lic hospital." The force of this anecdote must come home to every one. Nothing is more common, even in the best society, than the practice of administering wine, punch, &c. even to children thus not only injuring their health, and predisposing them to disease, but laying the foundation for intemperance in their maturer years.

Having stated thus much, it is not to be inferred that I advocate the banishment of liquors of any kind from society. Though I believe mankind would be benefitted upon the whole, were such stimulants to be utterly proscribed, yet, in the present state of things, and knowing the fruitlessness of any such recommendation, I do not go the length of urging their total disuse. I only would wish to inculcate moderation, and that in its proper meaning, and not in the sense too often applied to it; for, in the practice of many, moderation (so called) is intemperance, and perhaps of the most dangerous species, in so far as it becomes a daily practice, and insinuates itself under a false character, into the habits of life. Men thus indulge habitually, day by day, not perhaps to the extent of producing any evident effect either upon the body or mind at the time, and fancy themselves all the while strictly temperate, while they are, in reality, undermining their constitution by slow degrees -killing themselves by inches, and shortening their existence several years. The quantity such persons take at a time, is perhaps moderate and 18*

beneficial, if only occasionally indulged in, but, being habitually taken, it injures the health, and thus amounts to actual intemperance. "It is," says Dr. Beccher, and I fully concur with him, "a matter of unwonted certainty, that habitual tippling is worse than periodical drunkenness. The poor Indian who once a-month drinks himself dead, all but simple breathing, will outlive for years the man who drinks little and often, and is not perhaps suspected of intemperance. The use of ardent spirits daily, as ministering to cheerfulness or bodily vigour, ought to be regarded as intemperance. No person probably ever did or ever will receive ardent spirits into his system once a-day and fortify his constitution against its deleterious effects, or exercise such discretion and self-government, as that the quantity will not be increased, and bodily infirmities and mental imbecility be the result; and, in more than half the instances, inebriation. Nature may hold out long against this sapping and mining of the constitution, which daily tippling is carrying on, but, first or last, this foe of life will bring to the assault enemies of its own formation, before whose power the feeble and the mighty will be alike unable to stand."

Let those, therefore, who will not abandon liquors, use them in moderation, and not habitually, or day by day, unless the health should require it, for cases of this kind we sometimes do meet with, though by no means so often as many would be

lieve. Abstractly considered, liquors are not injurious. It is their abuse that makes them so, in the same manner as the most wholesome food becomes pernicious when taken to an improper ex

cess.

APPENDIX.

No. I.

Excerpt from Paris' Pharmacologia.

"THE characteristic ingredient of all wines is alcohol, and the quantity of this, and the condition or state of combination in which it exists, are the circumstances that include all the interesting and disputed points of medical inquiry. Daily experience convinces us that the same quantity of alcohol, applied to the stomach under the form of natural wine, and in a state of mixture with water, will produce very different effects upon the body, and to an extent which it is difficult to comprehend: it has, for instance, been demonstrated that Port, Madeira, and Sherry, contain from onefourth to one-fifth of their bulk of alcohol, so that a person who takes a bottle of either of them, will thus take nearly half a pint of alcohol, or almost a pint of pure brandy! and moreover, that different wines, although of the same specific gravity, and consequently containing the same absolute proportion of spirit, will be found to vary very considerably in their intoxicating powers; no wonder, then,