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spring, in very self-defence from the sickness and death occasioned by vending ardent spirits, the Board of Health in the city of Washington proclaimed the selling of it in any quantity to be a nuisance, and prohibited it for ninety days. It ought to have been for ninety years. Every drunkard we have among us is like a barrel of gunpowder in a conflagration ; and every vender of the liquid fire, is like a man heaping coals upon the head of it. When the cholera, or any dreadful pestilence is in the land, it is the vender and the drinker of ardent spirit who are its allies. Both invite it; the drunkard's very breath is a conductor for the pestilence; the village where he dwells is endangered; and if it comes, it lights upon him, and spreads all around him.

As long as there are men in every town hardened enough to sell ardent spirit, as long as legislation sanctions it, as long as the community permit dram-shops to be licensed, the temperance reformation has accomplished comparatively nothing. It is like one solitary pump in a distressed vessel at sea in a storm, throwing out but a drop of water for the ocean that enters at every opening seam. In our whole land the reformation, great as it already is, is yet in its infancy. If now we relax our efforts, if we do not follow them up, the tide of ruin will come back, with a force the more tremendous for being a little while resisted by a temporary dyke. There is nothing done to what may be done, must be done. What we have accomplished is to see and feel in some measure the greatness of the evil. Now let us set at work in earnest, to root it out utterly.

Next after the so called temperate drinkers, the whole weight of opposition this reformation meets with is from those who sell. But one word first in regard to these same temperate drinkers. Who are they? We mean, what are they? What are the temperate drinkers? They are the millions from whom the drafts of actual drunkards are yearly drawn. They are the corps-de-reserve, the unfailing resort, from whom come hourly new recruits, to supply the places of those whom death is taking constantly at his meals. They are moreover, the magazine of heaven's wrath, in offering materials for the rage of the pestilence. But are they not drunkards? Can they be considered in any other light? Who will mark out the line of distinction between temperate and intemperate drinking? It has been well remarked that there is no fact in the whole history of the temperance reformation,

brought more powerfully into view than this;-that the moment the first impression of habit is made on the physical constitution by this destroying agent, that moment the individual's moral sense is perverted; he becomes insensible to his own state; unwilling to acknowledge it even to himself; and as he goes on from step to step in the way to ruin, he is all the way indignant to be thought a drunkard, indignant to have his liberty of drinking infringed upon, and perfectly certain, in whatever light he may view the influence of ardent spirit on the community around him, that for him a little is necessary; at least his course can do no harm. Such is the infatuation of all who become addicted to its use. And but for those who will, despite of all remonstrance, persist in buying and using distilled liquor temperately, the traffic in this poison would be abandoned; for, the company of drunkards, however great, is rapidly diminishing, and if not increased from the ranks of those who call themselves temperate drinkers, would entirely disappear.

It is absolutely certain, that if all the temperate now in the land would adopt and adhere to the remedy of total abstinence, the vice of intemperance would totally vanish. It is equally certain that this remedy does not subject the members of temperance societies to the least sacrifice or inconvenience. It is certainly no self-denial to a temperate man to connect himself with a temperance society. And yet this simple, easy remedy, and one of unfailing efficiency, is neglected by multitudes. It is rejected, in many instances, even by professors of religion; and that too, in some cases, because the sale of sin and death is so profitable in this dying world; because he finds the promotion of this horrid traffic one of the most prolific sources of earthly gain.

It has been feared that injury might result from the too reckless exposure of professors of religion. We have no such fears. They ought to be exposed. It is duty we owe God and our fellow-beings. The profession of religion never has been a cloak in which men could wrap their sins with impunity; at least not since the dark ages; we hope it never will be, as long as the world stands. God forbid! Let us remember, that the mere profession of religion does not constitute Christianity now, any more than when our Lord declared he should one day say of many, that called him Lord! Lord!" Depart from me! I never knew you, that work iniquity." In such a cause as this, it is both

ye

piety and wisdom to expose those first, who, under the garb of religion, are traitors to her holy cause.

The truth is, the guilt of this horrid traffic can scarcely be overstated. Its enormity defies exaggeration. Eternity will reveal it, when the graves shall have given up their dead, to stand at the bar of judgment, and witness against the soul of the vender of ardent spirit. That passage applies to him with awful significancy, "Treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath;" for, the money gained by every drop of liquor he has sold for the perdition of his fellow-beings is added to the treasure of coming wrath, and the rust of his riches will eat into his own soul like a canker of fire. "To the pauperism, crime, sickness, insanity, and death temporal and eternal, which ardent spirit occasions, those who knowingly furnish the materials, those who manufacture, and those who sell it, are all accessory, and as such will be held responsible at the divine tribunal." "Disguise that business as they will," say the New York State Society, at the head of which is the Chancellor of the State, "disguise that business as they will, it is still, in its true character, the business of destroying the bodies and souls of men. The vender and the maker of spirit, in the whole range of them, from the pettiest grocer to the most extensive distiller, are fairly chargeable, not only with supplying the appetite for spirit, but with creating that unnatural appetite; not only with supplying the drunkard with the fuel of his vices, but with making the drunkard." Seller of Rum! remember that "to all the evils consequent on the use of ardent spirit, those who continue to traffic in it, after all the light which God in his providence has thrown upon the subject, are knowingly accessory. Whether they deal in it by wholesale or retail, by the cargo or the glass, they are, in their influence, drunkardmakers." "There was a time," the report of the American Temperance Society continues, "when the owners did not know the dangerous and destructive qualities of this articlewhen the facts had not been developed and published, nor the minds of men turned to this subject; when they did not know that it caused such a vast portion of the vice and wretchedness of the community, and such wide spreading desolation to the temporal and eternal interests of men; and although it then destroyed thousands for both worlds, the guilt of the men who sold it was comparatively small. But now, they sin against light pouring down upon them with un

utterable brightness; and if they know what they do, and in full view of its consequences continue that work of death, not only let the poison go out, but furnish it and send it out to all who are disposed to purchase, it had been better for them, and better for many others, if they had never been born." The fifth report, a document that ought to be universally circulated, speaks as follows: "A distinguished gentleman from one of our principal cities writes, Distillers, retailers, and drunkards, are culprits here in the eyes of all sober men."" The remark is now common, that it is as wicked to kill a man by one kind of poison as another. And the conviction is settling down upon the public mind, that he who continues knowingly to do it in any way, is in the sight of God a murderer, and as such will be held responsible at his tribunal. The opinion of judge Cranch, with regard to the criminality of furnishing ardent spirit as a drink, is, with conscientious and enlightened men, fast becoming common. "I know that the cup is poison-I know that it may cause death-that it may cause more than death-that it may lead to crime, to sin-to the tortures of everlasting remorse. Am I not then a murderer? worse than a murderer? as much worse as the soul is better than the body? If ardent spirits were nothing worse than a deadly poison, if they did not excite and inflame all the evil passions, if they did not dim that heavenly light which the Almighty has implanted in our bosoms to guide us through the obscure passages of our pilgrimage, if they did not quench the Holy Spirit in our hearts, they would be comparatively harmless. It is their moral effect, it is the ruin of the soul, which they produce, that renders them so dreadful. The difference between death by simple poison, and death by habitual intoxication, may extend to the whole difference between everlasting happiness and eternal death."

There is now no possible excuse for the sale or the use of ardent spirit in any way. Even as a medicine, it is beginning to be acknowledged that it is almost utterly useless. Mild diseases are rendered severe, and severe ones fatal, by its use. In very many cases of disease, to use it as a medicine would be like setting a house on fire, to cleanse it from its impurities. And it is beginning to be seen that the manufacturer and the seller of ten or twenty gallons, are no better than the seller of one glass; unless it be less guilty to send crime, pauperism, and misery through the country in large quantities, than it is to deal it out by retail. Does the

wholesale dealer in rum, say that his living depends on it? So do the forger, and the murderer, and the robber live by their vices. Does he say that others will sell, if he does

So will others murder, rob, steal, if he does not. Suppose a company of forgers should invite you to join and circulate their bills. You refuse. They tell you there are others who will, if you do not; that your joining will not make the company larger, nor your refusing lessen the quantity of crime committed. Would this be reason enough in your mind for incurring this guilt? But the cases are similar, with only this difference; the selling of rum is not forbidden by law; the passing of forged notes is.

The dealer in this poison is far more guilty than the dealer in slaves. Formerly it was not so; but now, with all the light that blazes on this subject, there is no comparison between the iniquity of the two crimes. One destroys earthly rights; manacles and injures the perishable body, the other takes away all title to eternal life, and destroys both soul and body in hell. It is bargaining in broken hearts, diseased constitutions, domestic anguish, private misery, public crimes, death to the perishing body, and the disease of sin forever to the surviving soul. Now he knows all this; every distiller knows it; every wholesale dealer knows it; every licensed and unlicensed retailer knows it. He cannot but know it. These things are not done in a corner. The plea of ignorance shall not shield him. Where is that portion of our land so blessed, that the consuming anguish produced by the vending of ardent spirit has not touched? Where the family so blessed, that in all its relations and branches, it is exempt from this awful scourge? We might almost ask, where the household into which this terrible domestic calamity has not entered?

Were every man who sells ardent spirit, condemned to be followed by the loathsome carcasses and tortured souls he has destroyed; if, wheresoever he turned, he heard their horrid jibberings and blasphemies; if every vessel he filled in his distillery, and every cask he rolled from the store, and every gallon he drew from the cask, and every glass he presented to the drinker, he should see flitting around him the ghosts of those whose progress to perdition it will accelerate; if the sculls of the victims he has helped to ruin, were piled up around his shop; if every additional drunkard, made so

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