REVIEW.

ARTICLE XIV.

The Criminality of Intemperance: An address delivered at the eleventh anniversary of the Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance. By Henry Ware, Jr. Minister of the Second Church in Boston. Boston: Phelps & Farnham.

We strongly recommend this address to public attention. We shall be doing a service to the community, if we can promote its circulation. We have seen nothing better adapted to awaken attention to the flood of vice and misery which intemperance is spreading. It is a forcible exhibition of the nature and extent of this loathsome form of moral depravity. It is forcible, because it is true, because it contains no assertions which can be gainsayed, and because it expresses, justly and strongly, those sentiments which a Christian or a moral man or an enlightened patriot must feel in regarding the evil which it presents to view. We shall make large extracts; for we cannot fill our pages with any thing more important. We trust, at the same time, that these extracts will not supersede in any degree the circulation of the address itself; but only tend to promote it. It is a tract of which large editions should be printed in all our cities, and which should be spread as widely as possible over the country.

The first head is of the Criminality of Intemperance.

'Considered as a habit of gross self-indulgence, it is criminal. We need not go to an ascetic extreme, and declare the way of virtue to be a path of mere self-denial and mortification. But it is plain, on the other hand, that life was not intended to be, and ought not to be, a season of mere self-indulgence; that any habit of it is incompatible with the real object of life; that, of whatever nature the indulgence may be, it interferes with the pursuit of eminent virtue; and that all grossness in it is criminal. We find no sect of philosophers and moralists in the world, who have not taught the incom patibility of self-indulgence with a high virtue. Even the genuine Epicureans are no exception. It cannot, therefore, be necessary to argue with the disciples of the pure morality, which was taught from heaven, on the criminality of this most gross and most beastly of all forms of selfishness. What a reproach to Christians, that it so prevails among them, and they are so insensible to its guilt! Again: Unfaithfulness to the social relations of life is criminal. We are made to live with one another and help one another.

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Creator has interwoven the interest and happiness of every man with the interest and happiness of some others. He has parents, or consort, or children, or friends, for whose peace and happiness he is bound to consult, no less than for his own. To disregard them, is to disobey God. If then, by the habitual gratification of a selfish propensity, he wound their feelings, disturb their peace of mind, contribute to distress rather than comfort them, to be a burden instead of a satisfaction. and to bring upon them want and suffering, is he not a criminal? If, for the sake of this one personal indulgence, he persist in making wretched those who are dear to him, is he not a criminal? It is no excuse that he is thoughtless; it is a crime to be thoughtless concerning such duties. It is no excuse that he is really kind-hearted and affectionate; it is so much the worse that such dispositions should be allowed to bear the fruits of malice and ill-will.

Further: To incapacitate one's self for duty is criminal. The great Creator has bestowed upon his creatures powers suited to the part he requires them to act; he places them in situations adapted to their exercise; and requires of them a service proportioned to those powers. Let them be employed with the most faithful diligence in their best and brightest state, and man can do no more than is reasonably his duty, can make no more than an adequate return to that goodness which has blest him; if he have felt truly grateful, and perceived the extent of his obligations, he will readily acknowledge the most faithful return to be poor and insufficient. But if, instead of this fidelity, he set himself to dull his faculties, to weaken his powers, to blind himself to the perception of right and wrong, and frustrate the object of his creation-striving to rid himself of his accountableness by descending to the level of the insane brutes;-what name will common sense give to this short of a crime !

Yet this is precisely the description of the drunkard. He has done the utmost in his power to incapacitate himself for that for which he was made. He has endeavoured to blot out his rational nature. He has done his best to cast away his crown of glory and honour, and forfeit his place a little lower than the angels--and become as one of the irrational beings, over whom God gave him dominion.

This he has done deliberately, step by step, seeing his path as he advanced, his eyes open on the consequences, after warning, and with forethought, in spite of entreaty, remonstrance and tears, in contempt of his own resolutions to the contrary, and a thousand broken vows. His path is in a manner strewed with broken pledges, violated promises, forfeited oaths, over which he forces his march to idiocy, brutishness, infamy, death.'

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'I do not mean to say that this habit is ever formed without temptation, or persisted in without what may be thought an excuse,

The temptation is gradual and insinuating; the habit is formed insensibly. It is an established custom for men to drink while they labour. The poor man is absurdly taught to think a glass necessary for his strength; he finds another necessary for companionship. He cannot walk abroad without finding a lure invitingly held out beneath the license of the law. Before he is aware of it, a certain stimulus has become necessary to his constitution. If he try to amend, he is pressed by this necessity, and in a manner compelled to maintain the vice; though he would give the world to renounce it. And where, we are asked, is the sin in all this? Is there not rather a call for compassion than for censure?

Undoubtedly there is a call for compassion-for deep and earnest compassion. So there is in the case of every sin, when we reflect on the circumstances of trial and temptation. The case of the drunkard is not, in this respect, different from that of other criminals. The man who, impelled by want, or the unprincipled habits of a bad education, robs on the high-way, is driven by as imperious a necessity as the drunkard. The temptation is as strong, the habit is as irresistible. The sudden passion of the murderer is as irresistible as the appetite of the tippler. The cherished revenge of the assassin is as strong an excitement as the cherished thirst of the intemperate. But who, in these cases, excuses the crime because of the temptation? Who thinks it a palliation of the offence, that the state of the offender's mind and heart is such as necessarily to lead to it? Who excuses the two-fold crime of David, because of the greatness of the lust by which he was drawn away and enticed? Compassionate therefore, as you please, the condition of the misera. ble man who is the slave of intemperate habits; but remember that, after all, his apology is but the same with that of other criminals, and quite as strong for them as for him.

'Indeed, may we not fairly go further, and say, that there are some circumstances which bring a peculiar aggravation to his guilt? When we consider the powerful dissuasives from this sin, is there not an aggravation in that state of mind which is not at all affected by them? When we reflect on the misery it occasions, must there not be a singular guilt in that deadness of mind, which allows one coolly to produce that misery without any malice or bad intention? How thoroughly must the good affections be palsied, and the moral sense destroyed, when this brutalizing enjoyment has become more desirable to a man, than all the rich pleasures which flow from home, friendship, health, and reputation! What an enormity of sin must he have to answer for, who has depraved himself so far, that, when all the felicities of a rational and social being are put in the one scale, and those of a beastly self-indulgence in the other, he chooses the last, strips himself of decency and honour, puts out the light of reason, flings off the attributes of a man, and rushes into all the wickedness of voluntary insanity, disgusting idiocy, and profane beastliness,--disgraces his friends, beggars his family, initi

ates his children in the dispositions and pathway of hell, becomes the corrupter of youthful purity, and a public teacher of debauchery with no disposition to engage in good pursuits, and no power to attend to the things which concern his peace, or to take one step toward the salvation of his soul! What can be said of such a man, but that his present and eternal ruin are complete? Earth curses him, while he is upon it, and beyond it he can see no prospect but that of the blackness of darkness. A drunkard cannot inherit the kingdom of God."

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'Now if there were but one being upon earth, who had thus de prived himself of his rational nature, and darkened his hope of immortality, with what intense and fearful interest would he be contemplated! with what earnest sympathy should we crowd around to gaze on so deplorable a spectacle, and how many hands would be united to save him from destruction! Yet it is not one, but many. Multitudes are thronging the broad path, and pressing forward with obstinate infatuation to this hideous gulf. Every village has its list of those who were impoverished and ruined by this vice. Every town can tell of estates forfeited to pay for their owner's degradation, and exhibits on its records the names of young and promising men, cut off prematurely by this infamous sin. Our alms-houses, reared for the refuge of honest misfortune, have become the shelter of poverty and sin, where the drunkard and glutton who have come to poverty, are supported upon the hard earnings of the industrious and sober. Look at a few facts.* Nearly four-fifths of those supported as paupers by a tax upon the industry of the community, have become paupers through intemperance. In one town in this state, thirteen out of every fourteen are a public charge from this cause. In this city the proportion is about two in every three. If, therefore, we consider that the annual expense of our alms-house is more than thirty-thousand dollars, we find that twenty thousand dollars are expended for the support of this vice. Twenty thousand dollars annually appropriated by the town of Boston in charity to drunkards! It is said that the annual expenses of the alms-houses in this state amount to about 900,000 dollars; four fifths of which sum-720,000 dollars-are paid for the benefit of those who were ruined by intemperance. What tax is there so enormous as this!

In estimating, however, the extent of this evil, we must add to the preceding account, the sum expended for ardent spirits by those who are not yet objects of the public charity. On the presumption that the inhabitants of this city consume their proportion of the thirty-three millions annually expended in the United States, we shall find the annual expenditure in Boston to be one hundred and

*Most of these statements are made from the past reports of this Society; for some of them I am indebted to other sources, but am unable to specify them. †This estimate is founded on the state of things in 1810; it must be much short of the truth at the present time.

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eighty thousand dollars*-more than sufficient to pay all the taxes. That this calculation is far within bounds will be evident, if we consider that it supposes each retailer to sell less than the amount of two dollars a week. In the city of New-York, in 1820, the amount expended in ardent spirits was one million eight hundred and ninety-three thousand and eleven dollars; which in proportion to the population is more than double the sum just named for Boston. So that, to speak far within bounds, there is every year consumed in this town spirits to the amount of two hundred thousand dollars, What one benefit to society can be named as the result of this monstrous cost? There is no reason to suppose that the town consumes more in proportion to its population than the country; on which supposition we have more than two millions five hundred thousand wasted annually in Massachusetts on this indulgence. Add to this the seven hundred and twenty thousand dollars, charity money, which the public pays from this cause, and there is a waste of more than three millions. I ask again, who will show us the benefits of this expense? How is government strengthened, or education promoted, or good morals aided, or good neighbourhood encouraged?

These various considerations afford some faint idea of the extent of this plague. To apprehend it yet more distinctly, we must remember the waste of life it occasions. It is the cause of more deaths, ei ther directly or by the disorders it creates, than any other single disease. It is said there are every year six thousand persons who die in the very act of intoxication, within the United States. If we could take almost any one of these cases separately, and describe to ourselves all its loathsome minuteness of depravity and misery, as Sterne has painted his single prisoner in the dungeon, what a heart-rending and soul sickening picture would be presented! But when we consider that this scene is repeated six thousand times every year, attended in most cases with indescribable distress and shame to family and friends; and that more than six times six thousand are pressing on in the straight path to the same end; the mind wants power to imagine so great a mass of accumulated and disgusting wretchedness. It turns away with loathing and abhorrence; or, I might say, with incredulity; for the mind is but too little af fected by an evil, which has grown too large for its measurement or conception. It has accordingly happened amongst us, as it happens in a city where a pestilence is raging. While the deaths are few and rare, there is a prevailing alarm and sadness. But as the destroyer advances and deaths multiply, there is produced a dreadful stupidity; so that as horrors accumulate, indulgence and disorders increase also, till you cannot say whether the wide ruin of death be more terrible than the riotous unconcern of the living.

*$180,000 per annum=$3,269 per week.

+ In a work lately published at Paris by M. Passenas, entitled Russia and Slavery, it is said, "It is computed that upwards of 200,000 die annually from the effects of intoxicating liquors."