Chapter 15

Are these things so? Suppose them exaggerations. Grant that the importance of your vigorous and unanimous cooperation in this work of reformation is unreasonably magnified; still, how much can you do. Were our coasts invaded by a powerful enemy, come to ravage our cities, chain our liberties, poison our fountains, burn our harvests, and carry off our youth into perpetual slavery, what could young men do? To whom would the trump of battle be sounded so effectually? Who else would feel upon themselves the chief responsibility for their country's rescue? What excuse could they find for supineness and sloth? Such indeed is the enemy by which the country is already desolated. And now it is to the warm hearts, and the strong hands, and the active energies, and the powerful example of young men, that the dearest interests of the nation look for deliverance.

Young men, shall we not enlist heartily and unitedly in promoting the extermination of intemperance? What question have we to decide? Is it a question whether the country is cursed with this plague to a most horrible and alarming extent? No. Is it a question whether the present power and the progressive character of intemperance among us demand an _immediate_ rising up of all the moral force of the nation to subdue it? No. Is it a question whether the most important part of the strength and success of such an effort depends upon the part in it which the young men in the United States shall take? No. Then what does the spirit of patriotism say to us? If we love our country; if we would rise in arms to shake off the hosts of an invader from our shores; if every heart among us would swell with indignation at the attempt of an internal power to break in pieces our free constitution, and substitute a government of chains and bayonets; what does the love of country bid us do, when by universal acknowledgment an enemy is now among us whose breath is pestilence and whose progress desolation--an enemy that has already done and is daily doing a more dreadful work against the happiness of the people than all the wars and plagues we have ever suffered?

What does the voice of common humanity say to us? Can we feel for human woe, and not be moved at the spectacle of wretchedness and despair which the intemperance of this country presents? Let us imagine the condition of the hundreds of thousands who are now burning with the hidden flame, and hastening to utter destruction by this most pitiless of all vices; let us embrace in one view the countless woes inflicted by the cruel tempers, the deep disgrace, the hopeless poverty, and the corrupting examples of all these victims, upon wives, children, parents, friends, and the morals of society; let us stand at the graves of the thirty thousand that annually perish by intemperance, and there be still, and listen to what the _voice of humanity_ speaks.

What does the exhortation of religion say to us? What undermines more insidiously every moral principle of the heart; what palsies so entirely every moral faculty of the soul; what so soon and so awfully makes man _dead while he liveth_; what spreads through the whole frame-work of society such rottenness, or so effectually opens the door to all those powers of darkness by which the pillars of public order are crumbled and the restraints of religion are mocked; what so universally excludes from the death-bed of a sinner the consolations of the Gospel, or writes upon his grave such a sentence of despair, as _intemperance_? Behold the immense crowd of its victims! Where are they not seen? Read in the book of God that declaration, "nor thieves, nor _drunkards_, shall inherit the kingdom of God;" then listen to what the exhortation of Christian benevolence speaks to us. Is it asked, _What can young men do?_ We can do this one thing at least. _We can continue temperate._ What if every one of us, now free from the appetite of strong drink, should hold on to our liberty; how would the ranks of intemperance, which death is continually wasting, be filled up? But how shall we continue temperate? Not by using the means of destruction. Not by a moderate indulgence in the cup of seduction. Not by beginning where all those began who have since ended in ruin. But by _entire abstinence from strong drink_. Let us renounce entirely what cannot profit us, what forms no important item in our comforts, what may bring us, as it has brought such multitudes as strong as we, to the mire and dirt of drunkenness.

But we can do something more. We can contribute the influence of our example to help bring into disrepute the use of ardent spirits for any purposes but those of medicine. If any of us are confident that we could go on in the moderate, without ever coming to the immoderate use of strong drink, we know that the deliverance of the country from its present curse is utterly hopeless while ardent spirit is in the hands of the people. It must be banished. Public opinion must set it aside. Young men must contribute to form that opinion. It cannot be formed without the total abstinence of the temperate. Let us not dare to stand in its way.

But we can do something more. We have an influence which, in a variety of ways, we may use in the community to diminish the temptations which, wherever we look, are presented to the unwary to entice them to intemperance. We can employ the influence of example, of opinion, and of persuasion, to drive out of fashion and into disrepute, the common but ensnaring practice of evincing hospitality by the display of strong drink, and of testifying friendship and good-will over the glass. We can contribute much powerful cooperation in the effort to make the use of ardent spirits for the ordinary purposes of drink so unbecoming the character of temperate people, that he who wishes to have his reputation for temperance unsuspected, will either renounce the dangerous cup, or wait till no eye but that of God can see him taste it. We can do much, in union with those of more age and more established influence, to create a public feeling against the licensing of those innumerable houses of corruption where seduction into the miseries of drunkenness is the trade of their keepers, and the means of destruction are vended so low, and offered so attractively, that the poorest may purchase his death, and the strongest may be persuaded to do so. These horrible abodes of iniquity not only facilitate the daily inebriation of the veteran drunkard, but they encourage, and kindle, and nourish, and confirm the incipient appetite of the novice, and put forth the first influence in that system of persuasion by which the sober are ultimately subdued and levelled to the degradation of wretches, from whose loathsomeness they once turned away in disgust. Why are these instruments of cruelty permitted? Not because the authorities will not refuse to license them. Public opinion is the conscience of those authorities. Let the opinions and feelings of that portion of the community where the strength and patronage of society reside, be once enlisted in opposition to such houses, and the evil will be remedied; the morals of society will not be insulted, nor the happiness of families endangered at every step by the agents and means and attractions of intemperance. Young men have much to do, and are capable of doing a great work in creating such a public opinion.

In order to exert ourselves with the best effect in the promotion of the several objects in this great cause to which young men should apply themselves, let us associate ourselves into _Temperance Societies_. We know the importance of associated exertions. We have often seen how a few instruments, severally weak, have become mighty when united. Every work, whether for evil or benevolent purposes, has felt the life, and spur, and power of cooperation. The whole progress of the temperance reformation, thus far, is owing to the influence of _societies_; to the coming together of the temperate, and the union of their resolutions, examples, and exertions, under the articles of temperance societies. Thus examples have been brought out, set upon a hill, and made secure. Thus the weak have been strengthened, the wavering confirmed, the irresolute emboldened. Thus public attention has been awakened, public feeling interested, and public sentiment turned and brought to bear. Thus works have been performed, information distributed, agencies employed, and a thousand instruments set in motion which no industry of individual unassociated action could have reached. Let temperance societies be multiplied. Every new association is a new battery against the stronghold of the enemy, and gives a new impulse to the hearts of those who have already joined the conflict. Let us arise, and be diligent, and be united; and may the God of mercy bless our work.

THE DRUNKARD IN HIS FAMILY.

His example is seen daily in the house, and in the parent. It is seen by children so soon as they can see any thing, and long before their minds are capable of distinguishing its nature, or its tendency. The parent visibly regards spirituous liquors as a peculiarly interesting enjoyment of sense, at a time when they know no enjoyments but those of sense: of course they cannot but think it eminently valuable. The means of intoxication are also provided to their hand; and their own home, so far as a dangerous and malignant influence is concerned, is changed into a dram-shop. The mother, in the meantime, not unfrequently contracts the same evil habit from the father; and thus both parents unite in the unnatural and monstrous employment of corrupting their children.

What a prospect is here presented to our view! A husband and wife, to whom God has given children to be trained up by them for heaven, united together in taking them by the hand, and leading them coolly to perdition. What heart, not made of stone, can look at such a family without feeling exquisite distress, and the most terrible forebodings? Contemplate, for a moment, the innocent, helpless beings, perfectly unconscious of their danger, and incapable of learning it, thus led as victims to the altar of a modern _Moloch_, less sanguinary, indeed, but not less cruel than the heathen god before whom the Israelitish parents burnt their own offspring, and say, whether you most pity the children, or detest the parents.

Dr. Dwight.

No. 247.

WHO SLEW ALL THESE?

AN AUTHENTIC NARRATIVE.

About twenty years ago, Mr. and Mrs. ----, decent and respectable people, removed with a family of children from the country to a neighboring town, where they purchased a small house and lot, and lived very comfortably. Their family, however, increasing to five boys, they removed to the shore--the town being situated on a river--and in addition to their former means of obtaining a living, erected a sign, and provided "entertainment" for such as chose to call on them. They were temperate people, accounted honest, and sent their children to the most respectable school in the place. In a short time it was perceived that they too frequently partook of the "entertainment," as it is called, which they provided for their customers. The habit of daily measuring the poison to others, induced them to taste for themselves; their house was not as respectable as formerly; restraints were removed; and although they were not drunkards, they gave evidence that they used too freely the deadly drug which they fearlessly handled. If the temperance reformation had been at that time commenced, they might have been warned of their danger, and saved from ruin; but nothing arrested their progress in the path of the destroyer.

Their children, who used to be clad with garments which denoted a mother's industry, soon began to bear marks of neglect, and were by degrees withdrawn from the school--their parents, because of _hard times_, not being able to support them there. They consequently lounged about, became acquainted with the customers at the bar, and learned their evil habits, especially that of drinking.

The parents had commenced the sale of intoxicating drinks to become rich; but at the end of a few years it had reduced them to poverty. They had lost their respectability, their honesty, and their property, which was mortgaged for rum; their children had become vagabonds, and their house a receptacle of vice. Of all their five sons, not one escaped the infection; they and their miserable parents wallowed in the mire together.

In consequence of the dreadful excess to which she had abandoned herself, the imagination of Mrs. ---- became disordered, and conjured up horrible visions. In her fits of the _delirium tremens_, she fancied herself bound with a belt of brass, to which was attached a chain held by the great enemy of souls, who had indeed enchained her with the most dire and effectual of all his spells. She would cross the room with the rapidity of lightning, screaming that he was winding up the chain, and she _must go_--she _could not_ stop. She was afraid to pass her own threshold, and fancied she heard unearthly voices, and saw spirits black and hideous all around her. "There they sit," she would say, "J----, M----," mentioning the names of all her children; "there they sit, grinning at me, and telling me I sent them to hell: they are on the beams and in the corners, and wherever I go."

The writer of this has often witnessed her desperate struggles; has seen her, when a gleam of reason came over her mind, weep in bitterness over her ruin and misery; has heard her confessions of deeds of villany committed under her roof; and has heard also her solemn vows to refrain from that which wrought all this misery and sin; but after all this, has seen her "seek it yet again."

All the arguments which religion can offer were set before her, and she often appeared to feel their force, and resolved to repent; but the deadly wave seemed to have retired to gather new force, and again swept over her and prostrated her lower than "the beasts that perish." There can be no more effectual barrier against the voice of conscience, the powerful influence of natural affection, and the strivings of the blessed Spirit of God, than the use of intoxicating drinks.

Her husband had made himself literally a beast: his appearance was scarcely human; bloated, discolored, tottering, uttering curses, and sometimes threatening her life. Her constitution after a while gave away, and she sunk in death, snoring out the few last days of her existence in a state of stupor, covered with rags and filth. Her husband had so benumbed every feeling of humanity by his excess, that he seemed very little affected by her death; and to one who reminded him of their former respectability, and spoke of the wretched state to which they were reduced, urging him powerfully, over the dead body of the self-murdered wife _now_ to desist, he replied stupidly, that there is an _eleventh hour_.

Four or five years have elapsed, and he is still in the same state of beastly degradation--his property entirely gone, and he occasionally earning a few cents, with which to purchase the poison which is consuming his vitals, and rendering him stupid and dead to every motive that can be urged for reformation.

Two of the sons of this unhappy man have gone down to death in an awful manner. Another, in an affray occasioned by intoxication, received such an injury in the head that his intellect has suffered, and he is subject to fits of partial derangement. The other two are very intemperate; one of them apparently lost to all sense of shame.

The circumstances attending the death of one of these young men were extraordinary. He had become subject to fits in consequence of his intemperate life; and his wife following the same course, they were obliged to give up keeping a public-house, and he maintained himself by fishing. He frequently stopped colored people and others who were advertised as runaways, and obtained a reward for returning them to their masters. He was brutally cruel in his treatment of those who thus fell into his hands, and on one occasion, having apprehended a young colored man on suspicion of his being a runaway, he confined him; and taking him in a boat to his master--who had sent him from home on business--as he was returning, he fell from the boat, probably in a fit, and sunk like lead into the mighty waters. On the following day search was made for his body, which was found swollen and disfigured, and laid in the grave.

His brother, the youngest of the five, had not reached his twentieth year, but had given himself up to the influence of the vice which has proved the destruction of his family, until he also was subject to fits. Not many months ago he was seized with one, being then intoxicated; he was recovered by the by-standers, and crawled to a small sloop lying partly on the shore for repairs: he laid himself down there, and was found, ten minutes afterwards, _dead_, with his head partly under water. It was supposed that another fit had seized him, and that in his struggle he had fallen and suffocated.

This is a melancholy history, but a true one. Many circumstances rendering it more striking are suppressed, as some of the parties are living. The old man, but a short time ago, was warned again, and the question put to him, "What are the benefits of this practice?" "It _fattens graveyards_!" he replied, with a distorted countenance and a horrid laugh.

Yes, such are the dire results of intemperance; and of intemperance not born with one, but brought on by a temperate use of ardent spirit. These facts are well known. They are published with the hope of their proving a restraint to some one who, trusting in the strength of principle, may occasionally taste this destructive poison.

"Look not upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright: at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." Go to God for strength to resist temptation; practise entire abstinence from all that can intoxicate; repent of sin, and trust in the mercy of Christ; and you shall be safe for the present life, and that which is to come.

PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY.

THE EFFECTS OF INTEMPERANCE ON THE MORAL, INTELLECTUAL, AND PHYSICAL POWERS.

BY THOMAS SEWALL, M. D.,

PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY IN THE COLUMBIAN COLLEGE, WASHINGTON CITY.

I address you, fellow-citizens, to enlist your sympathies and efforts in behalf of an institution which, in accordance with the spirit of the times, has been established through our land by the almost united voice of the nation, and this for the suppression of one of the most alarming evils that ever infested human society; a vice, too, so odious in its nature, so injurious in its consequences, and attended with so many circumstances of suffering, mortification, and disgrace, that it seems difficult to understand how it should ever have become a prevalent evil among mankind; and more especially how it should have come down to us from the early periods of society, gaining strength, and power, and influence, in its descent. That such is the fact, requires no proof. Its devastating effects are but too obvious. In these latter times, more especially, it has swept over our land with the rapidity and power of a tempest, bearing down every thing in its course. Not content with rioting in the haunts of ignorance and vice, it has passed through our consecrated groves, has entered our most sacred enclosures: and O, how many men of genius and of letters have fallen before it; how many lofty intellects have been shattered and laid in ruins by its power; how many a warm and philanthropic heart has been chilled by its icy touch! It has left no retreat unvisited; it has alike invaded our public and private assemblies, our political and social circles, our courts of justice and halls of legislation. It has stalked within the very walls of our capitol, and there left the stain of its polluting touch on our national glory. It has leaped over the pale of the church, and even reached up its sacrilegious arm to the pulpit and dragged down some of its richest ornaments. It has revelled equally on the spoils of the palace and the cottage, and has seized its victims, with an unsparing grasp, from every class of society; the private citizen and public functionary, the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the enlightened and the ignorant: and where is there a family among us so happy as not to have wept over some of its members, who have fallen by the hand of this ruthless destroyer?

As a nation, intemperance has corrupted our morals, impaired our intellect, and enfeebled our physical strength. Indeed, in whatever light we view it, whether as an individual, a social, or national evil, as affecting our personal independence and happiness, our national wealth and industry; as reducing our power of naval and military defence, as enfeebling the intellectual energies of the nation, and undermining the health of our fellow-citizens; as sinking the patriotism and valor of the nation, as increasing paupers, poverty, and taxation, as sapping the foundation of our moral and religious institutions, or as introducing disorder, distress, and ruin into families and society; it calls to us, in a voice of thunder, to awake from our slumbers, to seize every weapon, and wield every power which God and nature have placed within our reach, to protect ourselves and our fellow-citizens from its ravages.

But the occasion will not permit me to dwell on the general effects of intemperance, nor to trace the history of its causes. I shall, therefore, confine myself more particularly to a consideration of its influence on the individual; its effects on the moral, intellectual, and physical constitution of man--not the primary effect of ardent spirit as displayed in a fit of intoxication; it is the more insidious, permanent, and fatal effects of intemperance, as exemplified in the case of the habitual dram-drinker, to which I wish to call your attention.

I. The effects of ardent spirit on THE MORAL POWERS. It is perhaps difficult to determine in what way intemperance first manifests its influence on the moral powers, so variously does it affect different individuals. Were I to speak from my own observation, I should say that it first appears in an alienation of those kind and tender sympathies which bind a man to his family and friends; those lively sensibilities which enable him to participate in the joys and sorrows of those around him. "The social affections lose their fulness and tenderness, the conscience its power, the heart its sensibility, till all that was once lovely, and rendered him the joy and the idol of his friends, retires," and leaves him to the dominion of the appetites and passions of the brute. "Religious enjoyment, if he ever possessed any, declines as the emotions excited by ardent spirit arise." He loses, by degrees, his regard to truth and to the fulfilment of his engagements--he forgets the Sabbath and the house of worship, and lounges upon his bed, or lingers at the tavern. He lays aside his Bible--his family devotion is not heard, and his closet no longer listens to the silent whispers of prayer. He at length becomes irritable, peevish, and profane; and is finally lost to every thing that respects decorum in appearance, or virtue in principle; and it is lamentable to mark the steps of that process by which the virtuous and elevated man sinks to ruin.