No. 10. 



Temperance. 



325 



classes may have a very great aversion to 

 drunkenness, and think it extremely im- 

 proper to furnish strong drink to those who 

 are too weak to avoid intemperance — yet 

 without these respectable encouragers of 

 drunkenness, in its incipient stages, the low 

 unprincipled master of the grog shop, who 

 sells his poison to any body and every body, 

 drunk or sober, who is able and willing to 

 pay for it, would be about as inefficient in 

 the production of beastly ebriety, as the man 

 at an engine would be in extinguishing the 

 fire, if no one would supply his engine with 

 water. The low tavern is the sink into 

 which all the drainings from more respect- 

 able nurseries of intemperance eventually 

 collect. This nuisance will hardly be re- 

 moved by attempting to clear out the sink, 

 but by stopping the current which flows into 

 it. Stop this current, and the sink itself will 

 soon become dry. 



We are told that the Spartans used, at 

 times, to compel their slaves to get drunk, in 

 order that their children might acquire a 

 proper aversion to the practice. And beastly 

 intemperance, in every age, is sufficiently 

 disgusting, without the Spartan association 

 of slavery, to excite the abhorrence of un- 

 corrupted youth. We are, therefore, again 

 thrown back upon the temperate and respect- 

 able members of the community, who drink 

 intoxicating liquors in a moderate way, and 

 by their example encourage others to drink 

 them, as the original supporters of intem- 

 perance. In this work of destruction there 

 are doubtless many engaged, who have no 

 suspicion that they are contributing to the 

 evil at all. The farmer who carries his pro- 

 duce to market, and puts up his horses at a 

 tavern, may possibly fall into a practice, 

 which, if it does not make a drunkard of 

 him, may endanger the sobriety of others 

 who imitate his example. I allude to the 

 practice of taking a glass of liquor, by way 

 of renumeration to the host, for the use of 

 his shed or stable. Now if room, and nothing 

 but room, for himself or his horses is needed, 

 why not pay for that room? This, I know, 

 has been sometimes done. If in travelling 

 to or from market, in the winter season, it 

 becomes necessary to warm at a public-house 

 on the road, it would be more rational to pay 

 what might be reasonably estimated as the 

 value received, than to call for a glass, by 

 which an appetite for strong drink is excited, 

 and encouragement given to those who have 

 commenced their downward course towards 

 the drunkard's grave. 



It is very common for those who are ac- 

 customed to moderate drinking to say that 

 they can do with or without alcoholic liquor. 

 Indeed a man who acknowledges he cannot 

 do without such drink, must be unusually 



candid, or far gone in the way to the drunk- 

 ard's last home. And a conscientious man 

 would hesitate before he would furnish liquor 

 to a man who cannot do without it. If then 

 the temperate drinkers can do with or with- 

 out strong drink, why not do without, rather 

 than incur the danger, or encourage others 

 to incur the danger, of becoming intempe- 

 rate ] 



When we soberly reflect upon the great 

 liability to become grossly intemperate to 

 which the moderate drinkers are exposed, 

 and the great number who, by little and lit- 

 tle, become completely enslaved, we must be 

 convinced that nothing less than some im- 

 portant advantage can justify our incurring 

 so tremendous a risk. It is indeed difficult 

 to conceive what possible benefit, real or 

 imaginary, derivable from the use of alco- 

 holic liquor, can justify the exposure of our- 

 selves or our fomilies to the danger of falling 

 into the sink of intemperance. If any father 

 of a family, who possesses the common feel- 

 ings of humanity, could certainly foresee 

 that, by the occasional use of intoxicating 

 liquor in his family or among his workmen, 

 one of his sons would become a slave to in- 

 temperance, mingle in the brawls of the 

 grog-shop, and eventually, in a drunken 

 frolic, murder one of his degraded compa- 

 nions, and end his days on the gallows, cer- 

 tainly such a foresight must excite a positive 

 determination to exclude from his premises 

 any thing which could be expected to lead 

 to such a result. Were the obvious advan- 

 tages of the moderate use of intoxicating 

 liquor ten times as great as any body ima- 

 gines they are, still the certainty of such a 

 fearful result would be reason enough for 

 excluding it from the family and farm. Or 

 could it be foreseen that, by such use, one 

 of the sons would become a drunkard, but 

 not a murderer, lose ail his property and re- 

 spectability of character, and become the 

 inmate of an almshouse or insane hospital; 

 or that one of his daughters would be intro- 

 duced into society which would connect her 

 with a drunken husband, and strew her path 

 through life with the briars and brambles 

 which the wife of a drunkard is sure to en- 

 counter, no other argument would be needed 

 to excite a just abhorrence of the insidious 

 poison. Now we do not know that any of 

 these consequences must follow from the ad- 

 mission of these liquors into our families; 

 yet we know they may, for they have follow- 

 ed in numerous instances. The bare possi- 

 bility of such consequences is reason enough, 

 with a prudent parent, for keeping the cause 

 at a distance. — And the pious Christian, who 

 regards every man as his brother, and all the 

 youth in the country as his children, must be 

 anxious to exclude from his own family, and 



