to excess, because they are in general use among us, meeting us at every turn, and because with or without what in the individual case we call cause, it is to excess in frequent instances, that, when generally used at all, they tend with a powerful urgency. Every where men meet with them, and, meeting with them, men are constitutionally liable to become their prey. This is not necessary, and many in fact escape. Numbers who use them, it is needless to say, are men without a blot. But what do we thence infer? We might master a lion who should waylay us; but a country infested with lions, would not therefore cease to be dangerous to live in. What has established that habit of society, which involves so much danger, and actually produces year by year so much woe? Partly, it may be supposed (for we hear that reason often given), that ardent spirits are reckoned to be useful in frequent exigencies of the health. Is a person chilled; they are the common prescription to warm him. Is he heated; they will refresh him. Is he fatigued in body, they will bring back strength; or in mind, they will restore tone and cheerfulness. Has he taken cold, they will expel it. Is he to be exposed to take cold, they are that preventive, a little of which is better than much cure. Are his nerves shaken, they will compose them. Is his blood sluggish, they will stir it. It would seem, to hear their virtues successively set forth, that the alchymists might break their crucibles, for the panacea was found. I shall not undertake to say, that there are not constitutions which they may benefit, when those constitutions have become inured to the sparing use of them. I shall not deny that there may be other peculiar constitutions to which, without the self-created demand of previous use, they may be serviceable; though I should think it not amiss in persons possessing such, to resolve that they will resort to them, as they would to mercury or hemlock, or any of the most unsafe materials of the healing art, that is, under the strict guidance of professional wisdom. But full often has the conscientious physician seen cause to rue the day when he gave for the medicine of the body what proved in the result, the bane of the soul; and if not one of the most brilliant recent discoveries of medical science, because not made of a sudden, still one of the most valuable, not to say the most so, is, that distilled liquors are not nearly so often as has been thought, applicable to medicinal uses; a conviction which is becoming firmer and extending itself every day, with the progress of the art, and the collations of different experience. It is a maxim now among the professional men in the severely warm climates of the East and West Indies, that 'spirituous liquors, whether used habitually, moderately, or in excessive quantities, always diminish in the same degree the vital strength, and render men more susceptible of disease;' and the same is the result of the experience of our southern cities. It is not artificial stimulus

that gives strength, but natural food. All observation and experiment go to show it. Would it not have been strange if God, who meant man to have strength to labor and endure, should have designed him to derive it, not from the substantial fruits of the earth, but from a curious extract of art? Would it not have been out of all analogy? What other animal is so nourished? Do you strengthen the hard-working horse or ox with the simple grain, or with the intoxicating essence you obtain from it; and if it were prepared for their diet as it is for that of their driver, would they serve him so well or so long as they do? The Roman soldiers, who overran the world, drank vinegar and water. In the parent country, training for athletic exercises, demanding the greatest attainable power of action and endurance, is reduced to a regular science. The subjects of it are a class of men, little influenced by moral considerations. Their discipline is merely a discipline to bring the human machine to its maximum of exertion of activity and force, and one of its rules, it is said, founded on the nicest observation and full experience, is an utter prohibition of the use of spirituous liquors." pp. 57-65.

We

The third discourse is devoted to inquiries for the means "to stop this overflowing fountain of private and public ruin." insert with much pleasure the author's views of legal coercion.

The

"Does it not accord with just principles of law, to compel the citizen, under pain of its retributions, to keep sober, as much as to compel him to remain peaceable or honest, provided his intemperance injures other individuals and the community, as much as his passion or his dishonesty would injure them? And is not this condition met? Are acts of violence or of fraud often committed, which affect the community so injuriously as an example of vicious excess; and how often do we hear of such an act, which inflicts on individuals so grievous a wrong, as is inflicted by intemperance on all whose fortunes or whose hearts are bound to its victim? lenity which lets it pass unpunished, and so emboldens it, seems no less than just so much cruel injustice to the better part of society; oppression of the innocent in subjecting them to ill treatment from the guilty, and of the industrious in compelling them to take the burden of maintaining the improvident and idle. To punish drunkenness as a crime in itself, has been a course often enough adopted. The Romans went so far, as to punish capitally a single transgression of the kind by a female. And as to encroachments upon the liberties of the citizen, the public often protects itself (and is held by all writers to be justified by the great law of selfpreservation in doing so) by processes which might far better be

"See on this subject, Dr. Bradford's Address before the Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance."

reckoned encroachments, applied in cases, too, where the citizen is chargeable with no offence whatsoever. Take the case of the health laws. A person is taken ill in one of our cities with a disease, supposed to be infectious. This is no fault of his. On the contrary, it makes him a subject of pity. But, against his will, he must be taken from the comforts of home, and the reliefs of domestic care, to take his fate, whatever it may be, in some place unknown, and often odious to him. Repeated instances have occurred in this country, and in former times in this town, in which, to the pain of separation and the hazard of removal,―unavoidable inconveniences,--has been added the grievance of exposure to a place, and to circumstances, of peculiar danger." pp. 80-83.

The author asks;

"Would it not be possible, by a general law, to proportion the number of licensed houses, in each municipality, to its population, according to the supposed general exigency; and, since the difficulty of discriminating between different applications is so great, as almost to excuse the municipal authorities for unreasonably multiplying recommendations, might not a heavy tax be imposed by law, on the renewal of licenses, a tax which the few who would then monopolize the traffic, would be well able to pay, and which would have the general effect to place them in the hands of persons of some standing in society, as well as to diminish the number of places of allurement? If ardent spirits were thus made to deposit in the treasury a sum adequate to the support of the pauperism they create, it would not seem that there was injustice done. The effect of a similar measure has been incidentally tried, if proof of the effect were needed. In three years from the beginning of 1814, after which the internal duty, levied by the general government, became payable, fewer licenses by far were taken out in the counties of Suffolk and Essex, than in the years before and after; and there is no reason to doubt, that the same was the consequence elsewhere. In populous towns, might not the privilege of retailing liquor be withholden from places where household stores are sold, and where, of consequence, it is placed in the way of so many who do not come to seek it? Is there no just method of instituting some difference in the treatment of paupers by reason of intemperance, and others? May not guardians be trusted with authority over the persons of their intemperate wards? May not town officers be required to prosecute illegal practices of retailers? Might they not be forbidden, under forfeiture of their privilege, to sell liquor to paupers, and to other individuals, on a private injunction of town officers, grounded on a representation made by the friends of those individuals, or by other citizens, that they were falling into intemperate habits, which representation should have been ascertained

by proper inquiry to be just? One happy effect of such a measure would be, to remove from the view of the many, whose occasions call them to move from place to place, that crowd of loathsome loiterers, young and old, who, from town to town, are seen haunting the spot where conveyance rests. In Italy, where natural deformities abound, and where, from the misplaced generosity of travellers, a hideous deformity is a fortune, no sight so painful as that is to be seen. A limb which nature has wrenched, is no object of disgust, like a form which vice has disfigured. Again; one state has prohibited magistrates from holding their courts in taverns, as leading their suitors within sight of temptation; and a governor of New York, some years ago, recommended to its legislature, that demands for spirituous liquors sold by retail, should be made not recoverable by law. Is there nothing practicable and promising in such provisions?" pp. 84-87.

"Great things, I doubt not, might be done, by the provision of some substitute for ardent spirits, which should possess their supposed quality to refresh, and should take their place as the customary offering of good will. This is by no means a hopeless project, and I greatly desire to see it tried. In France or Italy, I did not see an intoxicated person. It is not principle that restrains the people of those countries. They are by no means free from other sensuality, and transplanted to other parts of the world, the French, at least, are not seldom drunkards. It is not want or costliness of the means of intemperance. The strong drink that deceives so many others, comes from the former kingdom, and the vineyards of Italy rear abundant temptation for other climes. But in those countries, men have not the same faith as in this, in the universal infallibility of ardent spirits, and custom has not made them the appropriate offering of hospitality, and therefore a relish for them is not formed. Friends repair together to houses of public entertainment, which are every where open, as with us. But the substance, with which they habitually regale themselves, excites without inebriating. The fact is a striking one; and, as it seems to me, speaks direction and encouragement. We wonder at some of the vices of those nations. The most vicious of them would wonder

no less at the intemperance of ours. Their preservative from it is equally at our command; and when they have found a means of perfectly temperate festivity, which satisfies them, in a like use, better than the hurtful one in use among us, is it not worth the trial to have it adopted from them?

'Again; there is a great want of innocent public amusements among us. We are told of a certain king, that he offered a prize for a new diversion. We should do well to follow his example, stipulating for one which should be harmless, and accessible to the whole people. In other countries, museums of antiquities and

other curiosities, collections of natural history, galleries of statuary and pictures, and extensive and magnificent public gardens, are places of universal holiday resort to a crowded, but perfectly orderly, because temperate population. Some governments, from motives of policy, are at much pains to recommend these recreations, and make their subjects happy by them; and the consequence is, that, though greatly behind our population in almost all respects, they greatly excel it in some natural, gentle, and refining tastes. They think not of the appetite of thirst in connexion with their holiday pleasures. They love no riot. They will tolerate none. It is hard to imagine any way in which such provision is ever to be made among us, but certain it is, that we are suffering for the want of it. Of a portion of our people, as of the hardy mountaineers, whom we resemble not a little in good and bad, it might be said by a like severe observer;

'Unknown to them, when sensual pleasures cloy,
To fill the languid pause with finer joy.'
'In wild excess the vulgar breast takes fire,
Till buried in debauch, the bliss expire.'

pp. 90-95. On the subject of savings banks, we fully concur in the following remarks.

"There is an institution of recent invention, which has done much, I doubt not, and may be made to do more, for the suppression of intemperance. I speak of the savings banks. The individuals who have established them in our towns, and taken care to have them attached to the large manufacturing establishments in the country, are public benefactors worthy of cordial praise. I mention them particularly here, in order to express my conviction, that every householder, and other person who employs laborers, may do important good, in the connexion of our subject, by making known to his dependants the existence of such institutions. A person who has little money at a time, is tempted to part with it for an idle indulgence, because he knows of no way to dispose of a small sum to advantage; and to inform him of such a way is to save much more than his money to him. Should there be such a person present, let me say to him, that if he is in the habit of spending eight cents a day in ardent spirits, and will discontinue that practice, to deposit the amount thus redeemed, in the savings bank, he may in twenty years be master from this source, of nearly a thousand, and in thirty years, of nearly two thousand dollars. How few laboring men are there, who do not daily spend that sum in this use, and what a difference it would make to the comfort of their age, to have its proceeds at their command, to say nothing of the health, good temper, and good character they will have added to their purchase." pp. 95-99.