan
Rome.   What holy resolutions, then, what
self-consecration of the entire life to truth and
duty, befit the aspiring and ingenuous youth of
the American republic! As your fathers are
swiftly passing away into the realms of silence,
do not all the transcendent interests of society,
its prosperity, its happiness, its honor in distant
lands and in distant times, devolve upon you?
How is all that is precious in our public instistitutions to be ennobled, and transmitted,
from early ancestors to late posterity, unless
one generation after another shall receive and
improve, and then pass it onward, as from hand
to hand?  Grasp, then, this conception of
your high destiny. Embody it in deeds. Your
power to fulfil it is the choicest boon of Heaven;
and ere the habits, the morals, the institutions
of society pass beyond your reach forever, redeem them from all pollution, cast out from them
the seeds of death and every element of decay,
and imbue them with the immortal strength of
knowledge,purity, and Temperance.