70 On Colonial Wines. 
Gentlemen, I thank you for patiently listening to so long 
a paper, but one word more before I take leave of this class 
of subjects, the study of which has afforded me pleasant 
occupation for my leisure time for many years. 
It may be asked in other places to which this paper will 
travel in your Transactions, why I, a clergyman, should have 
taken so much trouble about a subject of this nature? To 
reply fully to such a question would be long. Yet one or two 
reasons may be briefly stated. Certainly it is partof my duty 
to inculcate morality, to discourage and put down drunken- 
ness to the best of my ability, and to strike a blow, if possible, 
at the very root of the evil. Experience has long ago con- 
vinced me that pledges and resolutions to abstain from 
ardent spirits are but “poor safeguards of unstable virtue ;” 
and that to effect a lasting cure the natural instincts must 
be not violently assaulted with resolves, but steadily and 
gently turned towards sources of reasonable and healthy 
oratification, while the danger of excess is effectually 
removed. 
The experience of all warm countries where wine is the 
universal beverage leaves no doubt but that where the vine 
flourishes in luxuriance, there our beneficent Creator intended 
that his children should drink the produce of it and be glad. 
I need not recur to scenes of drunkenness with which we 
were all only too much familiarized a few years back; but 
I will lay before you some tables of shocking deaths brought 
on certainly by drunkenness. The wretched effects of this 
vice are forced upon the clergyman and the medical officer 
more than upon all others. Consider for a moment the 
subjoined tables, and say if I did or did not propose to 
myself a meritorious work when I set about striving to turn 
this current into another channel; and to help in providing 
the requisite conditions. 
Males. Females. Males. Females. 
1853 (6 months) 40 a 9 1860 oe 78 
1854 5m 107 MSE oe if 1861 ri 39 Hin 8 
1855 A oye er aes amet (75) 1862 wih 40 wd 9 
1856 on 61 ae AD 1863 ie 22. cae tell) 
1857 Ae 42 bapa tt Up 1864 te 28 <é 9 
1858 By 57 Ly 9 1865 ae 47 Bh daniel te: 
1859 mA 50 ee 9 —— -— 
| 679 156 
Of the above numbers thus much is known, that 51 females 
died certainly of deliriwm tremens, and 406 males. 
These tables do not contain the other forms of death 
derivable from drink, they are purposely confined to deaths 
