The art of turning the products of the earth into a fiery spirit was discovered by an Arab, about nine hundred years ago. The effects of this abuse of nature’s gifts were soon viewed with alarm. Efforts were made, even by a heathen people, to arrest the evil; and it shows the mighty agency and cunning of Satan, that Christian nations should ever have been induced to adopt and encourage this deadliest of man’s inventions. In the guilt of encouraging the destructive art, our own free country has largely participated. In the year 1815, as appears from well-authenticated statistics, our number of distilleries had risen to nearly forty thousand; and, until within a few years past, the progress of intemperance threatened all that was fair and glorious in our prospects. The reformation recently commenced is one of the grandest movements of our world; and to secure its speedy triumph, the concurrence of distillers is obviously indispensable. They must cease to provide the destroying element. This they are urged to do by the following considerations:

1. The business of distilling confers no benefits on your fellow-men. Ardent spirit is not needed as an article of living. In the first ages of the world, when human life was protracted to hundreds of years, it was unknown. By the first settlers of this country it was not used. It was scarcely used for a whole century. And those temperate generations were remarkably robust, cheerful, and enterprising. To this we may add, that several hundred thousand persons, accustomed to use it, have given it up entirely within a few years past; and their united testimony is, that they have made no sacrifice either of health, or strength, or any real comfort. Indeed few, if any, except such as have the intemperate appetite, will now seriously contend that distilled liquor is necessary or useful. The little that may perhaps be desirable as medicine, might be made by the apothecary, or the physician.

The talents God has given you might be applied to advance the welfare of your fellow-men. It is your duty—your highest honor—thus to apply them. And on the bed of death, in near prospect of the judgment, it will surely be a melancholy reflection that, as regards the happiness of mankind, your life has been an utter blank.

2. The business of distilling is not only useless, but is the occasion of many and great evils. Recent examination has developed a number of appalling facts, which few, if any, pretend to question. It is admitted that the use of ardent spirit has been a tax on the population of our country, of from fifty to a hundred millions of dollars annually. It is admitted that three-fourths of all the crimes of the land result from the use of intoxicating liquor. It is admitted that at least three-fourths of all the sufferings of poverty arise from the same source. It is admitted that upwards of thirty thousand of our citizens have annually descended to the drunkard’s grave. It is admitted, by those who believe the Bible, that drunkards shall not inherit eternal life, but must have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone. In a word, it is admitted that health, fortune, social happiness, intellect, conscience, heaven, are all swept away by the tide of intemperance.

And now, what you are specially bound to ponder is, that this burning tide, with all its desolations, flows from those very fountains you have opened—the boiling flood can be perpetuated only by those fires which your hands kindle, and which it is your daily task to tend.

The position you occupy, then, is one of most fearful responsibility. You are directly and peculiarly accessary to a degree of guilt and misery which none but the infinite mind can comprehend. I hear for you a loud remonstrance from every court of justice, from every prison of collected crime, from every chamber of debasement, and from every graveyard, as well as from the dark world of despair. I hear the cries of unnumbered mothers, and widows, and orphans, all with one voice imploring you to extinguish those fires, to dry up those fountains, and to abandon an occupation pregnant with infamy, and death, and perdition.

3. The business of distilling destroys, to a great extent, the bounties of Providence. Many of the substances converted into ardent spirit are indispensable to the comfort of man—some of them the very staff of life. But the work of distillation not only destroys them as articles of food, but actually converts them to poison. An incalculable amount of grain, and tens of thousands of hogsheads of sugar and molasses, besides enormous quantities of other useful articles, are every year thus wickedly perverted in this Christian land. Who does not know the odious fact that, in many places, the distillery has regulated the price of bread? Who does not know that this engine of iniquity has at times so consumed the products of industry as to make it difficult for the poorer classes to get a supply? “The poor we have always with us;” and cries of the suffering are often heard from other lands. Such facts, it would seem, might reach the conscience of all who are wantonly destroying Heaven’s gifts. Can you, for a little selfish gain, persist in converting the bread of multitudes into pestilential fire? How utterly unlike the example of Him who, while feeding thousands by miracle, could still say, “Gather up the fragments which remain, that nothing be lost.”

4. By continuing this destructive business, you greatly offend the virtuous and respectable part of the community. The temperance reformation has been commenced and prosecuted by enlightened men. It is not the enterprise of any political party or religious sect. It has the general support of ministers and Christians of different denominations, of statesmen, judges, lawyers, physicians, and hundreds of thousands in the walks of private life. They regard the enterprise as one, on the success of which hang the liberties of our republic and the happiness of future millions.

You cannot be surprised, then, that they look with pain on operations directly adapted to defeat their plans, and perpetuate the dread evil they deplore. You cannot suppose that their eye will light on the fountains of this mighty evil but with inexpressible grief, disgust, and indignation. And if you have the common magnanimity of our nature, you will surely cease to outrage the feelings of the virtuous throughout the nation.

5. You pursue a pernicious calling, in opposition to great light. The time was when good men extensively engaged in the distilling business, and when few seemed to be aware of its fearfully mischievous tendency. The matter had not been a subject of solemn and extensive discussion. The sin was one of comparative ignorance. But circumstances have changed. Inquiry has thrown upon the community a flood of light. The evil of intemperance has been exhibited in its complicated horrors. Ardent spirit has been found to be not only useless, but fearfully destructive; so that the guilt of manufacturing it is now enormously aggravated.

Good men were once engaged in importing slaves. They suspected not the iniquity of the business; and an apology can be offered for them, on the ground of ignorance. But their trade has now come to be regarded by the civilized world in the same odious light as piracy and murder. The man who engages in it is stamped with everlasting infamy. And the reason is, that, like the distiller, he now sins amid that fulness of light which an age of philanthropy has poured around him.

6. Perseverance in the business of distilling must necessarily be at the expense of your own reputation and that of your posterity. You are creating and sending out the materials of discord, crime, poverty, disease, and intellectual and moral degradation. You are contributing to perpetuate one of the sorest scourges of our world. And the scourge can never be removed till those deadly fires you have kindled are all put out. That public sentiment which is worthy of respect calls upon you to extinguish them. And the note of remonstrance will wax louder and louder till every smoking distillery in the land is demolished. A free and enlightened people cannot quietly look on while an enemy is working his engines and forging the instruments of national bondage and death.

Without a prophet’s vision, I foresee the day when the manufacture of intoxicating liquor, for common distribution, will be classed with the arts of counterfeiting and forgery, and the maintenance of houses for midnight revelry and corruption. Like these, the business will become a work only of darkness, and be prosecuted only by the outlaw.

Weigh well, then, the bearing of your destructive employment on personal and family character. The employment may secure for you a little gain, and perhaps wealth. But, in a day of increasing light and purity, you can never rid treasures, thus acquired, of a stigma, which will render him miserably poor who holds them. Upon the dwelling you occupy, upon the fields you enclose, upon the spot that entombs your ashes, there will be fixed an indescribable gloom and odiousness, to offend the eye and sicken the heart of a virtuous community, till your memory shall perish. Quit, then, this vile business, and spare your name, spare your family, spare your children’s children such insupportable shame and reproach.

7. By prosecuting this business in a day of light and reform, you peculiarly offend God, and jeopard your immortal interests. In “times of ignorance,” God, in a sense, “winked at” error. But let the error be persisted in under a full blaze of light, and it must be the occasion of a dread retribution from his throne.

The circumstances of the distiller are now entirely changed. His sin was once a sin of ignorance, but is such no longer. He knows he is taking bread from the hungry, and perverting the bounties of Providence. He knows he is undermining the very pillars of our republic. He knows that, by distilling, he confers no benefits upon mankind. He knows he is directly accessory to the temporal wretchedness and the endless wailing of multitudes. And knowing these things, and keeping on his way, he accumulates guilt which the Holy One cannot overlook. If endless exclusion from heaven be the drunkard’s doom, can he be held guiltless who deliberately prepared for him, and perhaps placed in his hand, the cup of death and damnation? This is not the decision either of Scripture or of common sense. Wilfully persevering to furnish the sure means of death, you carry to the judgment the murderer’s character as clearly as the midnight assassin.

And now, what is the apology for prosecuting a business so manifestly offensive to God, and ruinous to yourself, as well as others? Do you say, It is necessary as a means of support? But whence have you derived authority to procure a living at the sacrifice of conscience, character, and the dearest interests of others? And is the maintenance of a public nuisance really necessary to your support? In a country like this, the plea of necessity for crime is glaringly impious. Many and varied departments of honest and honorable industry are before you, all promising a generous reward; and, neglecting them for a wicked and mischievous occupation, you must bear the odium of a most sordid avarice, or implacable malignity.

You virtually, too, impeach the character of God. You proclaim that he has made your comfort, and even subsistence, to depend upon the practice of iniquity. It is an imputation he must repel with abhorrence and wrath. Nor is it sustained by the conscience, reason, or experience of any man.

But possibly you urge, in self-justification, Others will manufacture spirit, if I do not. But remember, the guilt of one is no excuse for another. “Every one of us shall give account of himself to God.” If others pursue a business at the sacrifice of character and of heaven, it becomes you to avoid their crime, that you may escape their doom.

It is not certain, however, that others will prosecute the destructive business, if you abandon it. Men of fore-thought will not now embark their silver and gold on a pestilential stream, soon to be dried up under that blaze of light and heat which a merciful God has enkindled. They will not deem it either wise or safe to kindle unholy and deadly fires where the pure river of the water of life is so soon to overflow. In the eye of thousands, the distillery on your premises adds nothing to their value. Indeed, should they purchase those premises, the filthy establishment would be demolished as the first effort of improvement. And every month and hour is detracting from its value, and blackening the curse that rests upon it.

Let the thousands now concerned in distilling at once put out their fires, and the act would cause one general burst of joy through the nation; and any effort to rekindle them would excite an equally general burst of indignation and abhorrence. None but a monster of depravity would ever make the attempt.

But again, perhaps you say, No one is obliged to use the spirit that is made. But remember, that you make it only to be used. You make it with the desire, with the hope, with the expectation that it will be used. You know it has been used by thousands—by millions—and has strewed the land with desolation, and peopled hell with its victims; and you cannot but acknowledge that you would at once cease to make the liquor, did you not hope it would continue to be used. Indeed, you must see that just in proportion to your success will be the amount of mischief done to your fellow-men.

It seems hardly needful to say that the foregoing considerations are all strictly applicable to such as furnish the materials for the distiller. Were these withheld, his degrading occupation would of course cease. By suffering, then, the fruits of your industry to pass into his hands, you perpetuate his work of death. You share all his guilt, and shame, and curse. And remember, too, that the bushel of grain, the barrel of cider, the hogshead of molasses, for which you thus gain a pittance, may be returned from the fiery process only to hasten the infamy and endless ruin of a beloved son, or brother, or friend.

Nor is the crime of the retailer of ardent spirit essentially different. He takes the poison from the distiller, and insidiously deals it out to his fellow-men. It is truly stirring to one’s indignation to notice his variety of artifice for rendering it enticing. His occupation is one which the civil authorities have, in some places, with a noble consistency, ceased to tolerate; and one which must soon be put down by the loud voice of public sentiment.

Indeed, the retailer, the distiller, and he who furnishes the materials, must be looked upon as forming a triple league, dangerous alike to private and social happiness, and to the very liberties of the nation. And an awakened people cannot rest till the deadly compact is sundered. Why not, then, anticipate a little the verdict and the vengeance of a rising tone of public sentiment, and at once proclaim the unholy alliance dissolved? Why not anticipate the verdict of an infinitely higher tribunal—why not believe God’s threatening, and escape the eternal tempest that lowers for him who putteth the cup to his neighbor’s lips? Why not coÖperate promptly in a public reform that is regarded with intense interest in heaven, on earth, and in hell?

O review, as men of reason, and conscience, and immortality, this whole business. And if you have no ambition to benefit your fellow-men—if you can consent to ruin many for both worlds—if you can persist in wasting and perverting the bounties of a kind Providence—if you can outrage the feelings of the most enlightened and virtuous—if you can pursue a work of darkness amid noonday light—if you can sacrifice a good name, and entail odium on all you leave—and if you can deliberately offend God, and jeopard your immortal interests for paltry gain, then go on—go on a little longer; but, “O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honor, be not thou united.”

Note.—A premium, offered by a friend of temperance, was awarded to the author of this Tract.

PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY.