ON INTEMPERANCE. “ Strong dring is raging.-SOLOMON. PHILADELPHIA: PRINTED FOR THE RELIGIOUS TRACT AND BOOK Joseph Rakestraw, Printer Strong drink is raging.-SOLOMON. THE friends of religion and humanity throughout our country, have long seen, and deeply lamented, the intemperate use of intoxicating liquors. They liave, also, long been convinced, that something ought to be done to effect a reformation;-to cure, if possible, such as are already infected, and, if not, at least to prevent the further spread of the deadly contagion. Nor have the wise and good, in time past, altogether contented themselves with unavailing regrets and good wishes. A kind of desultory warfare has been carried on against the common enemy, with various success. But the great destroyer has been steadily gaining ground. Our taverns and our grave yards are filled with its trophies. Not content with extending its ravages, and multiplying its triumphs among the refuse of society, it has invaded all ranks, and made awful havoc of property, genius, learning, reputation, and happiness. It is an enemy, which sparing neither high nor low, seems in this country, to be waging a war of extermination. Thousands of husbands has it already torn from the bosom of their families; thousands of sons from the embraces of their parents. Like the croaking plagues of Egypt," it has found its way into the very bed chambers of the rich and the poor, the public officer and the private citizen. Even magistrates themselves, the appointed guardians of the laws, have not always escaped. Nay more, this audacious and deadly foe to the bodies and souls of men, has leaped over the pale of the church, polluted the sanctuary, and, (how shall it be spoken?) has numbered among its victims ministers of the Gospel. Intemperance is certainly, at the present time, one of the most demoralizing, loathsome, heavenprovoking abominations of this country. Every body, who has either eyes or ears, must admit that here, at least, strong drink is raging. The experience of thousands proves, that it is like a fire shut up in the bones. It allows its votaries no ease. It consumes the best estates, often with a rapidity resembling that of a conflagration. It rages like a burning fever in the body, like a wild beast in the family, and like a sweeping pestilence in the community. Profaneness, gambling, lewdness, poverty, digrace, lawsuits, brutal stupidity, raving distraction, despair, murder, and suicide, march in its train. Many years ago, an eminent physician of Philadelphia gave it as his opinion, that more than four thousand of our citizens were annually hurried to an untimely grave, by the hand of this ruthless destroyer. The evil has increased since that time. Already there is good reason to believe, have intoxicating liquors cost the United States more lives than their independence; demoralized more persons, broken more hearts, beggared more families, and sent more souls to perdition than any other single vice. If nothing more were necessary, than a general statement of the evils of intemperance and the importance of a reformation, the preceding remarks might suffice. But it would be doing the subject great injustice to dismiss it here, especially as in that case, many would, probably, look upon the foregoing dreadful picture as very much overdrawn. The writer is confident, that every thing which has been advanced can be supported, without a very extensive or minute investigation. To this end he solicits a candid hearing, while he proceeds to specify more particularly some of the legion of evils, which are produced by ardent spirits in this country. 1. Look at their deadly effects upon the bodies of their infatuated victims. Physicians all agree that intemperance has a direct tendency to destroy health, and shorten life. In a vast multitude of instances, it is the legitimate parent of fevers, dropsies, consumption, gout, palsy, and apoplexy. "Ardent spirits," says Dr. Rush, (and so says almost every other physician,) "dispose the body to acute diseases in every form, and excite fevers in persons predisposed to them from other causes. Thus, when yel-low fevers have visited the cities of the United States, hard drinkers have seldom escaped, and rarely recovered." The same remark has been made concerning the most alarming and fatal diseases, which have, within a few years past, prevailed in different parts of the country. The writer has been assured, that hard drinkers have been remarkably singled out by the destroying angel; and that, in some places, not an individual of this class has recovered from an attack. Go then to the bed-side of a neighbour or a friend, who has long been laying up, in his system, the fuel of ardent spirits to feed the fever that now consumes him. Perhaps he was never called a drunkard. It may be that he was never completely intoxicated. But he drank regularly and freely. Now behold him on the brink of eternity. His tongue is parched. His brain is disordered. His disease, which he might have escaped by temperance, or which, had he been temperate, would have yielded to the power of medicine, is now incurable. His eye grows dim; he struggles; he gasps; he expires; and in him you behold the fate of vast numbers, who follow the same course. Shall we proceed further, and point you to ten thousand shadows of human existence in the last stages of various other diseases brought on by excessive drinking? Shall we undertake to count the miserable creatures, who are every year tortured to death by this vulture? Shall we press physicians to tell us how many names, on our annual bills of |
