PUTNAM AND THE WOLF; OR, THE MONSTER DESTROYED. AN ADDRESS ORIGINALLY DELIVERED AT POMFRET, CONN., BY REV. JOHN MARSH. A drunkard and his family

I remember, when a boy, reading a story which chilled my blood in my veins; but which taught me never to sit down and try to bear an evil which might, by bold and persevering effort, be remedied. The story was this. A certain district of country was infested by a wild beast. The nuisance was intolerable. The inhabitants rallied, and hunted it day and night, until they drove it into a deep den. There, with dogs, guns, straw, fire, and sulpher, they attacked the common enemy; but all in vain. The hounds came back badly wounded, and refused to return. The smoke of blazing straw had no effect; nor had the fumes of burnt brimstone. The ferocious animal would not quit its retirement. And now the shadows of evening gathered around them. The clock struck nine, and ten. And should they lose their prey? They must, unless some one should be so daring as to descend into this den of monsters and destroy the enemy. One man offered to go; but his neighbors remonstrated against the perilous enterprise. Perilous indeed it was; but live so they could not, and stripping off his coat and waistcoat and having a long rope fastened round his legs, by which he might be pulled back, he entered with a flaming torch in his hand, head foremost. The most terrifying darkness appeared in front of the dim circle afforded by his light. It was still as the house of death. But proceeding onwards with unparalleled courage, he discovered the glaring eyeballs of the ferocious beast, who was sitting at the extremity of the cavern. For a moment he retreated; but again descended with his musket. The beast howled, rolled its eyes, snapped its teeth, and threatened him with instant death, when he levelled, fired, and brought it forth dead, to the view of his trembling and exulting neighbors.

Little did I then think that I should one day see the country rallied on the same spot, to hunt a more terrible monster, whose destruction will require Putnam courage.

The old enemy, gentlemen, which your fathers hunted about these hills and dales, was visible to the eye, and could be reached with powder and ball; but the enemy whom you assault is, like the foe of human bliss which entered the garden of Eden, invisible, and therefore not to be described, and not to be destroyed by force of arms. That enemy did, indeed, to effect his purpose, assume the form of a serpent; and ours has been said, as belonging to the same family, to have occasionally the same aspect. A gentleman in Missouri has recently described a dreadful worm which, he says, infests that country. “It is of a dead lead color, and generally lives near a spring, and bites the unfortunate people who are in the habit of going there to drink. The symptoms of its bite are terrible. The eyes of the patient become red and fiery; the tongue swells to an immoderate size and obstructs utterance, and delirium of the most horrid character ensues. The name of this reptile is, ‘the worm of the still.’” I suspect it is one of the same family which is infesting the peaceful villages of New England, and whose ravages have alarmed the country, and caused you this day to leave your homes and seek its destruction. I would not here inquire minutely into its history. It is said to have originated in Arabia, the country of the false prophet. The aborigines of our forests never knew it. They could proudly tread on the rattlesnake and copperhead, but never fell before the worm of the still. O woful day when it found its way to our coasts; when here it first generated its offspring.

Yet there are men who think we belie it; who say that we are needlessly alarmed; that we are hunting a friend; that we are driving one from our country without whose aid we can never check the ravages of disease, or perform our labor, or have any hilarity. It is not, say they, a poisonous foe. It is a pleasant cordial; a cheerful restorative; the first friend of the infant; the support of the enfeebled mother; a sweet luxury, given by the parent to the child; the universal token of kindness, friendship, and hospitality. It adorns the sideboards and tables of the rich, and enlivens the social circles of the poor; goes with the laborer as his most cheering companion; accompanies the mariner in his long and dreary voyage; enlivens the carpenter, the mason, the blacksmith, the joiner, as they ply their trade; follows the merchant to his counter, the physician to his infected rooms, the lawyer to his office, and the divine to his study, cheering all and comforting all. It is the life of our trainings, and town-meetings, and elections, and bees, and raisings, and harvests, and sleighing-parties. It is the best domestic medicine, good for a cold and a cough, for pain in the stomach, and weakness in the limbs, loss of appetite and rheumatism, and is a great support in old age. It makes a market for our rye and apples; sustains 100,000 families who are distilling and vending, and pours annually millions of dollars into our national treasury. Had the wolf possessed the cunning of the fox, she would have told Putnam as smooth a story as this. But it would have made no difference. The old man’s cornfields were fattened by the blood of his sheep, and he would give no quarter. And the blood of our countrymen has been poured out at the shrine of the demon Intemperance, and we must give none. Talk we of alcohol as a friend! As well may a mother praise the crocodile which has devoured her offspring.

Look, my countrymen, at the ravages of intemperance. Fix your eye on its waste of property.

At the lowest calculation, it has annually despoiled us of a hundred millions of dollars—of thirty millions for an article which is nothing worth, and seventy or eighty millions more to compensate for the mischiefs that article has done—money enough to accomplish all that the warmest patriot could wish for his country, and to fill, in a short period, the world with Bibles and a preached Gospel. What farmer would not be roused, should a wild beast come once a year into his borders and destroy the best cow in his farmyard? But 6¹/₄ cents a day for ardent spirit wastes $22 81 cents a year, and in 40 years nearly $1,000, which is a thousand times as much as scores of drunkards are worth at their burial.

See the pauperism it has produced. We have sung of our goodly heritage, and foreign nations have disgorged their exuberant population that they might freely subsist in this land of plenty. But in this granary of the world are everywhere seen houses without windows, fields without tillage, barns without roofs, children without clothing, and penitentiaries and almshouses filled to overflowing; and a traveller might write—beggars made here. We are groaning under our pauperism, and talking of taxes, and hard times, and no trade; but intemperance has stalked through our land and devoured our substance. It has entered the houses of our unsuspecting inhabitants as a friend, and taken the food from their tables, and the clothing from their beds, and the fuel from their fire, and turned their lands over to others, and drove them from their dwellings to subsist on beggary and crime, or drag out a miserable existence in penitentiaries and almshouses. Two-thirds, or 150,000 of the wretched tenants of these abodes of poverty in the United States, were reduced by intemperance. So themselves confess. It was rum, brandy, and whiskey, that did it. And the Prison Discipline report tells of 50,000 cases of imprisonment for debt annually in the United States, in consequence of the use of ardent spirits. O, its sweeps of property can never be known.

Look at the crime it has occasioned.

It is said that there is a spring in China which makes every man that drinks it a villain. Eastern tales are founded on some plain matter of fact. This spring may be some distillery or dram-shop; for this is the natural effect of alcohol. It breaks down the conscience, quickens the circulation, increases the courage, makes man flout at law and right, and hurries him to the perpetration of every abomination and crime. Excite a man by this fluid, and he is bad enough for any thing. He can lie, and steal, and fight, and swear, and plunge the dagger into the bosom of his nearest friend. No vice is too filthy, no crime too tragical for the drunkard. The records of our courts tell of acts committed under the influence of rum, which curdle the blood in our veins. Husbands butcher their wives; children slaughter their parents. Far the greater part of the atrocities committed in our land, proceed from its maddening power. “I declare in this public manner, and with the most solemn regard to truth,” said Judge Rush, some years ago in a charge to a grand jury, “that I do not recollect an instance since my being concerned in the administration of justice, of a single person being put on his trial for manslaughter which did not originate in drunkenness; and but few instances of trial for murder where the crime did not spring from the same unhappy cause.” Of 895 complaints presented to the police court in Boston in one year, 400 were under the statute against common drunkards. Of 1,061 cases of criminal prosecution in a court in North Carolina, more than 800 proceeded from intemperance. Five thousand complaints are made yearly in New York to the city police of outrages committed by intoxicated persons; and the late city attorney reports, that of twenty-two cases of murder which it had been his duty to examine, every one of them had been committed in consequence of intemperate drinking. “Nine-tenths of all the prisoners under my care,” says Captain Pillsbury, warden of our own state prison, “are decidedly intemperate men, and were brought to their present condition, directly or indirectly, through intoxicating liquor. Many have confessed to me with tears, that they never felt tempted to the commission of crime, thus punishable, but when under the influence of strong drink.” And the Prison Discipline report states, “that of 125,000 criminals committed to our prisons in a single year, 93,750 were excited to their commission of crime by spirituous liquors.”

Look at its destruction of intellect.

It reduces man to a beast, to a fool, to a devil. The excessive drinker first becomes stupid, then idiotic, then a maniac. Men of the finest geniuses, most acute minds, and profound learning, have dwindled under the touch of this withering demon to the merest insignificance, and been hooted by boys for their silly speeches and silly actions, or chained in a madhouse as unsafe in society. Of eighty-seven admitted into the New York hospital in one year, the insanity of twenty-seven was occasioned by ardent spirit; and the physicians of the Pennsylvania hospital report, that one-third of the insane of that institution were ruined by intemperance. What if one-sixth of our maniacs were deprived of their reason by the bite of the dogs, the friendly inmates of our houses, or by some vegetable common on our table; who would harbor the dangerous animal, or taste the poisonous vegetable? But, one-third of our maniacs are deranged by alcohol. Indeed, every drunkard is in a temporary delirium; and no man who takes even a little into his system, possesses that sound judgment, or is capable of that patient investigation or intellectual effort, which would be his without it. Just in proportion as man comes under its influence, he approximates to idiotism or madness.

Look at its waste of health and life.

The worm of the still, says the Missouri gentleman, never touches the brute creation, but as if the most venomous of all beings, it seizes the noblest prey. It bites man. And where it once leaves its subtle poison, farewell to health—farewell to long life. The door is open, and in rush dyspepsia, jaundice, dropsy, gout, obstructions of the liver, epilepsy—the deadliest plagues let loose on fallen man—all terminating in delirium tremens or mania a potu, a prelude to the eternal buffetings of foul spirits in the world of despair. One out of every forty, or three hundred thousand of our population, have taken up their abode in the lazar-house of drunkenness, and thirty thousand die annually the death of the drunkard. These sweeps of death mock all the ravages of war, famine, pestilence, and shipwreck. The yellow-fever in Philadelphia, in 1793, felt to be one of the greatest curses of heaven, destroyed but four thousand. In our last war the sword devoured but five hundred a year: intemperance destroys two hundred a week. Shipwrecks destroy suddenly, and the country groans when forty or fifty human beings are suddenly engulfed in the ocean; but more than half of all the sudden deaths occur in fits of intoxication. It needed not a fable to award the prize of greatest ingenuity in malice and murder to the demon who invented brandy, over the demon who invented war.

Look at its murder of souls.

Not satisfied with filling jails, and hospitals, and graveyards, it must people hell. Every moral and religious principle is dissipated before it. The heart becomes, under its influence, harder than the nether mill-stone. It has gone into the pulpit and made a Judas of the minister of Christ. It has insinuated itself into the church, and bred putrefaction and death among the holy. It has entered the anxious room in seasons of revival, and quenched conviction in the breast of the distressed sinner, or sent him, exhilarated with a false hope, to profess religion, and be a curse to the church. It has accompanied men, Sabbath after Sabbath, to the house of God, and made them insensible as blocks of marble to all the thunders of Sinai and sweet strains of Zion. It has led to lying, profane swearing, Sabbath-breaking, tale-bearing, contention; and raised up an army, I may almost say, in every village, who wish for no Sabbath, and no Bible, and no Saviour, and who cry out with stammering tongues, “Away with him, crucify him.” It has, without doubt, been the most potent of all the emissaries of Satan, to obliterate the fear of the Lord, turn men away from the Sabbath and the sanctuary, steel them against the word, the providence, and grace of God, stupefy the conscience, bring into action every dark and vile passion, and fill up with immortal souls the dark caverns of eternal night. Let a man, day by day, hover around a dram-shop, and sip and sip at his bottle, and the devil is sure of him. No ministers, no Sabbaths, no prayers, no tears from broken-hearted and bleeding relatives, can avail to save him. He holds that man by a chain which nothing but Omnipotence can break.

And look, too, at its waste of human happiness.

Yes, look—look for yourselves. The woes of drunkenness mock all description. Some tell of the happiness of drinking. O, if there is a wretched being on earth, it is the drunkard. His property wasted, his character gone, his body loathsome, his passions wild, his appetite craving the poison that kills him, his hopes of immortality blasted for ever; it is all

And his family. I can never look at it but with feelings of deepest anguish.

thou art shipwrecked here. Sorrow, woe, wounds, poverty, babblings, and contention, have entered in and dwell here. Yet we have 300,000 such families in the land; and if each family consists of four individuals, more than a million persons are here made wretched by this curse of curses.

And his death. O, to die in our houses, amid our friends, and with the consolations of religion, strips not death of its character as the king of terrors. But to die as the drunkard dies, an outcast from society, in some hovel or almshouse, on a bed of straw, or in some ditch, or pond, or frozen in a storm; to die of the brain-fever, conscience upbraiding, hell opening, and foul spirits passing quick before his vision to seize him before his time—this, this is woe; this is the triumph of sin and Satan. Yet, in the last ten years, 300,000 have died in our land the death of the drunkard; rushing, where?—“Drunkards shall not inherit the kingdom of God”—rushing into hell, where their worm dieth not, and their fire can never be quenched. And if the demon is suffered to continue his ravages, 300,000 more of our existing population will, in the same way, rush into eternal burnings.

And his funeral. Have you ever been at a drunkard’s funeral? I do not ask, did you look at his corpse? It was cadaverous before he died. But did you look at his father as he bent over the grave and exclaimed in agony, “O, my son, my son, would to God I had died for thee, my son.” Did you look at his widow, pale with grief, and at his ragged, hunger-bitten children at her side, and see them turn away to share the world’s cold pity, or, perhaps, rejected and forlorn, follow the same path to death and hell?

Such are the ravages of the demon we hunt. Its footsteps are marked with blood. We glory in our liberties, and every fourth of July our bells ring a merry peal, as if we were the happiest people on earth. But O, our country, our country! She has a worm at her vitals, making fast a wreck of her physical energies, her intellect, and her moral principle; augmenting her pauperism and her crime; nullifying her elections—for a drunkard is not fit for an elector—and preparing her for subjection to the most merciless tyranny that ever scourged any nation under heaven. We talk of our religion, and weep over the delusions of the false prophet and the horrors of Juggernaut; but a more deceitful prophet is in our churches than Mahomet, and a more bloody idol than Juggernaut rolls through our land, crushing beneath its wheels our sons and our daughters. Woe, woe, woe to Zion. Satan is in Eden. And if no check is put to the ravages of the demon, our benevolent institutions must die, our sanctuaries be forsaken, our beautiful fields be wastes, and the church will read the history of her offspring in the third of Romans: Their throat is an open sepulchre; their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood—all, blasting our bright hope of the speedy approach of millennial glory.

There is cause, then, for the general alarm that has been excited in our country; reason for this extensive and powerful combination to hunt and destroy the monster. Much, by divine help, has been done. He has been routed and brought to the light of day; the mischief he has done has been exposed; his apologists have been confronted; he is driven into his den, and now how can he be destroyed? That he must be destroyed there can be no question. The man who does not wish for the suppression of intemperance must have the heart of a fiend; especially, if he wishes to grow rich on the miseries of his fellow-men. And he must be destroyed now. It is now or never. Men may say enough has been done, and talk about his being held where he is. He cannot be held there. He has the cunning of a serpent, and he will escape through some fissure in the rock. He is now in our power. The temperance movement, which has on it the impress of the finger of God, has brought him within our grasp; and if we let him escape, the curse of curses will be entailed upon our children. How then can he be destroyed? I answer, and thousands answer, by starvation. No weapon can reach him so long as you feed him. But who has a heart so traitorous to humanity as to feed this monster? Every man who now, in the face of the light that is shed upon this subject, distils, or vends, or uses intoxicating liquor; every distillery, and every dram-shop in the land, nourishes this foe to human peace; every man who takes the alcoholic poison into his system, or imparts it to others, except as he takes and imparts other poisons to check disease, gives life to the beast. I need not stop to prove it. It is manifest to the child. Let every distillery in the land cease, and every dram-shop be closed, and total abstinence become the principle of every individual, and the demon will be dead; yes, take away from him his wine, his brandy, and his whiskey, and he will perish for ever. But here is the very brunt of the battle. We have hunted the monster through the land, and driven him into his den; and now we must stand at the very mouth of the cavern, and contend with our fellow-men and fellow-sufferers—yes, and fellow-Christians too—who are either afraid to attack the monster, or are determined he shall live.

And first, we are met by a body of men who tell us that alcohol is useful. And what if it is? What if every benefit that the moderate and immoderate drinker can think of, flows from it? What will this do to compensate for its giant evils which are desolating our land? Is man so bent on self-gratification that he will have every sweet, though it be mingled with poison? Will he exercise no reason; make no discrimination between unmixed good and good followed by desolating woes? Tea was good. But, said our fathers, if with it we must have all the horrors of British tyranny, away with it from our dwellings. My countrymen, “the voice of your fathers’ blood cries to you from the ground, ‘My sons, scorn to be slaves!’” Away with the shameful plea that you cannot do without an article which subjects you to an evil ten thousand times worse than all the horrors of British tyranny. You kindle the fires of liberty by pointing to the woes of the prison-ship, and the bones of your countrymen whitening on the shores of New Jersey. O, crouch not to a tyrant who binds a million in his chains, and demands thirty thousand annually for his victims. I blush for the imbecility of the man who must have an article on his farm which eats up his substance and his vitals, and may turn his son into an idiot and a brute. Better have no farm. Better go at once, with his family, into the poor-house, and be supported by public charity.

Next comes canting Hypocrisy, with his Bible in his hand, telling us that “every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving.” What does he mean; that ardent spirit is the gift of God? Pray, in what stream of his bounty, from what mountain and hill does it flow down to man? O, it is in the rye, and the apple, and the sugar, and the Mussulman has taught us Christians how to distil it. And so the poet tells us Satan taught his legions how to make gunpowder. “There are,” said he,

And now, to carry out the argument, gunpowder, and guns, and swords, are the gift of God, and men must needs use them, and kill one another as fast as possible.

But nothing, it is plead, was made in vain. Spirit is good for something, and to banish it from use, and promise that we will “touch not, taste not, handle not,” is contempt of the works of God. I should like to have seen what the Pomfret hero would have done with a man who should have stood before him, and said, Don’t you destroy that wolf; God made it, and it may be good for something.

Next, we are checked in our principle of starvation by a set of thoughtless youth and presumptuous men, who say there is no danger from the demon if we keep him low. All his ravages have been occasioned by his being full fed. Let him sip but little, feed him prudently, and he will do no harm.

“Good,” says the demon, growling in his den; “that is all I want. The doctrine of prudent use is the basis of my kingdom. Temperate drinking has made all the drunkards in the land, and keep it up in all your towns and villages, and I shall be satisfied.”

O the delusion! Prudent use! What is the testimony of every chemist and physician in the land? Alcohol is a poison.

“Not a bloodvessel,” says Dr. Mussey, “however minute, not a thread of nerve in the whole animal machine escapes its influence. It disturbs the functions of life; it increases for a time the action of the living organs, but lessens the power of that action; hence the deep depression and collapse which follow preternatural excitement. By habitual use it renders the living fibre less and less susceptible to the healthy operation of unstimulating food and drink, its exciting influences soon become incorporated with all the living actions of the body, and the diurnal sensations of hunger, thirst, and exhaustion, are strongly associated with the recollection of its exhilarating effects, and thus bring along with them the resistless desire for its repetition.” More than fifty per cent. of common spirits are alcohol, this deadly substance, holding rank with henbane, hemlock, prussic acid, foxglove, poison sumach. Nausea, vertigo, vomiting, exhilaration of spirits for a time, and subsequent stupor, and even total insensibility and death, are their accompaniments. Broussais remarks, “A single portion of ardent spirit taken into the stomach produces a temporary phlogosis.” Now, I submit it to every considerate man, whether there can be any prudent use of a poison, a single portion of which produces the same disease of which the drunkard dies, and a disease which brings along with it a resistless desire for a repetition of the draught.

Thoughtless, self-sufficient men say, they can control this desire, can govern their appetite, can enjoy the exhilaration of strong drink, and yet be temperate. Let them look at the poor inebriate wallowing in his pollution. He once stood just where they stand; boasted just as they boast; had as fair character, and as kind friends, and as precious a soul and bright hopes of heaven as they have. Let them tell why he does not control his appetite. Perhaps they say, he is a fool. Ah, what made him a fool? Or, his reason is gone. And what took away his reason? Or, he has lost his character. And what took away his character? Or, his sense of shame is departed. And what took away his sense of shame? Ah, here is the dreadful secret, which it may be well for all, boasting of their power of self-control, to know. At the very moment when the man thinks he stands firm, and reason can control appetite, his moral sense departs, his shame is gone, and he turns, through the power of his morning bitters and oft-repeated drams, into the brute and the maniac. With the moral sensibilities laid waste, reason here has only the power of the helmsman before the whirlwind. “Twenty years ago,” says Nott, “a respectable householder came in the morning with a glass of bitters in his hand, and offered it to his guest, saying, ‘Take it; it will do you good. I have taken it for some years, and I think it does me good; and I never want any more.’ Time passed on, and presently the bottle of bitters in the closet was exchanged for the barrel of whiskey in the cellar; and the poor man was often at the tap for just as much as would do him good, and he never wanted any more. Time passed on, and a hogshead was needful; and its contents were exhausted with the same intent, and the same self-deceivings. At length the home of his family was relinquished to his creditors; his polluted body was lodged in a jail, from which he presently issued a drunken vagabond, and wandered a wretched being, until he found a drunkard’s grave.” It is but the history of thousands. No laws of nature act with more uniformity than the laws of intemperance. No inoculation sends with more certainty disease into the system than drinking strong drink. Hundreds have made an agonizing struggle to escape from perdition. They have seen their sin and danger; they have walked the streets in agony; they have gone to their homes and looked at their wives and children, and into the pit of despair. But their feverish stomach has cried, Give, give! and they have drank often and often, with the solemn promise that it should be the last time; until they have exclaimed, with a once interesting youth, “I know I am a ruined man, but I cannot stop.”

Some, indeed, through much care and strength of constitution, may escape; but the plague, if it appear not in their skin and their bone, may break out in their children. “I will drink some,” said an aged deacon of a church of Christ; “for it does me good.” God was merciful, though he tempted Heaven, and it is said that he died with his character untarnished; but six loathsome sons drank up his substance, with the leprosy in their foreheads. What a meeting must there be between that deacon and his sons on the judgment-day! The doctrine of prudent use must be abandoned. It can have no standard. Every man thinks he drinks prudently, whether he takes one glass a day or five, and is just as much excited and just as liable to drunkenness as all drunkards were when they stood where he now stands. He only that entirely abstains can properly be called a temperate man. And he only is clear from the guilt of spreading intemperance through the land. Moderate drinkers are the life of this bloody system which is wringing with agony the hearts of thousands. Did all at once drink to excess, alcohol would be viewed with dread, as is laudanum and arsenic. Better that all who tasted it were at once made drunkards; then, drunkards would be as scarce as suicides. But men now sip moderately and are reputable; they think themselves safe, but one in every forty sinks to drunkenness; and thus, among twelve millions of people, drinking moderately, the demon has perpetually 300,000 victims. And for these, while all are thus paying homage to the bottle, what is the hope? The lost wretch may wake from his brutality and crime, and resolve that he will reform, and his broken-hearted wife may hope that the storms of life are over, and his babes may smile at his strange kindness and care; but the universal presence of the intoxicating fluid, and the example of the wise and the good around him, will thwart all his resolutions, and he will go back, like the dog to his vomit. All the drunkenness, then, that shall pollute our land, must be traced to moderate drinkers. They feed the monster. They keep in countenance the distillery and the dram-shop, and every drunkard that reels in the streets. Moderate use is to this kingdom of blood what the thousand rivulets and streams are to the mighty river. O how have we been deceived. We long searched for the poison that was destroying our life. The drop said, It is not in me—I am but a drop, and can do no harm. The little stream said, It is not me. Am I not a little one, and can do no harm? And the demon Intemperance, as she prowled around us, said, Let my drops and my rivulets alone; they can do no harm. Go stop, if you can, the mighty river. We believed her. But the river baffled our efforts. Its torrents rolled on, and we contented ourselves with snatching here and there a youth from destruction. But we now see that the poison is in the drops and the rivulets; and that without these, that river of death, which is sweeping the young and the old into the ocean of despair, would cease for ever. And we call upon these self-styled prudent, temperate drinkers, to pause and look at the tremendous responsibility and guilt of entailing drunkenness upon their country for ever.

But we are met with more serious opposers to the plan of starvation. They are, they say, the bone and muscle of the country. They come from the farms, the shipyards, and workshops, and say, If you starve out this monster, we shall be starved out, for we cannot do our work and get a living without rum or whiskey; though, according to their own confession, they have found it hard living with. Their rum and their whiskey have cost them double and treble their other taxes—their sons have become vile, their workmen turbulent, their tools have been broken, and many of themselves are already sinking under its enfeebling influence.

With such it is hard to reason. They have tried but one side, and are incapable of judging the case. We can only tell them there is no danger. Not a particle of nourishment does spirit afford them. The hard drinker totters as he walks. The poor inebriate can neither stand nor go. We can point them to hundreds and thousands of their own profession, honest men, who solemnly testify that they are healthier and stronger, can perform more labor, and endure the frosts of winter and heat of summer better without it than with it. We can ask them whether they fully believe that the God of heaven, a God of love, has put them under the dire necessity of using daily an article which, with such awful certainty, makes drunkards; and whether, when he has said, Woe to him that giveth his neighbor drink, he has said, too, you must all drink it; it is necessary for you. But such never can be taught and convinced but by experience; and to such we would say, Try it for yourselves.

Our next opposition, gentlemen, is from a band clothed in white—professors of our holy religion—enlisted soldiers of Christ, engaged to every work of benevolence: they come—O tell it not in Gath!—to intercede for the monster, and oppose our enterprise. Is not this, you ask, a libel? Alas, too often, reports of temperance societies tell of opposition from professors of religion.

What can be the meaning of this? Has not intemperance been the greatest curse to the church? Has it not caused her to bleed at every pore? And have not her members cried to heaven that the destroyer might perish? And now, when God has put into their hands a weapon by which it may at once be exterminated, will they hesitate? Will they hang back? Will they say, we cannot make the sacrifice? O where lies this astonishing witchery? What has put the church to sleep? What has made her angry at the call to come out from the embrace of her deadliest foe? O what has he, who drinks the cup of the Lord, to do with the cup of devils? Does he need it to make him serious or prayerful, or to enable him better to understand the word of God, or bear reproach for Christ, or discharge his Christian duties, or open his heart in charity? Does it not palsy the heart, quench the spirit of prayer, seal up every holy and benevolent feeling, and turn many from Christ, that they walk no more with him? What can a professor mean who refuses to enlist under the temperance banner? Does he really want the monster to live? Does he pray that he may? Will he stand aloof from this conflict? Is he determined to deny himself in nothing? To care not if others perish? To risk shipwreck of character and conscience, and to keep in countenance every drunkard and dram-shop around him? Is it nothing to him that intemperance shall spread like a malaria, to every city, and village, and neighborhood, until the land shall send up nothing but the vapors of a moral putrefaction, and none shall here pray, or preach, or seek God; but ignorance, and crime, and suffering, withering comfort and hope, shall go hand in hand, until we can be purified only by a rain of fire and brimstone from heaven? O for shame, for shame! Let the Christian, pleading for a little intoxicating liquor, be alarmed; let him escape as for his life from the kingdom of darkness. “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”

Next to diseased appetite, the love of money is the most potent principle in the breast of depraved man. Thirty-six thousand distillers, and eighty-five thousand venders of ardent spirits in our land, form a tremendous host in opposition to our enterprise. They live everywhere.

They live wherever the demon has his haunts. Or rather, he lives where they live; for they feed him. And while he fattens on the article they make and vend, they receive in return the silver and gold of his deluded victims. Now, how can this formidable host, who cry out, Our craft is in danger, by this demon we have our wealth—how can they be met? Can they be met at all? Yes, they can—for they are men; generally reputable men; in cases not a few, pious men; and all have consciences, and may be made to feel their accountableness to God. Now let them be told that they keep this monster alive; that to their distilleries and shops may be traced all the poverty, and contention, and tears, and blood, which drunkenness produces; that their occupation is to poison the young and the old; and by dealing out gallons, and quarts, and pints, and gills, they fill up, with drunkards, the highway to hell; that they do all this to get the money of the wretched victims; that the tears of broken-hearted widows and orphan children are entering into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, and that neither God nor their consciences will hold them guiltless in this thing, and sure I am that they will be filled with horror at their own doings, and quit their business.

If there are some so hardened and dead to all the best interests of men as to persist, against the light of the age, in the business of making drunkards, let public indignation burn against them till they can no longer stand before its fires. Let a distillery be viewed as a man would view the inquisition, where the racks, the tortures, and the fires, consume the innocent. Let the dram-shop be ranked, as Judge Dagget says it should be, with the haunts of counterfeiters, the depositories of stolen goods, and the retreats of thieves; and over its door let it be written, “The way to hell, leading down to the chambers of death.” The time has been when a vender could deal out, day by day, the liquid poison to the tottering drunkard, attend his funeral, help lay him in the grave; then go home, post up his books, turn the widow and her babes into the streets to perish with hunger or be supported by charity, and yet sustain a good reputation. But in future, whenever the community shall stand around the grave of a drunkard, let the eyes of all be fixed on the inhuman vender; let him be called to take one solemn look into the grave of the slain and the pit of the damned; and if he will return to the ruin of his fellow-men, let the voice of his brother’s blood cry to him from the ground, and his punishment be greater than he can bear.

Perhaps some reputable vender is offended at the freedom of these remarks. I would ask him if he has never been offended at the smell of that filthy drunkard who has hung around him? I would ask him if his conscience has never stung him as ragged children have come to him in bleak November to have him fill their father’s bottle? I would ask him if his soul has never shook within him as he passed, in the darkness of night, the graveyard where three, four, or five of his neighbors lie without even a tombstone, who found their death at his counter? His traffic may be profitable, but let him beware lest while he feeds the monster it turns and devours him and his offspring. At least, let him solemnly inquire, before God, whether he can be a virtuous man and knowingly promote vice; or an honest man, and rob his neighbor by selling an article which promotes sorrow, disease, and death.

I congratulate you, gentlemen, on the stand which you have taken against the monster Intemperance, and on the success with which your efforts have been crowned. You are doing a work for this country for which future generations will call you blessed. Let your watchword be onward, extermination, death; and victory will be yours. Our weapons are simple, but mighty. O what a discovery is this principle of entire abstinence! Let the name of its author be embalmed with that of Luther, and Howard, and Raikes, and Wilberforce. What has it not already done for our suffering country! What a change meets the eye as it wanders from Georgia to Maine—from the Atlantic to our western borders. Here we see farms tilled; there buildings raised; here churches built; there vessels reared, launched, and navigated too; manufactories conducted; fisheries carried on; prisons governed; commercial business transacted; journeys performed; physicians visiting their patients; legislators enacting laws; lawyers pleading for justice; judges deciding the fate of men, and ministers preaching the everlasting Gospel—without intoxicating liquor. Here we see importers unwilling to risk the importation of spirituous liquor into the land; there distillers abandoning their distilleries as curses to themselves and the community; and merchants, not a few, expelling the poison from their stores, and some pouring it upon the ground, choosing that the earth should swallow it rather than man. And all this in the short space of three years. What has done it? Entire abstinence. What then will not be done, when, instead of 50,000 who now avow it, 500,000 shall give their pledge that they will abandon a kingdom founded in blood. And can they not be found in this land of humane men, and patriots, and Christians? Yes, they can. Onward then, gentlemen. Listen not to those who say you are carrying matters too far. So said the wolf. She loved life, and she loved blood. But did she ever regard the cry of the sheep? The monster Intemperance has been glutted with blood; and never spared, and had no pity. He still howls for blood; and many plead that he may have some. But depend upon it, their pleas are only those of debased appetite and avarice. Rally the community against them. Enlighten the public mind. Collect facts. Let your towns and villages be searched with candles. Go into the dens. Bring the monster and his suffering victims to light, and the public indignation will no longer slumber.

Of one thing I will remind you. The demon will daunt the timid. It is noisy and fiery. Attack it, and it will roll its eyes, and snap its teeth, and threaten vengeance. Attempt to starve it, and it will rave like the famished tiger. Thousands have fed it against their consciences, rather than meet its fury. But fear not. The use of ardent spirit meets no support in the Bible or the conscience, and the traffic meets none. Be firm. Be decided. Be courageous. Connect your cause with heaven. It is the cause of God; the cause for which Immanuel died. O, as men and patriots, banish intemperance, with all its sources, from your country and the land. As ministers and Christians, banish it for ever from the churches of the living God. Let the demon no longer hide in the sanctuary. Let entire abstinence be written in capitals over the door of every church. Expel for ever the accursed enemy, that the Spirit of the Lord may descend and bless us with life and peace.

To those not connected with the Temperance Association, I would say, Look at this enterprise. It injures no man, wrongs no man, defrauds no man, has no sectarian or political object in view; it would only relieve our infant nation of a burden and a curse which is fast placing it side by side with buried Sodom. As wise men, judge ye of its importance and merits. As men hastening to judgment, act in relation to it. A solemn responsibility rests upon you. Shall the land now be rid of intemperance? You reply, Yes—and talk of wholesome laws, and high licenses, and prudent use. Three green withes on Samson! Entire abstinence is the only weapon which will destroy the monster. “But we can practise that without giving our pledge.” True. But until you give it, he will count you his friend and haunt your dwelling. In this cause there is no neutrality. Have you supported this cruel kingdom of darkness and death? Will you do it longer? Shall conscience be riven by the act? Shall the land that bears you be cursed; the young around you be sporting with hell; the awakened sinner be drowning conviction at his bottle; the once fair communicant be disgraced; the once happy congregation be rent; its ministry be driven from the altar, and its sanctuary crumble to ruin? Shall our benevolent institutions fail, and our liberties be sacrificed? Shall God be grieved? Shall wailings from the bottomless pit hereafter reproach and agonize you as the cause of the ruin, perhaps of your children and children’s children? Methinks one common pulsation beats in your hearts, and you answer, No—no. Methinks I see you rising in the majesty of freemen and Christians, in behalf of an injured country and church, and destroying at once the demon among you.

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