The report then asks what further laws may be enacted for the suppression of the evil, and it suggests laws to diminish the quantity sold at single sales, to raise the price of liquors and increase the duty on imported liquors, to advance the price of licenses, to limit the number of licenses granted, to severely punish drunkenness as an offense, in itself, to appoint special officers to enforce the laws, to provide for a close inspection of licensed houses and a strict guardianship over the estates of intemperate wards, withholding the means of intoxication.

There were important movements in other States. Respectable committees in New York, Philadelphia, and other places were prosecuting assiduous inquiries in regard to the evils of intemperance to ascertain their true extent, and to suppress or lessen them. Some Legislatures strengthened their laws against the liquor traffic. An ex-President of the United States more than once employed his pen on the subject. It also engaged the attention of the Governor of New York who, in his speech to the Legislature, urged that body to pass "some law to prevent the habitual drunkard from exhibiting in public the odious vice of drunkenness, and by its frequency rendering it less detestable; and to restrain him from wasting his property, thereby bringing his family, for whom he is bound to provide by the strongest obligations, to want and wretchedness." "As auxiliary to the end," he recommended "that accounts or contracts for ardent spirits, by retail, should not be recoverable by law." Also the Legislature of Vermont appointed a committee composed of the Governor, other principal officers of the government, and respectable individuals residing in different parts of the State, for the purpose of suppressing intemperance. Another State wisely forbade justices of the peace to hold their courts in taverns. The "North American Review" was also enlisted in the great reform, publishing many valuable articles.

We have thus given in detail some facts of this period, that we may the better understand the character of this great struggle in its incipiency.

"In 1822," says Dr. Justin Edwards,' "a teamster, partially intoxicated, fell under the wheels of his wagon, and was crushed to death. Another man, tending a coal pit, became partially intoxicated, fell asleep upon some straw, and was burned to death. These events occasioned the delivery of two discourses, one on the wretchedness of intemperate men, and the other on the duty of preventing sober men from becoming intemperate. The means of doing this, the sure means, and the only means were shown to be abstinence from the use of intoxicating drinks. This was shown by facts to be practicable and expedient, and was urged to be the indispensable duty of all men, a duty which they owed to God, to themselves, to their children, to their country, and to the world."

"This doctrine appeared strange to many, excited great attention, occasioned much conversation, and, under the blessing of the Lord, produced great results. A conviction of the duty of abstinence was fastened on many consciences; and it became evident from facts that this doctrine was adapted to commend itself to every man's conscience in the sight of God."

But this new reform made slow progress. The odds were fearfully against it, and its basis was not sufficiently radical to produce marked results. It only attempted to restrain the use of liquors to moderate quantities, and this chiefly in the case of distilled spirits. This was, perhaps, as much as could be expected in the infancy of the enterprise. But as they sowed sparingly the immediate harvest was scanty. The foul weeds of intemperance grew so rank and thick that, under so superficial a culture, they continued to thrive with most destructive luxuriance. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Massachusetts Society languished, and that within a few years of its organization some of its most distinguished members advocated its dissolution. At a subsequent period (1829) Hon. Isaac Parker, Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court of Massa

1 "Permanent Temperance Documents," p. 19.

chusetts, who had been one of the earliest presidents of the Society, referring to the slow progress of the cause during the first few years of its existence, said: "Many seeing no happy results after many years of efforts have retired from the field in despair. I am one of this number." A few years later he reengaged in the movement.

The great evil rolled on with widening sway and increasing malignity.

"We have to regret," said the "Boston Recorder," in 1823, "that the efforts for a reform are so few and feeble. The laws are poorly executed. Nothing comparatively is yet actually accomplished. Moral societies which sprung into being a few years ago as by magic, at the alarming prevalence of vice, are merged nearly all into oblivion. Their influence was gone even sooner than their name. Intemperance now walks at large aided rather than opposed by law. The sale of licenses has become a source of

public revenue at the expense of public virtue. . . . It is an evil of wide extent in the land. No check is given or scarcely attempted. Philanthropists, statesmen, and Christians witness and deplore it. As a destroying angel, it lifts its pallid front and ghastly look in our cities,

towns, and scattered settlements. It reels and wears rags in every street, and moveth the heavens with drunken blasphemies under every hedge. . . Fifty millions of dollars lost is but a trifle compared with the moral influence of intemperance. This immense sum has poured down the throats of ten millions of people seventy-five millions of gallons of liquid fire, mingling and flowing with their life blood. Nay, more; must I not deduct at least one million of children and nearly the whole female portion of the population from the drinking community? We have then seventy-five millions of gallons boiling and burning in the flesh of four millions of men."

Thus had intemperance increased during all this period of superficial temperance efforts. We have before noticed that the average consumption of the stronger liquors (beer, ale, cider, etc., excepted) was, in 1792, two and a half gallons for each inhabitant of the United States of all ages. In 1810 it was four and four sevenths gallons, and in 1823 seven and a half gallons. It was not uncommon, at this time, to pronounce the Temperance Reformation a failure. And yet these preliminary movements were not in vain. The Massachusetts Society, the same body as originally incorporated, survives to this day, under the presidency of Hon. Jacob Sleeper, of Boston.

The labors of this society exerted in some minds a very considerable influence in producing a lively sense of the great evil of intemperance. It gradually enlightened the better class of men, excited discussion, led to a right understanding of the great vice, and prepared the way for future efforts. The difficulty was that the reform was not sufficiently radical for the virulence of the evil. Fermented liquors were not included in its indictment. No harm was suspected from them. Distilled or ardent spirits, as they were then called, were the objects toward which attention was directed; and of these only the excessive use was deplored. The original pledge of the Massachusetts Society prohibited only "the too free use of ardent spirits." They seem to have regarded the moderate use as something with which they had nothing to do.

Professor Calvin E. Stowe, in 1866, referred to this period as follows:

In 1819 I went to Maine, and found the farmers and fishermen reduced to the greatest misery by their drinking habits. There was one village inhabited almost entirely by lumbermen, and I believe there was more rum drank there, in the course of the year, than would be necessary to float the whole village off. In this village there was a temperance society formed, the pledge of which bound every one who should get drunk to treat the rest all around. In 1825 I entered the seminary at Andover as a theological student. When I first arrived at the Mansion House, which was kept for the exclusive benefit of the students and visitors at the seminary, the first thing I did was to step up to the bar, and order a glass of brandy toddy, which Squire, a leading supporter of the seminary, mixed with his own hands and gave me.

Dr. Stowe also mentions the deterioration of the physical constitutions of the people "during the three generations from the time just preceding the Revolution, in which the diseases arising from the use of intoxicating drinks increased a hundredfold. If there had not been a check, I believe, by this time, our whole population would have become idiotic."

One of the hinderances in the way of reform in this period was cider drinking. Enormous quantities were put into the cellars of all classes of persons, in the autumn, for the year's consumption, from ten to forty barrels to each family; and it was drank without stint, often accompanied with cider-brandy, one of the ugliest of liquors. No temperance pledges excluded cider until after 1836.

In the year 1825, Rev. Lyman Beecher, D.D., again appeared conspicuously in the list of temperance champions, and preached his famous "Six Sermons on Intemperance," which have since echoed round the world, reprinted in many languages. For many years, they were a leading standard document of the Temperance Reformation. The origin of these sermons was thus related by Dr. Beecher.'

1 "Autobiography," vol. ii.