n that
no less than 30,000 souls are annually passed for the judgment-bar of
God, driven there by Intemperance. How many slaves are at present among
us? We ask not of slaves to man, but to Intemperance, in comparison with
whose bondage the yoke of the tyrant is freedom. They are estimated at
480,000! And what does the nation pay for the honor and happiness of
this whole system of ruin? _Five times as much, every year, as for the
annual support of its whole system of government._ These are truths, so
often published, so widely sanctioned, so generally received, and so
little doubted, that we need not detail the particulars by which they
are made out. What, then, is the whole amount of guilt and of woe which
they exhibit? Ask Him "unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known,
and from whom no secrets are hid." Ask _Eternity_!

The biographer of Napoleon, speaking of the loss sustained by England on
the field of Waterloo, says, "Fifteen thousand men killed and wounded,
threw half Britain into mourning. It required all the glory and all the
solid advantages of that day to reconcile the mind to the high price at
which it was purchased." But what mourning would fill _all_ Britain, if
every year should behold another Waterloo? But what does every year
repeat in our peaceful land? Ours is a carnage not exhibited only once
in a single field, but going on continually, in every town and hamlet.
Every eye sees its woes, every ear catches its groans. The wounded are
too numerous to count. Who is not wounded by the intemperance of this
nation? But of the dead we count, year by year, more than double the
number that filled half Britain with mourning. Ah, could we behold the
many thousands whom our destroyer annually delivers over unto death,
collected together upon one field of slaughter, for one funeral, and one
deep and wide burial-place; could we behold a full assemblage of all the
parents, widows, children, friends, whose hearts have been torn by their
death, surrounding that awful grave, and loading the winds with tales of
woe, the whole land would cry out at the spectacle. It would require
something more than "_all the glory_," and "_all the solid advantages_"
of Intemperance, "_to reconcile the mind to the high price at which they
were purchased_."

But enough is known of the intemperance of this country to render it
undeniable by the most ignorant inhabitant, that a horrible scourge is
indeed upon us.

Another assertion