24 QUARTERLY JOURNAL. 



— pilfering the hard earnings of the industrious mechanic — plun- 

 dering the adventurous merchant by wholesale — stealing au^ay the 

 products of the labor of the husbandman, and bringing under the 

 terrible power of his fascination the high in station, the learned, 

 the accomplished and the venerable. In short, we saw the evils 

 he entailed upon his immediate victims — to quote another — to be. 

 *' self-reproach, mental anguish, enfeebled intellect, brutalized 

 passionSj poverty, crime, infamy, disease, despair, madness and 

 death ; to their dependent families, shame and mortification, with- 

 ered affections, blasted hopes, misery and want, reproaches anc 

 violence ; in fine, disgust, loathing, and unspeakable wretchedness 

 to the public bad example, neglected duties, violated laws, the 

 streets filled with beggary, and the courts with offenders, crowdec 

 alms-houses and prisons, the industry of the country burthenec 

 and oppressed, the general morals vitiated, public virtue degraded 

 and the very foundations of government weakened and endan 

 gered." 



And who can wonder at this awful extent of vice and misery 

 when he remembers how all-pervading and firmly established wa' 

 the use of intoxicating drink? This offspring and agent of perdi 

 tion was the inmate of the drawing-room and the kitchen ; h 

 was domesticated into a nurse of children ; he worked in tb 

 fields with the farmer — helped him harvest his crops, and alwa) 

 went with him to market, or met him there ; he was the princ 

 pal personage at births, marriages and funerals ; he was the gettei 

 up of most quarrels, and no quarrel could be settled without h 

 friendly interference. At anniversaries, at civic celebrations, i 

 military displays, at social entertainments, at religious observance; 

 at the farmers' bee, and the ladies' tea-party, he was always fir: 

 and foremost — the most busy and the most noisy. Freemen coul 

 not properly remember the day of their country's birth, withoi 

 getting independently drunk, and acknowledging allegiance to 

 power far more despotic, more heartless, more cruel and exacting 

 than any of the race of Tudor, or Stuart, or Brunswick. H, 

 helped to elect the candidate to office, and then while he rejoiccj 

 with his friends over his success, with an equal largeness of hear 

 sympathized with his opponent at his defeat. He was present c 

 all occasions, whether of joy or grief, sacred or secular, ready 1 

 furnish the inspiration suited to the occasion, and in the requisi 



