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