to his family the inheritance of an untarnished name, the example of virtues that should blossom for his sons and daughters from the tomb-though she would have wept bitterly indeed, the tears of grief would not have been also the tears of shame. But to behold him, fallen away from the station he once adorned, degraded from eminence to ignominy-at home, turning his dwelling to darkness, and its holy endearments to mockery-abroad, thrust from the companionship of the worthy, a self-branded outlaw-this is the wo that the wife feels is more dreadful than death,-that she mourns over as worse than widowhood. There is yet another picture behind, from the exhibition of which I would willingly be spared. I have ventured to point to those who daily force themselves before the world, but there is one whom the world does not know of —who hides herself from prying eyes, even in the innermost sanctuary of the domestic temple. Shall I dare to rend the veil that hangs between, and draw her forth?-the priestess dying amid her unholy rites-the sacrificer and sacrifice? Oh! we compass sea and land, we brave danger and death, to snatch the poor victim of heathen superstition from the burning pile-and it is well -but shall we not also save the lovely ones of our own household, from immolating on this foul altar, not only the perishing body, but all the worshipped graces of her sex-the glorious attributes of hallowed womanhood! Imagination's gloomiest reverie never conceived of a more revolting object, than that of a wife and mother, defiling in her own person the fairest work of her God, and setting at nought the holy engagements for which he created her. Her husband-who shall heighten his joys, and dissipate his cares, and alleviate his sorrows? She, who has robbed him of all joy, who is the source of his deepest care, who lives his sharpest sorrow?-These are indeed the wife's delights-but they are not hers. Her children--who shall watch over their budding virtues, and pluck up the young weeds of passion and vice? She, in whose bosom every thing beautiful has withered, every thing vile grows rank? Who shall teach them to bend their little knees in devotion, and repeat their Saviour's prayer against temptation?" She, who is herself temptation's fettered It ought never to be forgotten petite finds no peace except in some They make their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law." If all excitability is not destroyed, and he is visited by a momentary pang of remorse, he flies to the relief of the sovereign opiate, and sinks back to stupidity again. This remark has been often verified in the late revivals of religion in our land. Drunkards have in some instances been alarmed and apparently under serious impression; but a return to the cup has drowned the voice of conscience, and erased the impression, and few, very few, have given evidence of conversion to God. The evils of intemperance, as they respect the general interests of society, are classed in different divisions. The iniseries of pauperism are chiefly imputable to this cause. From an examination into the state of the alms-houses in Portland, Portsmouth, New-York, and Baltimore, it was found, according to documents introduced by Mr. P., that the greater part of their wretched tenants were brought thither by intemperance. In one, two thirds, in another, three fourths, in another, four fifths and in another, six sevenths, of their number, owed their poverty and degradation to The proportion, we this cause. apprehend, is not much less in our country towns. Drunkards, and The next of the public evils of the families of drunkards, compose intemperance, is the multiplication at least two thirds of the whole of crimes. number of paupers. This fact, however, gives but a faint idea of the poverty caused by intemperance. The number of those reduced to want, but kept from becoming a public burden by private charity,is much greater; and the want and wretchedness, from the same cause, of multitudes more who receive no assistance, is almost beyond calculation. Should any benevolent individual undertake to ascertain the dimensions of this evil, and visit all the miserable hovels, and all the abodes of squallid poverty, and investigate the causes which have brought their tenants to this condition, he would find three fourths, at least, and we we believe nine tenths, of all this wretchedness to result from the idleness, improvidence, and expense,occasioned by intemperance. "I have seen," says one--"I have seen ardent spirits more than once, form, with a scanty allowance of bread and meat, the only meal of an almost perishing family. I have seen a mother and her children hovering, in the depth of winter, over a few dying embers, half naked and half starved; bread and water the only nourishment of the children, bread and rum of the parents.' "I have seen a little child, squallid and filthy, pinched with cold and want, covered but not protected from the inclemency of the winter, by a few tattered garments, her bare feet on the frozen earth, stealing along with a broken pitcher to bring to her parents the liquor, which was to serve for the morning's repastwhilst in their comfortless dwelling, gladdened by no blazing hearth, they were waiting in bed, with a drunkard's longing, for that which to them was better than food, clothing, or fire."* *Dr. John Ware's Address, quoted by Sprague. Intemperance is not only a crime in itself, but is more prolific than any other cause of crimes. Drunkenness produces in many of its subjects a temporary madness, and in his phrenzy the drunkard" scatters firebrands.arrows, and death." Mr. P. has furnished a number of facts in illustration of this position. In 1819, three fourths of the assaults and batteries charged in the city and county of New-York, and brought before the court of sessions, proceeded from the degrading use of ardent spirits. A judge of NorthCarolina lately declared from the bench, that of the cases of manslaughter which had come before him, there was not one which had not been occasioned by intemperance; and few of murder which were not attributable to the same cause. The following is a remark of Sir Matthew Hale. "The places of judicature," said that great lawyer, "which I have so long held in this kingdom, have given me opportunity to observe the original cause of most of the enormities that have been committed for the space of near twenty years; and by a due observation I have found that if the murders and man slaughters, the burglaries and robberies, the riots and tumults, the adulteries and other great enormities, that have happened in that time, were divided into five parts, four of them have been the issue and product of excessive drinking, of tavern and alehouse meetings. We learn from another source that out of one thousand and sixty-one cases of criminal prosecution in the year 1820, before the court of sessions in the city of New-York, more than eight hundred were stated to have been connected with intemperance. Judge Rush, of Pennsylva. nia, makes the following declara tion in a charge to the grand-jury.* "I declare, in this public manner, and with the most solemn regard to truth, that I do not recollect an instance, since my being concerned in the administration of justice, of a single person being put on his trial for man-slaughter, which did not originate in drunkenness; and but few instances of trials for mur der, where the crime did not spring from the same unhappy cause. A moment's reflection will be sufficient to convince you, gentlemen, that the various breaches of the peace, that are daily brought before the courts, are derived in a greater or less degree from this infamous and mischievous vice." A respectable young gentleman, resident in Louisiana, stated to us in conversation a few weeks since, that a man could not maintain a respectable standing in society there, who would receive an insult, without demanding satisfaction in an honorable way. We inquired of him, low a man could mingle in such society, without exposure to the necessity of giving or accepting a challenge? He replied, that this was not at all difficult, as most of the insults which resulted in duels ori ginated over the bottle. "The way therefore, to avoid the necessity of fighting a duel, in that part of our country, is, as the Scotchmen say, just to keep sober.” The board of managers of the the Prison Discipline Society say, "Intemperance directly, or indirectly, furnishes a great proportion of the subjects for Houses of Correction and Prisons." From these documents the conclusion is obvious, that intemperance is the great cause of those crimes which require civil punishment that if this single vice could be exterminated, man-slaughters would nearly cease, murders would be few, assaults and batteries and breaches of the peace would be rare, our prisons emptied, and our courts discharged from a great part of their burdens. The evils of intemperance have a fearful aspect in respect to our civil liberty. This is exhibited by our authors with a fine glow of patriotic feeling. nation is our own. spread intemperance to a people govThe ruinous consequences of wideerning themselves, can hardly be overrated. If there be on earth one nation more than another, whose institutions must draw their life-blood from the individual purity of its citizens, that Rulers by divine right, and nobles by hereditary succession, may, perhaps, tolerate with impunity those depraving indulgencies which keep the great mass abject. Where the many enjoy little or no power, it were a trick of policy to wink at those enervating vices, which would rob them of both the ability and the inclination to enjoy it. But in our country, where almost every man, however humble, bears to the omnipotent ballotbox his full portion of the sovereigntywhere at regular periods the ministers of authority, who went forth to rule, return to be ruled, and lay down their dignities at the feet of the monarch multitude-where, in short, public sentiment is the absolute lever that moves the political world, the purity of the people is the rock of political safety. We may boast, if we please, of our exalted privileges, and fondly imagine that they will be eternal-but whenever those vices shall abound, which undeniably tend to debasement, steeping the poor and the ignorant still lower in poverty and ignorance, and thereby destroying that wholesome mental equality, which can alone sustain a selfruled people—it will be found by woful experience, that our happy system of government, the best ever devised for the intelligent and good, is the very worst to be entrusted to the degraded and vicious. The great majority will then truly become a many-headed monster, to be tamed and led at will. The tremendous power of suffrage, like the strength of the eyeless Nazarite, so far from being their protection, will but serve to pull down upon their heads the temple their ancestors rear ed for them. Caballers and demagogues will find it an easy task to delude those who have deluded themselves; and the freedom of the people will finally be buried in the grave of their virtues. National greatness may survive-splendid talents and brilliant victories may fling their delusive lustre abroad-these can illumine the darkness that hangs around the throne of a despot-but their light will be like the baleful flame that hovers over decaying mortality, and tells of the corruption that festers beneath. The immortal spirit will have gone--and along our shores, and among our hills-those shores made sacred by the sepulchre of the Pilgrim, those hills hallowed by the uncoffined bones of the Patriot even there, in the ears of their degenerate descendants,shall ring the last knell of departed Liberty. I would not, even in anticipation, do my country injustice. I glory in my citizenship. With the exception of the one hateful vice, which is spreading its ravages far and wide, we may proudly challenge a comparison with the dominions of the earth. The present, however, is not a time for the silken phrases of self-condemnation. This gross and besetting sin, the parent of so many others, is a national blot and if it shows the darker on our scutcheon, that it pollutes so fair a surface, it becomes more imperiously the duty of every patriotic citizen to assist in removing it. Let not our glory and disgrace go hand in hand. When we exultingly proclaim to the decrepit communities of the old world, how far we have out-stripped them in liberty, let them not be able to tell us that we have also out-stripped them in a vice, which is liberty's most deadly foe. If that be true, which we have been told, let it teach us humility, and excite us to amendment-that though but two hundred years a people, but fifty years a nation, we have already, in this particular, attained a wicked preeminence over kingdoms that had seen centuries come and depart, long before the white sail of Columbus caught the inspiring winds of our western sky.-Sprague. pp. 20—22. It is admitted that intelligence and virtue are the pillars of republican institutions, and that the illumination of schools, and the moral power of religious institutions are indispensable to produce this intelligence and virtue. But who are found so uniformly in the ranks of irreligion as the intemperate? Who like these violate the Sabbath, and set their mouth against the heavens-neglecting the education of their families-and corrupting their morals? Almost the entire amount of national ignorance and crime is the offspring of intemperance. Throughout the land, the intemperate are bewing down the pillars, and undermining the foundations of our national edifice. Legions have besieged it, and upon every gate the battle-ax rings; and still the sentinels sleep. Should the evil advance as it has done, the day is not far distant when the great body of the labouring classes of the community, the bones and sinews of the nation, will be contaminated; and when this is accomplished, the right of suffrage becomes the engine of self-destruction. For the labouring classes constitute an immense majority, and when these are perverted by intemperance, ambition needs no better implements with which to dig the grave of our liberties, and entomb our glory. Such is the influence of interest, ambition, fear, and indolence, that one violent partizan, with a handful of disciplined troops, may overrule the influence of five hundred temperate men, who act without concert. Already is the disposition to temporize, to tolerate, and even to court the intemperate, too apparent, on account of the apprehended retribution of their perverted suffrage. The whole power of law, through the nation, sleeps in the statute-book, and until public sentiment is roused and concentrated, it may be doubted whether its execution is possible. Where is the city, town, or village, in which the laws are not openly violated, and where is the magistracy that dares to carry into effect the laws against the vending or drinking of ardent spirits? Here then an aristocracy of bad influence has already risen up, which bids defiance to law, and threatens the extirpation of civil liberty. As intemperance increases, the power of taxation will come more and more into the hands of men of intemperate habits and desperate fortunes; of course the laws gradually will become subservient to the debtor, and less efficacious in protecting the rights of property. This will be a vital stab to liberty-to the security of which property is indispensable. For money is the sinew of war-and when those who hold the property of a nation cannot be protected in their rights, they will change the form of government, peaceably if they may, by violence if they must. In proportion to the numbers who have no right in the soil, and no capital at stake, and no moral principle, will the nation be exposed to violence and revolution. In Europe, the physical power is bereft of the right of suffrage, and by the bayonet is kept down. But in this nation, the power which may be wielded by the intemperate and ignorant is tremendous. These are the troops of the future Cæsars, by whose perverted suffrages our future elections may be swayed, and ultimately our liberties destroyed. They are the corps of irreligious and desperate men, who have something to hope, and nothing to fear, from revolution and blood. Of such materials was the army of Cataline composed who conspired against the liberties of Rome. And in the French revolution, such men as Lafayette were soon swept from the helm, by mobs composed of the dregs of creation, to give place to the revolutionary furies which followed.-Beecher. pp. 56-59. Let no one turn away his eyes from this subject, or laugh at these representations, as the fancy of a sickly brain, or as a topic introduced merely to display the powers of the orator. The danger is real, and cannot be denied unless we will shut our eyes to the light of history, and deny the connection between cause and effect; it cannot long be disregarded with impunity; the time to meet it will soon have passed by, and we as a people may lament in the sadness of despair, over an evil too great to be remedied. Mr. P. presents this subject in a style of cool and conclusive argumentation. I affirm no more than is past contradiction; that slaves to their own desires are ready to be slaves to other men; that luxury has been the bane and ruin of republics; and that the vile indulgence which is now a destruction wasting at noon-day among us, is luxury in one of its most menacing forms, and prepares a worthless population the most effectually for a master's yoke. We are jealous of our liberties, we say. And are we the first of modern free states that have been so, and yet have fallen? Was not Venice watchful of its liberty, and self-devoting to maintain it, till enterprize brought wealth, and wealth, indulgence, and indulgence, effeminacy, and effeminacy, bondage? We are wise and refined, we think. Was Florence less so, when it unsaid all its weighty republican maxims, and bowed its neck to the foot of a rich and popular citizen? No, the guardian of our institutions is public virtue; an erect, manly virtue, in full command of all its powers; an independent virtue, not capable of being seduced for the offered supply of a base appetite. Let but the habit we have been to-day contemplating pursue its ravages, and that virtue will fast be sapped. A miserable population will grow numerous, the subjects alike of intimidation and bribes. Without sense of character, without means of living, they will stand ready to be the instruments of the ambitious purposes of any wicked man. Is it thought such persons will value their own political prerogatives too much to forego them, though they may not respect those of others, too much to invade them? What care such persons for the difference between one political relation and another? Their tastes have another object; and is it to be supposed that the despotic appetite against which natural affection is powerless, is to pause in opposition to a thing so unsubstantial as a theory of the rights of man? I cannot avoid thinking, that as there is no darker stain in our national morals, so there is no darker cloud over our political prospects,-the prospect of the permanency of our free institutions, than this. I see not how this view can be gainsaid, if it be true, as it is unquestionable, that intemperance is an evil of vast extent among us; that it is a thorough corrupter of the mind, |