No. 10. 



Tempei'ance. 



327 



ter's field, was found to be so rapid, that 

 some of the retailers became alarmed, and 

 discontinued their sales. 



Of all the forms in which intemperance 

 contributes to the misery of man, its contri- 

 butions to the criminal list are the most copi- 

 ous. When men drink alcoholic liquor, even 

 in a moderate way, it is very apt, indeed al- 

 most certain, to raise their spirits, and make 

 them more talkative. It was remarked by 

 Dr. Johnson, in reply to one who insisted that 

 drinking wine improved conversation; before 

 dinner men meet with great inequality of 

 understanding, and those who are conscious 

 of their inferiority, have the modesty not to 

 talk. When they have drunk wine, every 

 man feels himself happy, he loses that 

 modesty, and grows impudent and vocifer- 

 ous: but he is not improved; he is only not 

 sensible of his defects. Dr. Johnson was not 

 then speaking of gross intemperance, but of 

 social drinking. Now as this social drink- 

 ing renders men more impudent and vocifer- 

 ous, they are evidently more likely to quar- 

 rel, than when they are not thus stimulated. 

 As the steam rises higher, the propensity to 

 quarrel increases; for the passions become 

 less subject to the understanding. Passions 

 frequently excited, grow imperious and domi- 

 neering. Hence the man who often drinks 

 to the verge of intoxication, is rendered more 

 excitable than the man of total abstinence. 

 When the vinous potations are extended 

 into the region of drunkenness, the pug- 

 nacious propensity commonly becomes pre- 

 dominant. We accordingly find many men, 

 who, when entirely clear of drink, are quite 

 inoffensive, but when intoxicated, are insuf- 

 ferably quarrelsome. We may therefore 

 conclude, without searching our criminal re- 

 cords, that intemperance must greatly aug- 

 ment the mass of the more brutal species of 

 crimes, such as murder, assault and battery, 

 &c. 



But intemperance often leads to crimes 

 with which it is not so obviously connected 

 — The intemperate man is rendered in great 

 measure unfit for honest employment, and in 

 consequence generally becomes poor ; hence 

 he is exposed to temptation, which the mo- 

 rality of the grog-shop is ill-calculated to 

 resist. Becoming an outcast from respect- 

 able society, his feelings towards others can 

 hardly be entirely cordial. Larceny and its 

 kindred crimes, then readily follow. The 

 children of intemperate parents, if not rescu- 

 ed by the hand of charity, are liable to be 

 impelled, by want of the necessaries of life, 

 to resort to pilfering. This reasoning is 

 amply supported by facts. By the report of 

 the Moral Instructor, of the Eastern Peni- 

 tentiary of Pennsylvania, read before the 

 House of Representatives in 1S39, it appears 



that of 178 admitted during the preceding 

 year, " 125 drank, and got drunk; "28 drank, 

 but did not get drunk ;" leaving only 25, or 

 not quite one in seven who did not drink. 

 The same report gives the whole number 

 admitted there previous to the year 1839, as 

 1036, of whom 747 drank to intoxication ; 

 67 drank, but did not get drunk, 212 were 

 temperate, and 10 uncertain : this shows that 

 about four-fifths of the inmates of that prison 

 were at least occasional drinkers; and about 

 three-fourths decidedly intemperate. Of 57 

 convicts committed to the Connecticut prison 

 in 1837, no fewer than 42 were intemperate. 

 Of 64 criminals confined in the Hartford jail 

 in 1838 and 1839, there were 46 known to 

 be intemperate. Of 39 prisoners in the jail 

 of Litchfield county, Connecticut, 35 were 

 intemperate. In the jail of Ogdensburg, N. 

 York, seven-eighths of the criminals were 

 addicted to strong drink. Of 647 in the 

 state prison at Auburn, N. Y, 467 were in- 

 temperate; and 346 were under the in- 

 fluence of strong drink when the crimes, 

 for which they were imprisoned, were com- 

 mitted. Of 690 children, imprisoned for 

 crimes in the city of New York, more than 

 400 were from intemperate families. Of 

 653, who were, in one year, committed to 

 the house of correction at Boston, 453 were 

 drunkards ; and the overseer gave it as his 

 opinion that there were not ten among them 

 who were not in the habit of using strong 

 drink to excess. In 1833, there were 114 

 persons committed to the Albany jail, in one 

 month, for various ofi'ences; of whom, 82 

 are reported as intemperate; 14 free-drink- 

 ers of ardent spirits, and 18 whose charac- 

 ters were not known, as they came from a 

 distance. Yet the crimes charged upon 

 several of these 18, were such as are seldom 

 committed by temperate men. Col. W. S. 

 Williams, of South Carolina, declares that 

 of eleven murders tried at the court where 

 he practised, one of the parties was intem- 

 perate or intoxicated when the crime was 

 committed ; and in most instances both were 

 so. With regard to other offences of per- 

 sonal violence, assaults with intent to com- 

 mit murder, and common assaults, he says, 

 he has, in the course of his practice, been 

 engaged in many, and witnessed trials in- 

 numerable, and cannot recollect a single case, 

 in which some of the parties were not more 

 or less intoxicated. H. Maxwell, of New 

 York, states that of twenty-two cases of 

 murder which it bad been his duty to ex- 

 amine, all had been committed in conse- 

 quence of intemperance. Within a few 

 months there were six individuals, in the in- 

 terior of Pennsylvania, belonging to one 

 family, murdered on the same day, and a 

 seventh attempted. The murderer, during 



