the man, or rather the woman, that sold him the quart, for it was a woman, had there been the fear of God in her heart, then he had lived. Poor soul! he had several chances of living, but they all failed.

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And let me say here-though I am quite ashamed suppose that a woman would encourage that sin that is binding her sex in chains of iron-the woman who sold him the potion that brought him to a premature grave, had lived with an intemperate husband, who, in a fit of intoxication, had burned the building that stood on the very ground where she sold the rum. Thus men and women too, it seems, can sport with fire-brands, arrows, and death. It would seem that one had had the means of being warned and wakened, if any warning would render woman wise. But she took up her husband and buried him, and then went to selling rum. I sincerely hope she will not follow him to the drunkard's grave. When her bed was on fire first, and then her house, and she at length a widow, who would have dreamed that she would have employed herself in selling liquid fire? O tempora! O mores! I passed it a few evenings since, the evening of the Sabbath, and saw at her door two sturdy sons of Erin fisting and biting each other, like sons of Belial, and screaming at each bite, and pounce like panthers on some craggy rock of the Alps. We called the watch, and had them put where they would get sober, and where they would have oppor tunity to meet the police, all breakfasted and warm, and answer to the board, who gave them license to be riotous, for the tumult of the Sabbath evening.

O, how it sickens the heart to know one such case all through! I remember that it was a law in Israel, that in an extreme case, when a house had the leprosy, it should be cleansed by being burnt to ashes. But it

seems that even burning does not cleanse the modern leprosy. The disease outlives the fire, and comes up from the ashes like the fabled Phoenix, all fledged for a renewed occupancy. I suppose it finds a covert in the crumbling walls and burning timbers, and comes out again to infect the timbers and walls that are used in repairing the ruins. I fear nothing will cure it, but the heat of that pit, "the pile whereof is fire and much wood, and the breath of the Lord like a stream of brimstone doth kindle it."

In a town at the north, where the cause of temperance gained a few years since a sudden and powerful ascendancy in the public mind, there died a rum-seller, in circumstances that made a powerful impression on many minds. Another family lived in the house with him, and one day the lady of that family, perceiving by what she heard and saw, that something was going on that was wrong, burst suddenly into his apartment, and found him hanging by the neck. She called her husband, who immediately cut him down. But as it was his purpose to die as soon as he could recover strength, he broke from the embrace that held him, ran to a shelf, seized a razor, and hastily opened a jugular vein, and died in a few seconds.

The history of the transaction is short. The man had begun to be intemperate, was a customer at his own bar, and very soon perceived that he must feel the pressure of the hard times, which tippling always produces, especially when one becomes an inebriate at his own bar. He had been observed to be gloomy, but I do not remember that any apprehensions as to such a result had been entertained till the fatal moment when he was found hanging by the neck. How long he had been in the trade I do not remember, nor can I judge

to what extent he had offended the Lord, by the ruin he had brought upon other families. He was a dealer

in the article; and I remember that the society afterwards formed in that town calculated, that every trader in the town manufactured, at the least calculation one confirmed drunkard every three years, and şent one family down into the vale of beggary and rags and wretchedness. If, then, unless this calculation was erratic and wild, he had been a dealer in the article three years, and I know not but he had twenty, he had probably ruined one family, and God in righteous indignation made him a victim to his own traffic. I would willingly have thrown a veil over this scene, and saved his widow, who has married honourably, and his children, who, for aught I know, are doing well, the pain of applying this scrap of history to their own case, were it not that we have been silent too long already, and indulged our sense of delicacy till we have allowed the plague to spread through every limb of our rising and otherwise happy republic. But we must be no longer so much afraid of wounding the sensibility of the living, as not to expose the speaking facts which have transpired in the madness and ruin that men have brought upon themselves and others, by the sale of strong drink. If we had only courage enough to dig through the wall, and lay open the chamber of imagery, as the prophet was directed to do, and see the train of misery and death that moves in the wake of every rum-dealer in the land, the tale would make the ears of every one who heard it tingle. Oh! he has the heart of a tiger, and blood is his legitimate prey. When we see how with a spirit of cold moneyed calculation, he can take the lovely woman and the beloved wife and crucify her husband, and turn her from her home, to starve and

freeze, and make her children beggars and homeless and fatherless at a price at which one would hardly cut off the head of a dog. We are amazed at the long-suffering patience of God. And I know not whether he even weeps at the outrages he commits. Were I not the subject of feelings too strong to trust myself, I would stop and address him if I might in a voice loud enough to reach the two oceans. I would say, that the man who is destined to such a business, ought to have been whelped by a wolf and destined to wear his teeth and his appetite, that his personal equipments might agree with his office, and herd him with his kind. I would train him to his work in the business of a blood-hound, that he might scent his prey afar off. I would at least have him bred a hangman, and spend the whole fountain of his tears before he should be placed at the tap. Then his employment and his soul would be in unholy symphony.

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But I must return from my impassioned feeling, or you will say I rail. In our country every man must be free. True, but the term is abused. One ought not to be free to make disastrous inroads upon every family that he may have it in his power to destroy. He ought not to be free to do this even if the father of that family is willing that it should be done. If one had power suddenly to convert men into panthers, and could obtain license so to do, he ought not to feel himself at liberty to do it, till the whole community around him are consulted on the question whether it would be safe to have a panther run at large. To be free is not to be free to destroy, and he has not this kind of freedom even with regard to the soil he owns. He may not so use it as to injure his neighbour. He may not dig a deep pit and leave it open. He may not overthrow a building, even if he will, and can operate only on his own premises. He may not in

cautiously blast the ponderous rock that may lie in his own territory. He may not be free to remove some natural embankment that wards off a stream which, when turned upon his neighbour's habitation, would endanger the life of his family. One may not have the freedom to set fire to his own house. He may not fall the tree that may even throw down his neighbour's enclosures. Free as we are in this country, we are free only to use our own things so as not to injure our neighbour. And on this principle it is easy to show the extent to which men are free to sell ardent spirits.

Having finished my rhapsody last evening at rather a late hour, under strongly excited feelings, I retired to my bed, and fancied myself employed in advocating the cause of an injured man. He had been prosecuted for a libel by one of our retailers who would impede the cause of reform by bringing odium upon the man who ventured to rebuke his iniquitous traffic. It ran as follows, as nearly as I can remember.

May it please the court. I have risen to advocate the cause of an injured man. You have heard the testimony, and the wretch stands before you. What has his history been but that of a miser, a swindler, a calumniator, a robber, and a bear. I know the court feel clement while I name that man after the blackest prowler of the desert. He has lived to counteract the benevolence of God, and send want and misery, and infamy and death, into habitations, otherwise the abode of comfort and hope. It has been his employment, the work he delights in, and what his soul is shaped to, to barter disease, and famine, and riot, and ruin, for farms, and dwellings, and moneys, to hoard up, and boast of, and buy a name with, and friendship, and influence. I will not name his calling, for he disgraces even that,