room, the London clubs, or tea-gardens-enter them on the Sabbath-day, and listen to the filthy jests, the profane oaths, the impious scoffs at everything sacred, virtuous, and awful, and you will soon learn, that the instances given above are not solitary. And what is more awful still, you need not go out of your own vicinity to get a sight of these "whited sepulchres" or "hells;" and if you will visit them, you may find there the children that the other day wept under your instruction in the Sabbath-school; and, perhaps, the son and the daughter, that were once the joy of your house, to whom you first gave the poisonous cup, and whose taste is increased to such a degree, that they will now drink and die, and break your heart.

James Upton, Esq., of Throgmorton Street, in his Report in 1817, says, "The magnitude and enormity of the evil (drinking) is such, that I am really at a loss where to begin and where to end. The vital interests, both of nations and individuals are involved in it, no less so the domestic and public peace, and general safety. The evil is far more extensive than can be conceived by common minds, or superficial observers; its operation, I had almost said, is felt more or less in almost every family; I witnessed, when a student in Edinburgh in 1784, its fatal consequences in the infirmary, by an enlargement of the liver, to an extent almost unprecedented in this country. Many very excellent men have become subjects of incurable stomach complaints and wasted away, in middle life, where there has been countinghouse application; persons, too, who would have been shocked to be considered otherwise than sober men, seeing they only took one or two glasses a day. Travelers again, go much further, and generally die of brandied stomachs: in these stomachs, there is not the least power of either taking or keeping nourishment. The next degree is diseased liver, with deranged func tions of stomach and brain, dropsy, arterial ossifications, mental derangement, paralysis, serous apoplexy, and death. In this incurable state of things, all social, parental, filial, and religious feeling are completely destroyed, and every possible immorality is let loose to occupy their place. Such is the dreadful vacuum and craving sensation of stomach (all our moderate drinkers feel a sinking in the stomach) which drinking produces, that I

have no doubt, in order to quiet it, a man will and has sacraficed everything dear to man. This is not all; this mode of life excites artificial, sensual, and unchaste appetite, and you have an offspring possessing only half natural life. A vast number of women have been taught to drink, in the middle and higher classes, by taking indiscriminately quack medicines containing alcohol, hot seeds, and essential oils, such as Rhymer's tincture for gout in the stomach, Solomon's Balm of Gilead," &c. This gentleman, who has been in extensive practice as a medical man, in and about the metropolis for thirty years, further states, that "this evil leads to Sabbath-breaking, thieving, murders, and cruelties of every description :" he adds, "that madness is a frequent consequence of the excessive use of spirits, and that in those cases where any hereditary tendency or predisposition to this malady exists, it is easy to conceive how the powerful stimulus of fermented drinks will be both likely to call it into action, and to aggravate its symptoms."

After reading such testimonies and extracts, we may use the expressive words of Professor Edgar : "From all correspondents, whether officers of excise, magistrates, or clergymen, there comes a most affecting cry of distress. Benevolence groans in every heart over the wide-spread ruin, and the eyes of the benevolent of every denomination are at present turned with intense anxiety to the British Legislature."

How far the Legislature may be able to stay the widely spreading scourge, is a question that may be difficult to solve; something, doubtless, our senators might do, but as the evil is one of domestic custom and arrangement, the reformation must begin at home. Laws simply viewed as legislative enactments are not very powerful, and severe penalties in enforcing them, have in numberless instances aggravated the evil, when the tastes and passions of the people have been adverse to obedience. Even the laws of Heaven are not obeyed, so long as the disposition of man is adverse to them, and hence the necessity of regeneration to change the moral taste and inclination of him who becomes the servant of God.

Our legislators may make what laws they please, but the nation must be cured of its love of strong drinks before those laws

will be heeded. As long as the parent, the friend, the minister, the Christian, the senator, calls for his ale, wine, or spirits, and drinks himself and commends the poisons to others, the laws of God and man must be set at defiance. These destructive liquors deprive men of reason and self-control; debilitate the frame, and produce an insatiable appetite for more stimulus; inflame all the sensual appetites of our nature, and arm them with a giant's impetuosity, ruin men's health and circumstances, and render them reckless and desperate, so that they "neither fear God nor regard man; and on a people thus bereft of health, intellect, moral feeling, and self government, laws are powerless, and legislative enactments against drunkenness mere waste paper. And why trouble our senators? They have already enough to do. Why raise and cherish a demon at our own fire-side, and then call upon Parliament to destroy the fiend? Would it be wise for every family in the country to send for the eggs of the cockatrice, or the cubs of the tigress, to hatch and feed and cherish these destroyers until they bit and poisoned and devoured our children, friends, and most valuable citizens, and then, after filling the land with reptiles and beasts of prey, to call upon the Queen and her Parliament to sweep them away Why introduce the monsters at all? To send for a plague worse than the cholera, and then call upon the Lords and Commons to drive it out of the land, is not acting like rational beings or Christians! Yet this is what we are doing, so long as we continue these drinks in any form in our houses.

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We teach our children to drink a liquor which poisons their bodies, their minds and their morals; and then are astonished that government does not check, that religion does not control, and that God does not subdue the aboundings of vice. In obedience to the solicitations of this infatuating spirit, we throw ourselves, or hurl our children from the pinnacle of the temple, and wonder that God does not send his angels to prevent any injury; too inconsiderate to reflect that it is said, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." We are not to swallow poison ourselves nor administer the same to others, and then expect a miracle from Heaven to extract the virus, or turn it into blessing. Just as rational would it be to use and commend the use of

arsenic or hemlock, and expect the senate to control or dilute and change these poisons, as to drink alcohol in any form or state, and call upon the government to save us from being destroyed.

Let the reformation begin at home; let us sweep "this leaven of malice and wickedness" from our houses; let us neither drink, nor recommend others to drink so pestilent a liquor; let us brand it with the deepest execration, and whether in the barrel, the pipe, or the puncheon, let us write in the largest characters, the word POISON upon it, that our children may take warning, and then the evil will be banished, and we shall be a saved and a happy people. We shall then no longer look for legislators to work miracles, nor presumptuously expect God to interfere to remove a scourge which a depraved taste and heart have prompted us to introduce. We shall presently show that neither wines nor ales are necessary to man, and shall fairly confute the delusive interpretations that have been put upon the wines mentioned in Revelations; and we shall also expose the great deception respecting the nutritious qualities of ales, beer and porter; but were we not capable of doing this, still the evils already detailed, as the natural results of drinking, ought to constrain us to enter into a vow of total abstinence.

Were wine nectar, were the nutriment of beer ambrosial, or as capable of giving immortality to our bodies as the tree of life in the garden of Eden, still, if partaking of either would become an occasion of sin to ourselves or others, we ought to abstain. Paul said, “He could wish himself accursed from Christ for his brethren after the flesh." Jesus Christ sacrificed himself for the salvation of men; martyrs gave up life, and all that was dear to life, rather than encourage or patronize any one sin of their time;—but what claim can we lay to their spirit, their society, or their glory, if we refuse to part with a poison which has swept its millions from the face of the earth? Medical authorities, magistrates, police reports, and ecclesiastical calculations have demonstrated that every species of disease is originated, that crimes at which humanity blushes are perpetrated, that the church to a most awful extent, is robbed of its members, and that death in every horrid and painful form is promoted by these accursed poisons; and if these facts are not sufficient to enkindle

feelings of indignation toward such a pest, and prompt us to penitence and abstinence, there is reason to fear that we "would not repent, though one rose from the dead."

When speaking of the crimes that are committed through drunkenness, in order to meet the objection, that iniquity has abounded among people not addicted to drinking, we showed that the moral and intellectual character of our day is different from that of any of those nations. Among them, education and religion were on the side of immorality; the people were trained to be vicious, and their very godliness was the extreme of criminality; they therefore did not need the poison of a stimulating liquor to destroy their reason, sear their consciences, or harden their hearts. "Their minds and consciences were defiled." But among us things are different. Our schools and our religion are calculated to make the people humane and moral, and would do so were it not for the influence of alcoholic drinks.

In attributing so much disease to inebriating liquors when but moderately used, perhaps we may be reminded that diseases have prevailed among those nations whose circumstances of necessity restrained them from alcohol. We grant all this but still we must say, that as our facilities for moral and intellectual culture are more numerous, so the means of preserving health are also much greater than those of any ancient nation. Our habits are more cleanly, our country is better drained, our cities and towns have their common sewers, the diet of the people is more nutritious, clothing is more comfortable, our houses better ventilated, and opportunities of recreation and exercise more numerous than those of any previous period, and we ought therefore to be the healthiest people upon earth.

We grant that in all the departments mentioned above, very much remains to be done, ay, and would instantly be done but for the talent and property that is annually wasted on inebriating poisons; but still, after making every deduction, the advantages in favor of health infinitely surpass those of former times: and yet, with all these blessings, we are getting the weakest and sickliest people alive. Strong men are become― not women; women, though the weaker vessels, would blush