so DR. ';pcfford's address. 



trusting to others' accounts; to memory, or to marks on their 

 doors and wainscots. 



To record in a book kept for the purpose, all their labor and 

 experiments upon their farms, as recommended by a distin- 

 guished agriculturist, in your last annual pamphlet, 1 have no 

 doubt would richly compensate the labor, but it is my present 

 purpose to urge the necessity of keeping a fair and exact ac- 

 count of the date and circumstances of every money or barter 

 transaction between man and man. It would save many of 

 those uncharitable thoughts and hard speeches which often alien- 

 ate friends, and disturb the peace of neighborhoods. 



If every person kept exact accounts of all his debts and credit, 

 law suits would be very unfrequent, and our friends the law- 

 yers would be relieved from the disagreeable necessity of send- 

 ing their uncharitable " Greetings," or writing " your goods and 

 chattels are attached," or " for the want thereof take the body." 

 And as I always rejoice when the bodily health of the communi- 

 ty is such as to relieve physicians from the care of the sick, to 

 turn their attention to their books, their farms, and their gardens ; 

 so will I rejoice when the health of the body politic, is such, that 

 our much esteemed friends, the lawyers, may be entirely relieved 

 from professional cares, to devote their distinguished talents to 

 employments more profitable to the community. 



One more requisite to prosperity you must permit me to name, 

 and that is the disuse of ardent spirit. 



1 am sorry that I cannot name this subject, without exciting 

 sonte unpleasant feelings, but 1 cannot, in justice to this Society, 

 or my profession, omit to mention a cause which has so long 

 bung like a mill-stone, to weigh down the prosperity of the coun- 

 try. No portion of the community have paid a heavier tribute 

 to the distillery than the fiuniers. Their laborious occupa- 

 tion and exposure to heat and cold, fostered the belief that ar- 

 dent spirits were necessary to them. But this error is now near- 

 ly exploded, and I rejoice that the hour of their emancipation 

 has arrived. Too long have you submitted to a tax which nei- 

 ther you nor youi fathers were able to bear, — a tax ten times 

 more burdensome that Great Britain ever atlem.pted to impose, 



