But it may be said, if we reject spirits from being a part of our
drinks, what liquors shall we substitute in their room? I answer, in the
first place,
1. SIMPLE WATER. I have known many instances of persons who have
followed the most laborious employments for many years in the open air,
and in warm and cold weather, who never drank any thing but water, and
enjoyed uninterrupted good health. Dr. Moseley, who resided many years
in the West-Indies, confirms this remark. "I aver (says the doctor),
from my own knowledge and custom, as well as the custom and observations
of many other people, that those who drink nothing but water, or make
it their principal drink, are but little affected by the climate, and
can undergo the greatest fatigue without inconvenience, and are never
subject to troublesome or dangerous diseases."
Persons who are unable to relish this simple beverage of nature, may
drink some one, or of all the following liquors, in preference to ardent
spirits.
2. CYDER. This excellent liquor contains a small quantity of spirit,
but so diluted, and blunted by being combined with a large quantity of
saccharine matter, and water, as to be perfectly wholesome. It sometimes
disagrees with persons subject to the rheumatism, but it may be made
inoffensive to such people, by extinguishing a red hot iron in it, or by
mixing it with water. It is to be lamented, that the late frosts in the
spring so often deprive us of the fruit which affords this liquor. The
effects of these frosts have been in some measure obviated by giving an
orchard a north-west exposure, so as to check too early vegetation, and
by kindling two or three large fires of brush or straw, to the windward
of the orchard, the evening before we expect a night of frost. This last
expedient has in many instances preserved the fruit of an orchard, to
the great joy and emolument of the ingenious husbandman.
3. MALT LIQUORS. The grain from which these liquors are obtained, is
not liable, like the apple, to be affected by frost, and therefore they
can be procured at all times, and at a moderate price. They contain
a good deal of nourishment; hence we find many of the poor people in
Great-Britain endure hard labour with no other food than a quart or
three pints of beer, with a few pounds of bread in a day. As it will be
difficult to prevent small beer from becoming sour in warm weather, an
excellent substitute may be made for it by mixing bottled porter, ale,
or strong beer with an equal quantity of water; or a pleasant beer may
be made by adding to a bottle of porter, ten quarts of water, and a
pound of brown sugar, or a pint of molasses. After they have been well
mixed, pour the liquor into bottles, and place them, loosely corked, in
a cool cellar. In two or three days, it will be fit for use. A spoonful
of ginger added to the mixture, renders it more lively, and agreeable to
the taste.
3. WINES. These fermented liquors are composed of the same ingredients
as cyder, and are both cordial and nourishing. The peasants of France,
who drink them in large quantities, are a sober and healthy body of
people. Unlike ardent spirits, which render the temper irritable, wines
generally inspire cheerfulness and good humour. It is to be lamented
that the grape has not as yet been sufficiently cultivated in our
country, to afford wine to our citizens; but many excellent substitutes
may be made for it, from the native fruits of all the states. If
two barrels of cyder fresh from the press, are boiled into one, and
afterwards fermented, and kept for two or three years in a dry cellar,
it affords a liquor which, according to the quality of the apple from
which the cyder is made, has the taste of Malaga, or Rhenish wine. It
affords when mixed with water, a most agreeable drink in summer. I have
taken the liberty of calling it POMONA WINE. There is another method
of making a pleasant wine from the apple, by adding four and twenty
gallons of new cyder to three gallons of syrup made from the expressed
juice of sweet apples. When thoroughly fermented, and kept for a few
years, it becomes fit for use. The blackberry of our fields, and the
raspberry and currant of our gardens, afford likewise an agreeable and
wholesome wine, when pressed and mixed with certain proportions of sugar
and water, and a little spirit, to counteract their disposition to an
excessive fermentation. It is no objection to these cheap and home-made
wines, that they are unfit for use until they are two or three years
old. The foreign wines in common use in our country, require not only a
much longer time to bring them to perfection, but to prevent their being
disagreeable, even to the taste.
4. MOLASSES and WATER, also VINEGAR and WATER, sweetened with sugar
or molasses, form an agreeable drink in warm weather. It is pleasant
and cooling, and tends to keep up those gentle and uniform sweats, on
which health and life often depend. Vinegar and water constituted the
only drink of the soldiers of the Roman republic, and it is well known
they marched and fought in a warm climate, and beneath a load of arms
which weighed sixty pounds. Boaz, a wealthy farmer in Palestine, we find
treated his reapers with nothing but bread dipped in vinegar. To such
persons as object to the taste of vinegar, sour milk, or butter-milk, or
sweet milk diluted with water, may be given in its stead. I have known
the labour of the longest and hottest days in summer supported, by means
of these pleasant and wholesome drinks, with great firmness, and ended,
with scarcely a complaint of fatigue.
5. The SUGAR MAPLE affords a thin juice, which has long been used by the
farmers in Connecticut, as a cool and refreshing drink, in the time of
harvest. The settlers in the western counties of the middle states will
do well to let a few of the trees which yield this pleasant juice remain
in all their fields. They may prove the means, not only of saving their
children and grand-children many hundred pounds, but of saving their
bodies from disease and death, and their souls from misery beyond the
grave.
6. COFFEE possesses agreeable and exhilarating qualities, and might be
used with great advantage to obviate the painful effects of heat, cold,
and fatigue upon the body. I once knew a country physician, who made it
a practice to drink a pint of strong coffee previously to his taking a
long or cold ride. It was more cordial to him than spirits, in any of
the forms in which they are commonly used.
The use of the cold bath in the morning, and of the warm bath in the
evening, are happily calculated to strengthen the body in the former
part of the day, and to restore it in the latter, from the languor and
fatigue which are induced by heat and labour.
Let it not be said, ardent spirits have become necessary from habit in
harvest, and in other seasons of uncommon and arduous labour. The habit
is a bad one, and may be easily broken. Let but half a dozen farmers
in a neighbourhood combine to allow higher wages to their labourers
than are common, and a sufficient quantity of _any_ of the pleasant
and wholesome liquors I have recommended, and they may soon, by their
example, abolish the practice of giving them spirits. In a little while
they will be delighted with the good effects of their association. Their
grain and hay will be gathered into their barns in less time, and in a
better condition than formerly, and of course at a less expense, and a
hundred disagreeable scenes from sickness, contention, and accidents
will be avoided, all of which follow in a greater or less degree the use
of ardent spirits.
Nearly all diseases have their predisposing causes. The same thing may
be said of the intemperate use of distilled spirits. It will, therefore,
be useful to point out the different employments, situations, and
conditions of the body and mind, which predispose to the love of those
liquors, and to accompany them with directions to prevent persons being
ignorantly and undesignedly seduced into the habitual and destructive
use of them.
1. Labourers bear with great difficulty, long intervals between their
meals. To enable them to support the waste of their strength, their
stomachs should be constantly, but moderately stimulated by aliment, and
this is best done by their eating four or five times in a day during
the seasons of great bodily exertion. The food at this time should be
_solid_, consisting chiefly of salted meat. The vegetables used with
it, should possess some activity, or they should be made savoury by
a mixture of spices. Onions and garlic are of a most cordial nature.
They composed a part of the diet which enabled the Israelites to
endure, in a warm climate, the heavy tasks imposed upon them by their
Egyptian masters; and they were eaten, Horace and Virgil tell us, by
the Roman farmers, to repair the waste of their strength, by the toils
of harvest. There are likewise certain sweet substances, which support
the body under the pressure of labour. The negroes in the West-Indies
become strong, and even fat, by drinking the juice of the sugar cane,
in the season of grinding it. The Jewish soldiers were invigorated by
occasionally eating raisins and figs. A bread composed of wheat flour,
molasses, and ginger (commonly called gingerbread), taken in small
quantities during the day, is happily calculated to obviate the debility
induced upon the body by constant labour. All these substances, whether
of an animal or vegetable nature, lessen the desire, as well as the
necessity, for cordial drinks, and impart equable and durable strength
to every part of the system.
2. Valetudinarians, especially those who are afflicted with diseases of
the stomach and bowels, are very apt to seek relief from ardent spirits.
Let such people be cautious how they make use of this dangerous remedy.
I have known many men and women of excellent characters and principles,
who have been betrayed, by occasional doses of gin and brandy, into a
love of those liquors, and have afterwards fallen sacrifices to their
fatal effects. The different preparations of opium are much more safe
and efficacious than distilled cordials of any kind, in flatulent or
spasmodic affections of the stomach and bowels. So great is the danger
of contracting a love for distilled liquors, by accustoming the stomach
to their stimulus, that as few medicines as possible should be given in
spiritous vehicles, in chronic diseases. A physician, of great eminence
and uncommon worth, who died towards the close of the last century,
in London, in taking leave of a young physician of this city, who had
finished his studies under his patronage, impressed this caution with
peculiar force upon him, and lamented at the same time, in pathetic
terms, that he had innocently made many sots, by prescribing brandy and
water in stomach complaints. It is difficult to tell how many persons
have been destroyed by those physicians who have adopted Dr. Brown's
indiscriminate practice in the use of stimulating remedies, the most
popular of which is ardent spirits, but, it is well known, several
of them have died of intemperance in this city, since the year 1790.
They were probably led to it, by drinking brandy and water, to relieve
themselves from the frequent attacks of debility and indisposition,
to which the labours of a physician expose him, and for which rest,
fasting, a gentle purge, or weak diluting drinks would have been safe
and more certain cures.
None of these remarks are intended to preclude the use of spirits in
the low state of short, or what are called acute diseases, for, in such
cases, they produce their effects too soon to create a habitual desire
for them.
3. Some people, from living in countries subject to intermitting
fevers, endeavour to fortify themselves against them, by taking two or
three wine-glasses of bitters, made with spirits, every day. There is
great danger of contracting habits of intemperance from this practice.
Besides, this mode of preventing intermittents is far from being a
certain one. A much better security against them, is a tea-spoonful of
the jesuits bark, taken every morning during a sickly season. If this
safe and excellent medicine cannot be had, a gill or half a pint of a
strong watery infusion of centaury, camomile, wormwood, or rue, mixed
with a little of the calamus of our meadows, may be taken every morning,
with nearly the same advantage as the jesuits bark. Those persons who
live in a sickly country, and cannot procure any of the preventives of
autumnal fevers which have been mentioned, should avoid the morning and
evening air; should kindle fires in their houses, on damp days, and in
cool evenings, throughout the whole summer; and put on winter clothes,
about the first week in September. The last part of these directions
applies only to the inhabitants of the middle states.
4. Men who follow professions, which require constant exercise of
the faculties of their minds, are very apt to seek relief, by the
use of ardent spirits, from the fatigue which succeeds great mental
exertions. To such persons, it may be a discovery to know, that TEA
is a much better remedy for that purpose. By its grateful and gentle
stimulus, it removes fatigue, restores the excitement of the mind, and
invigorates the whole system. I am no advocate for the excessive use
of tea. When taken too strong, it is hurtful, especially to the female
constitution; but when taken of a moderate degree of strength, and in
moderate quantities, with sugar and cream, or milk, I believe it is, in
general, innoxious, and at all times to be preferred to ardent spirits,
as a cordial for studious men. The late Anthony Benezet, one of the
most laborious schoolmasters I ever knew, informed me, he had been
prevented from the love of spiritous liquors, by acquiring a love for
tea in early life. Three or four cups, taken in an afternoon, carried
off the fatigue of a whole day's labour in his school. This worthy man
lived to be seventy-one years of age, and died of an acute disease, with
the full exercise of all the faculties of his mind. But the use of tea
counteracts a desire for distilled spirits, during great _bodily_, as
well as mental exertions. Of this, Captain Forest has furnished us with
a recent and remarkable proof, in his History of a Voyage from Calcutta,
to the Marqui Archipelago. "I have always observed (says this ingenious
mariner) when sailors drink TEA, it weans them from the thoughts of
drinking strong liquors, and pernicious grog; and with this, they are
soon contented. Not so with whatever will intoxicate, be it what it
will. This has always been my remark. I therefore always encourage it,
without their knowing why."
5. Women have sometimes been led to seek relief from what is called
breeding sickness, by the use of ardent spirits. A little gingerbread,
or biscuit, taken occasionally, so as to prevent the stomach being
empty, is a much better remedy for that disease.
6. Persons under the pressure of debt, disappointments in worldly
pursuits, and guilt, have sometimes sought to drown their sorrows
in strong drink. The only radical cure for those evils, is to be
found in religion; but where its support is not resorted to, wine
and opium should always be preferred to ardent spirits. They are far
less injurious to the body and mind, than spirits, and the habits of
attachment to them are easily broken, after time and repentance have
removed the evils they were taken to relieve.
7. The sociable and imitative nature of man, often disposes him to
adopt the most odious and destructive practices from his companions.
The French soldiers who conquered Holland, in the year 1794, brought
back with them the love and use of brandy, and thereby corrupted the
inhabitants of several of the departments of France, who had been
previously distinguished for their temperate and sober manners. Many
other facts might be mentioned, to show how important it is to avoid
the company of persons addicted to the use of ardent spirits.
8. Smoking and chewing tobacco, by rendering water and simple liquors
insipid to the taste, dispose very much to the stronger stimulus of
ardent spirits. The practice of smoking cigars has, in every part of
our country, been more followed by a general use of brandy and water,
as a common drink, more especially by that class of citizens who have
not been in the habit of drinking wine, or malt liquors. The less,
therefore, tobacco is used in the above ways, the better.
9. No man ever became suddenly a drunkard. It is by gradually
accustoming the taste and stomach to ardent spirits, in the forms of
GROG and TODDY, that men have been led to love them in their more
destructive mixtures, and in their simple state. Under the impression
of this truth, were it possible for me to speak with a voice so loud
as to be heard from the river St. Croix to the remotest shores of the
Mississippi, which bound the territory of the United States, I would
say, Friends and fellow-citizens, avoid the habitual use of those two
seducing liquors, whether they be made with brandy, rum, gin, Jamaica
spirits, whiskey, or what is called cherry bounce. It is true, some
men, by limiting the strength of those drinks, by measuring the spirit
and water, have drunken them for many years, and even during a long
life, without acquiring habits of intemperance or intoxication, but many
more have been insensibly led, by drinking weak toddy and grog first at
their meals, to take them for their constant drink, in the intervals of
their meals; afterwards to take them, of an increased strength, before
breakfast in the morning; and finally to destroy themselves by drinking
undiluted spirits, during every hour of the day and night. I am not
singular in this remark. "The consequences of drinking rum and water,
or _grog_, as it is called (says Dr. Moseley), is, that habit increases
the desire of more spirits, and decreases its effects; and there are
very few grog-drinkers who long survive the practice of debauching with
it, without acquiring the odious nuisance of dram-drinkers' breath,
and downright stupidity and impotence[64]." To enforce the caution
against the use of those two apparently innocent and popular liquors
still further, I shall select one instance, from among many, to show
the ordinary manner in which they beguile and destroy their votaries.
A citizen of Philadelphia, once of a fair and sober character, drank
toddy for many years, as his constant drink. From this he proceeded to
drink grog. After a while, nothing would satisfy him but slings made
of equal parts of rum and water, with a little sugar. From slings he
advanced to raw rum, and from common rum to Jamaica spirits. Here he
rested for a few months, but at length, finding even Jamaica spirits
were not strong enough to warm his stomach, he made it a constant
practice to throw a table-spoonful of ground pepper in each glass of his
spirits, in order, to use his own words, "to take off their coldness."
He soon after died a martyr to his intemperance.
[64] Treatise on Tropical Diseases.
Ministers of the gospel, of every denomination, in the United States!
aid me with all the weight you possess in society, from the dignity and
usefulness of your sacred office, to save our fellow men from being
destroyed, by the great destroyer of their lives and souls. In order
more successfully to effect this purpose, permit me to suggest to you
to employ the same wise modes of instruction, which you use in your
attempts to prevent their destruction by other vices. You expose the
evils of covetousness, in order to prevent theft; you point out the
sinfulness of impure desires, in order to prevent adultery; and you
dissuade from anger, and malice, in order to prevent murder. In like
manner, denounce, by your preaching, conversation, and examples, the
seducing influence of toddy and grog, when you aim to prevent all the
crimes and miseries, which are the offspring of strong drink.
We have hitherto considered the effects of ardent spirits upon
individuals, and the means of preventing them. I shall close this head
of our inquiry, by a few remarks on their effects upon the population
and welfare of our country, and the means of obviating them.
It is highly probable, not less than 4000 people die annually, from
the use of ardent spirits, in the United States. Should they continue
to exert this deadly influence upon our population, where will their
evils terminate? This question may be answered, by asking, where are
all the Indian tribes, whose numbers and arms formerly spread terror
among their civilized neighbours? I answer, in the words of the famous
Mingo chief, "the blood of many of them flows not in the veins of any
human creature." They have perished, not by pestilence, nor war, but by
a greater foe to human life than either of them--ardent spirits. The
loss of 4000 American citizens, by the yellow fever, in a single year,
awakened general sympathy and terror, and called forth all the strength
and ingenuity of laws, to prevent its recurrence. Why is not the same
zeal manifested in protecting our citizens from the more general and
consuming ravages of distilled spirits? Should the customs of civilized
life, preserve our nation from extinction, and even from an increase
of mortality, by those liquors; they cannot prevent our country being
governed by men, chosen by intemperate and corrupted voters. From such
legislators, the republic would soon be in danger. To avert this evil,
let good men of every class unite and besiege the general and state
governments, with petitions to limit the number of taverns; to impose
heavy duties upon ardent spirits; to inflict a mark of disgrace, or a
temporary abridgment of some civil right, upon every man convicted of
drunkenness; and finally to secure the property of habitual drunkards,
for the benefit of their families, by placing it in the hands of
trustees, appointed for that purpose, by a court of justice.
To aid the operation of these laws, would it not be extremely useful
for the rulers of the different denominations of christian churches
to unite, and render the sale and consumption of ardent spirits, a
subject of ecclesiastical jurisdiction? The methodists, and society of
friends, have, for some time past, viewed them as contraband articles,
to the pure laws of the gospel, and have borne many public and private
testimonies, against making them the objects of commerce. Their success
in this benevolent enterprise, affords ample encouragement for all other
religious societies to follow their example.