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.
"Pass where we may, through city or through town,
Village or hamlet, of this merry land,
* * * * every twentieth pace
Conducts the unguarded nose to such a whiff
Of stale debauch, forth issuing from the sties
That law has licensed, as makes Temperance REEL."
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.
ARGUMENT AGAINST THE MANUFACTURE OF
ARDENT SPIRITS:
ADDRESSED TO
THE DISTILLER AND THE FURNISHER OF THE MATERIALS.
BY REV. EDWARD HITCHCOCK, D. D.
A sense of duty impels me to address this portion of my fellow-citizens,
in the hope that I may persuade them to abandon the employment by which
they furnish ardent spirits to the community. I am not about to charge
them as the intentional authors of all the evils our country suffers
from intemperance, nor wholly to clear myself from the guilt; for some
of these men are my neighbors and personal friends, and I know them to
be convinced that the excessive use of ardent spirits is a frightful
evil among us, and that they would cheerfully join in some measures for
its suppression, though not yet satisfied that those now in train are
judicious or necessary. Not long ago, I was in essentially the same
state of mind, and encouraged these men in the manufacture of spirits,
by the purchase and use of them. Now I would fain believe that the minds
of all these individuals are open to conviction, and that the same
arguments which satisfied me that I was wrong, will satisfy them.
In the first place, therefore, I would reason with these men _as a
chemical philosopher_. The distiller is a practical chemist; and
although he may never have studied chemistry in the schools, he cannot
but have often thought of the theory of his operations. And the farmer
who receives at the distillery, in return for his rye, cider, or
molasses, a liquid powerful substance, obtained from them, will very
naturally inquire by what strange transformation these articles have
been made to yield something apparently so very different from their
nature. Probably, some of them may have concluded that the spirits exist
naturally in the grain, and apples, and sugar-cane, just as flour, and
cider, and molasses do. And hence they have inferred, first, that God
intended the spirits for the use of man, as much as the flour, the
apples, or the molasses; and that it is just as proper to separate the
spirits by distillation, as it is to obtain the flour by grinding and
bolting. Secondly, that there can be nothing injurious or poisonous in
the spirits, any more than in the apples, the grain, or the molasses;
the only injury, in either case, resulting from using too much. Thirdly,
that spirits must be nourishing to the body, constituting, as they seem
to do, the very essence of the fruit, grain, and molasses, which are
confessedly nutritious.
Now, these inferences are all rendered null and void by the fact that
ardent spirits, or alcohol, which is their essence, do not exist
naturally in apples, grain, or sugar-cane. No one ever perceived the
odor or the taste of alcohol in apples, or the cider obtained from them,
while it was new and sweet; but after it had fermented for a time, by a
due degree of warmth, the sweetness in a measure disappeared, and
alcohol was found to be present. And just so in obtaining spirits from
rye, or any other substance; a sweet liquor is at first obtained, which,
by fermentation, is found to be partly converted into alcohol. This
sweetness results from the sugar which the substances naturally contain,
or which is formed by the process. This sugar is next destroyed, or
decomposed, by the fermentation, and its parts go to make up a new
substance, then first brought into existence, called alcohol. If the
fermentation be carried on still farther, another new substance is
produced, viz., vinegar. Carried still farther, putrid, unhealthy
exhalations are the result, such as we find rising from swamps and other
places where vegetable matter is decaying. If, then, we may conclude,
because alcohol is obtained from grain and other nutritious substances,
that therefore God intended it for the use of man, the same reason will
show that he intended man should breathe these poisonous exhalations. If
alcohol cannot be poisonous or injurious, because derived from harmless
and salutary substances, neither can these exhalations be so; nor,
indeed, those more putrid and deadly ones arising from the putrefaction
of sweet animal food. And if alcohol must be nutritious, because apples,
grain, and molasses are so, it follows that these exhalations are
nutritious.
Having thus explained the chemistry of this subject, I would, secondly,
address these men as a _physician_. I mean merely, that I wish to
present before them the views of the most distinguished and impartial
physicians concerning ardent spirits. It is important, then, to remark,
that physicians have decided that alcohol is a powerful _poison_. And
how do they prove this? Simply by comparing its effects with those of
other poisons--particularly the poisons derived, as alcohol is, from
vegetables--such as henbane, poison hemlock, prussic acid, thorn-apples,
deadly nightshade, foxglove, poison sumach, oil of tobacco, and the
essence of opium. These poisons, taken in different quantities,
according to their strength, produce nausea, dizziness, exhilaration of
spirits with subsequent debility, and even total insensibility; in other
cases, delirium and death; and alcohol does the same. These poisons
weaken the stomach, impair the memory and all the powers of the mind,
and sometimes bring on palsy, apoplexy, and other violent disorders; and
so does alcohol. Do you say that ardent spirits, as they are commonly
drank, do not produce these effects except in a very slight degree?
Neither do these substances, when much weakened by mixture with other
things. Even rum and brandy, of the first proof, contain only about
fifty parts of alcohol in the hundred; and even the _high wines_, as
they are called, are by no means pure alcohol; yet less than an ounce of
proof spirits, given to a rabbit, killed it in less than an hour. Three
quarters of an ounce of alcohol, introduced into the stomach of a large
and robust dog, killed him in three and a half hours. In larger
quantities, as almost every one knows, this same substance has proved
immediately fatal to men. Do you say that many drink spirits for years,
and are not destroyed; and do you hence inquire how they can be
poisonous? So I reply, not a few take small quantities of other poisons
every day for years, and continue alive. A horse, indeed, may take the
eighth part of an ounce of arsenic every day, and yet be thriving. But
how many are there, do you suppose, who habitually drink ardent spirits,
and yet suffer no bad effects from it? Have they no stomach complaints,
no nervous maladies, no headaches? Do they live to a great age? Not one
out of a hundred of those who daily drink ardent spirits, escapes
uninjured; though their sickness and premature decay, resulting from
this cause, are generally imputed to other causes; and as many as this
would escape if arsenic were used, in moderate quantities, instead of
spirits.
Farmers and distillers, whom I address, pause, I beseech you, and
meditate upon this fact. It is poison into which you convert your rye
and apples; it is poison which, under the name of whiskey and
cider-brandy, you put into your cellars; it is poison which you draw out
from the brandy and whiskey casks for drink, and which you offer your
children and friends for drink; it is poison which you sell to your
neighbors; it is producing the same effects as other poisons upon you
and upon them; that is, it is undermining your constitutions, and
shortening your lives and happiness. You would not dare thus to
manufacture and distribute among the community calomel or arsenic, if
these were in use, leaving it to every man to determine how large doses
he should take. Yet it would not be half as dangerous for men of all
descriptions to deal out and administer these substances to themselves
and others, for there would be none of that bewitching temptation to
excess, in the case of calomel and arsenic, which attends ardent
spirits. But if by carelessly distributing calomel or arsenic in
society, you had destroyed only one life, your conscience would be
exceedingly burdened with the guilt. And who is to bear the guilt of
destroying the thirty or forty thousand who are cut off annually in this
country by intemperance? Suppose the distilleries were all to stop, how
many would then die from hard drinking?