ON INTEMPERANCE.

An Address delivered before the Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance. 1827.

IN discharging the duty which has been confided to me, I shall use great plainness of speech. The themes that lead to the pleasant fields of poetry, and tempt the wanderer to linger among the beautiful creations of fancy, are for other and happier seasons. The purpose for which we have assembled, awakening, as it does, so many painful associations, holds no communion with the bright regions of romance we tread the cold, gray waste of reality. The hour before us is one of severe and fearful reflection; and it becomes him who has been selected to occupy it, to speak the words of truth and soberness.

We have met to mourn over a calamity which, like one of the plagues sent to curse ancient Egypt, has come upon us, and upon our people, and into our houses, and into our bed-chambers,' and is desolating the land. We have met to bear our testimony against Drunkenness - and we call upon all good men to stand forth, and cheer us with their influence and example. We implore them as Christians, as Patriots, as Philanthropists, to join in the labor and

the praise of extirpating a vice that has taken deep root in our nation, spreading to its remotest borders, and dropping in its loveliest paths the seeds of misery, disease, and death.

The spectacle before us is indeed appalling. The victims of intemperance are wasting around us in frightful numbers. Neither sex, nor age, nor rank, nor talent, is unsubdued by the subtle destroyer. Man falls away from his glorious destiny, and woman is degraded from her angel station; the young bow their faces in the beauty of their promise, the mature are arrested in the pride of their usefulness, and the white locks of the old seek the tomb in disgrace; the rich are overcome in their splendid mansions, the poor in their dreary hovels; the arm of labor is paralyzed, the light of learning is extinguished; genius is struck down in his eagle career, and the holy functions of piety are defiled in the dust.

Friends-we may not sit in silence, while this devastation is going on. We have a duty to perform; and what we would do effectually, we must do unitedly. It is time for us to speak ;- the ear that would be deaf to the kind whisper of individual remonstrance, must hear the congregated voices of an alarmed community. Above all, it is time for us to act; the sin that shrouds itself in the broad mantle of custom, custom must expose and destroy. A vast proportion of the cases of confirmed intemperance may be traced, not so much to any innate depravedness, as to

the crafty workings of the unreproved usages of society; and we, who continue to follow these usages, even while we laugh at them, are ourselves more or less chargeable with the evils we lament over, and are bound to exert our efforts for the alleviation of them. I say, our efforts - not merely those which are exhausted in assembling to hear admonitory addresses, too often only criticised and forgotten -in showering abroad tracts, 'that seem to pass off like a thick flight of snow, leaving no trace of their passage, and disappearing where they fall;'-these things, certainly, are not to be left undone; but if we would have them of any avail, something more must be done also. Least of all can we rely on the unassisted arm of authority. We may invoke the laws, but we may as well invoke the dead. Laws can only operate when the mischief is done. Prevention is what we want-remedy utterly loses its character. Indeed, though we very properly punish the thief and the murderer, for crimes against which we all set our faces, with what consistency can we punish the drunkard, for an offence to which our own daily practices naturally lead him? We do all but the deed ourselves—we tread on the borders of the forbidden ground, and then angrily cry out for justice on him who goes one step farther. Enforce the laws!' exclaims some virtuously-indignant citizen, as he beholds the low-born drunkard shaming the fair face of day -'enforce the laws!'

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and with these words on his lips, he coolly arranges the evening club, from the carousings of which if he retires unexposed, it is because the shades of night do more for him than his own prudence. 'Suppress drinking-houses and soda establishments!' cries the anxious father, who shudders lest his son may drink there of the waters of death, which, however, he is not at all afraid to press upon his friends at home. Why does not government impose a tax on domestic spirits?' is the inquiry of one, who sits at his loaded table, boasting of the age of his foreign liquors, and recounting the various voyages that have rendered them so exquisite. Truly, there is a little absurdity in these things. Besides, we may fine and imprison a poor wretch, now and then, for intoxication; but it will go only a little way to reduce the evil—it will not teach him temperance. We may lessen the number of dram-shops that pour forth their steams of abomination from every hole and corner; but we all know that many a man becomes a drunkard before he sets his foot within one- it will not teach him temperance. We may call upon our rulers to lay heavy duties on imported and domestic liquors; but, should they even be courageous enough to do so, it would only tempt the importer to become a smuggler, and instruct the distiller to outwit the exciseman-perhaps it might put money into the public treasury but it would not teach

men temperance. No! we must go beyond all this