In September of the same year, the present Secretary was again appointed to an agency of three months, and visited various places in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.

The prospect continued to brighten, and the evidence to increase that the work was of God. Numbers were found who had been led, within a few years, from their own reflections, without concert, in view of what they saw, to the conclusion, that they could not continue to use ardent spirit, or to furnish it for the use of others, without the commission of sin. These were evidences which God had prepared, when the duty of abstinence was preached, to rise up and say, "We have felt it ;" and when the utility of abstinence was exhibited, to say, "It is true; we have tried it, and found it so." This was said by men in various kinds of business, and in all conditions of life, and it gave a powerful impulse to the cause. "I wish," said an old man, as he rose at the close of a temperance meeting, "to say to the people, before they go away, that all which they have heard with regard to the utility of abstinence from ardent spirit is true. I know it is true. I have tried it. More than a hundred tons of hay I have gathered this summer off my own farm, and not a man in my employment has used a drop. I never got through the business of a season before without having some of my men sick. In the hot days of haying and harvesting, one was taken off a day, another a week, and so on. But this summer, not a man has lost a meal of victuals during the season. They have not broken the tools, as they used to; they have not quarrelled among themselves, as they used to; and I finished the business of the scason much sooner than my neighbors who kept on in the old way, and much better than ever before. Oh! it is a great improvement."

In the course of the year, were published Kittredge's First Address, Dr. Mussey's Address before the Medical Convention of New Hampshire, Mr. Palfrey's Sermons, and Dr. Beecher's Sermons on the Nature, Signs, Evils, and Remedy of Intemperance; and they were all powerful auxiliaries to the cause.*

To show the state of the public mind at this period, we present a few extracts from the publications of that year.

The Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance, in their Annual Report, Nov., 1827, say, "It is becoming unfashionable to drink ardent spirits in decent company; and it is no longer considered a necessary mark of hospitality to offer them. People are beginning to yield to the conviction that they are injurious to health, even when used in moderation. It is presumed that the im

Dr. Beecher's Sermons were preached the year before, at Litchfield, Conn. This fact, however, was not known to those who formed the American Temperance Society, thus showing that different minds, in distant places, without concert, were taking substantially the same views of this great subject.+

↑ APPENDIX, E.

provement which has begun will go on, and they will be at length universally banished. It seems now to be generally admitted by those who have had an opportunity for observation, or have made themselves acquainted with the various facts, which have been collected with regard to intemperance, that we are to attribute much of the prevalence of immoderate drinking to erroneous opinions and prac tices of society, with regard to moderate drinking. No man probably ever became at once a drunkard. Drunkards have all once been moderate drinkers, and have only gradually and insensibly become immoderate drinkers. It would seem, then, that there must be something wrong in this habit of moderate drinking, since it leads, in so large a proportion of cases, to so deplorable a result."

They also passed the following resolutions, viz:

"1. Resolved, That, in the opinion of this meeting, there is sufficient evidence that ardent spirits are not necessary as a refreshment or a support to the strength during labor, but, on the contrary, are absolutely injurious to the health; that to the general moderate use of them is to be chiefly attributed the prevalent habit of intemperance; and that entire abstinence from their use, except when prescribed as medicines, be recommended to all classes of society.

"2. Resolved, That it be recommended to ship-owners, masters of vessels, farmers, mechanics, proprietors and superintendents of manufacturing establishments, and all others having the care of young persons when first entering upon laborious occupations, to endeavor to induce those under their charge to form the habit of labor without any use of ardent spirits.

"3. Resolved, That it be recommended to all having the charge of the education of the young, to endeavor to produce upon their minds a strong impression of the dangerous tendency of even a moderate use of ardent spirits."

The conviction had now become extensive, that the use of ardent spirit is wrong. Many had come to the conclusion, that no man in health, who understands its nature and effects, can continue to use it as an article of luxury or diet, or to traffic in it, without guilt.

Kittredge, in his Address, said, "Ardent spirits are said to be useful and necessary. It is false. It is nothing but the apology that the love of them renders for their use. There are only two cases in which, Dr. Rush says, they can be administered without injury; and those are cases of persons likely to perish, and where substitutes may be applied of equal effect. What rational man would use them for the sake of these two possible cases? As well might he introduce rattlesnakes among his children, because their oil is good in diseases with which they may possibly be afflicted. What! drink none? Yes-I say, Drink none. One gallon for this town is

just four quarts too much. In addition to the miseries of debt and poverty, which they entail upon a community, they are the parent of one half the diseases that prevail, and one half the crimes that are committed. It is ardent spirits that fill our poor-houses and our jails; our penitentiaries, mad-houses, and state prisons. It is ardent spirits that furnish victims for the gallows. They are the greatest curse that God ever inflicted on the world, and may well be called the seven vials of his wrath. They are more destructive in their consequences than war, plague, pestilence or famine, yea, than all combined. They are slow in their march, but sure in their grasp. They seize not only on the natural, but the moral man. They cou sign the body to the tomb, and the soul to hell. But have not ar dent spirits one good quality, one redeeming virtue? None, I say, none. There is nothing, not even the shadow of a virtue, to secure them from universal and everlasting execration. The parent should instil into his children a hatred of ardent spirits as much as he does of falsehood and theft. He should no more suffer his chil dren to drink a little, than he does to lie a little, and to steal a little. No longer use that which is the source of infinite mischief, without one redeeming benefit; which has entailed upon you, upon your children, and upon society, woes unnumbered and unutterable. Banish it from your houses. It can be done. You have only to will, and it is effected. Use it not at home. Let it never be found to pollute your dwellings. Give it not to your friends or your workmen. Touch it not yourselves, and suffer not your children to touch it. And let it be a part of your morning and evening prayer, that you and your children may be saved from intemper ance, as much as from famine, from sickness and death."

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Dr. Beecher, in his Sermons, said, "The traffic in ardent spirits wrong, and should be abandoned as a great national evil. The amount of suffering and mortality, inseparable from the commerce in ardent spirits, renders them an unlawful article of trade. The commerce in ardent spirits, which produces no good, and produces a certain and an immense amount of evil, must be regarded as an unlawful commerce, and ought, upon every principle of humanity, patriotism, conscience, and religion, to be abandoned and proscribed. It seems to be a manifest violation of the command, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,' and of various other evangelical precepts.

"No man can act in the spirit of impartial love to his neighbor, who, for his own personal emolument, inflicts on him great and irreparable evil; for love worketh no ill to his neighbor. Love will not burn a neighbor's house, or poison, his food, or blast his reputation, or destroy his soul. But the commerce in ardent spirits does all this inevitably and often. Property, reputation, health, life and salvation fall before it.

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"The direct infliction of what is done indirectly, would subject a man to the ignominy of a public execution."

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"It is scarcely a palliation of this evil, that no man is destroyed maliciously, or with any direct intent to kill; for the certainty of evil is as great as if waters were poisoned which some persons would surely drink, or as if a man should fire in the dark upon masses of human beings, where it must be certain that death would be the consequence to some."

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"Can it be denied that the commerce in ardent spirits makes a fearful havoc of property, morals and life? Does it not shed blood as really as the sword, and inore blood than is shed by war? In this point, uone are better witnesses than physicians, and, according to their testimony, intemperance is one of the greatest destroyers of virtue, health and life."

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"The consideration, that those, to whose injury we are accessory by the sale of ardent spirits, are destroyed also by the perversion of their own free agency-and that the evil is silent, and slow-paced in its march-doubtless subtracts, in no small degree, from the keen sense of accountability and crime, which would attend the adminis tration of arsenic, or the taking of life by the pistol, or the daggeras does also the consideration that although we may withhold the the deleterious potion will be cup, yet, from some other source, obtained.

He who deliberately assists his "But all this alters not the case. neighbor to destroy his life, is not guiltless because his neighbor is a free agent and is also guilty; and he is accessory to the crime, though twenty other persons might have been ready to commit the same sin if he had not done it. Who would sell arsenic to his neighbor, to destroy himself, because he could obtain it elsewhere? Who would sell a dagger for the known purpose of assassination, because, if it were refused, it could be purchased in another place? We are accountable for our own wrong-doing, and liable to punishment at the hand of God, as really as if it had been certain that no one would have done the deed, if we did not.

"The ungodliness in time, and the everlasting ruin in eternity, inseparable from the commerce in ardent spirit, proscribe it as an unlawful article of traffic.

"Who can estimate the hatred of God, of his word and worship, and of his people, which it occasions? or number the oaths and blasphemies it causes to be uttered? or the violations of the Sabbath? the impurities and indecencies, violence and wrong-doing, which it originates? How many thousands does it detain every Sabbathday from the house of God-cutting them off from the means of grace, and hardening them against their efficacy! How broad is the road which intemperance alone opens to hell, and how thronged with travelers!"

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"Here is an article of commerce spread over the land, whose effect is evil only, and that continually, and which increases an hundred-fold the energies of human depravity, and the hopeless victims of future punishment.

"Drunkenness is a sin which excludes from heaven. The commerce in ardent spirits, therefore, productive only of evil in time, fits for destruction, and turns into hell, multitudes which no man can number.

"I am aware that, in the din of business, and the eager thirst for gain, the consequences of our conduct upon our views, and the future destiny of our fellow men, are not apt to be realized, or to modify our course.

"But has not God connected with all lawful avocations the welfare of the life that now is, and of that which is to come? And can we lawfully amass property by a course of trade which fills the land with beggars, and widows, and orphans, and crimes; which peoples the grave-yard with premature mortality, and the world of wo with the victims of despair? Could all the forms of evil produced in the land by intemperance come upon us in one horrid array, it would appail the nation, and put an end to the traffic in ardent spirits. If in every dwelling built by blood, the stone from the wall should utter all the cries which the bloody traffic extorts, and the beam out of the timber should echo them back, who would build such a house?—and who would dwell in it? What if, in every part of the dwelling, from the cellar upward, through all the halls and chambers, babblings, and contentions, and voices, and groans, and shrieks, and wailings, were heard, day and night? What if the cold blood oozed out, and stood in drops upon the walls, and, by preternatural art, all the ghastly skulls and bones of the victims destroyed by intemperance, should stand upon the walls, in horrid sculpture within and without the building-who would rear such a building? What if, at eventide, and at midnight, the airy forms of men destroyed by intemperance, were dimly seen haunting the distilleries and stores, where they received their bane-following the track of the ship engaged in the commerce-walking upon the waves-flitting athwart the deck-sitting upon the rigging and sending up from the hold within, and from the waves without, groans, and loud laments, and wailings! Who would attend such stores? Who would labor in such distilleries? Who would navigate such ships?

"Oh! were the sky over our heads one great whispering gallery, bringing down about us all the lamentation and wo which intemperance creates, and the firm earth one sonorous medium of sound, bringing up around us, from beneath, the wailings of the damned, whom the commerce in ardent spirits had sent thither;-these tremendous realities, assailing our sense, would invigorate our conscience, and