A NTI- TOBA ceo. 2 9 



v\^hich arrested criminals utter after their imprisonment, 

 is for tobacco, and the second is for ejuploynufit. 

 How often and painfully the slaves of this degrading 

 habit desire to break their chains, but — alas, in vain ! It 

 has a fascination and compulsion which they cannot 

 resist. They would give worlds to throw off the hateful 

 bondage, and be as free as when they came from their 

 mothers' arms ; but they have sold their birtliright, not 

 even for an honest mess of pottage, but for a smoke, for 

 an unsubstantial puff, for the titillation of a few morbid 

 ner\^es, that yields no nourishment to the system, no 

 strength, no health — but, on the other hand, entails 

 weakness, morbidness, disease, expense, sickness, and 

 haply, death, and, worse than all, opens the door to 

 a throng of temptations. 



Indictment Six. 



The tobacco plague is a perversion of the gifts of God, 

 and turns his blessings into curses. As a medicine, as a 

 poison, it may have, in rare instances, its place and its 

 use, as alcohol, as arsenic and other potent poisons have, — 

 but as an article of daily and universal indulgence, never. 

 Its cultivation exhausts the soil more than almost any 

 other crop. It subsidizes the commerce of the world as 

 opium does, as hquors do, to enslave and impoverish 

 mankind. It absorbs a vast amount of human labor and 

 capital, to load the shoulders of men with new burdens, 

 grievous to be borne, and to implant in the human frame 

 pains and diseases not native to our race. It cultivates 

 selfishness of character, self-indulgence, absorption in 

 one's o^\^l pleasure, and disregard of the feelings and 



