_not_ tend to promote crime, and
pauperism, and misery, and to make widows and orphans, and that this
business cannot be vindicated by that standard. In one word, that by any
rules of life that have been set up to regulate the conduct of men,
whether in the Bible, in the necessary relations of the social compact,
in the reason and conscience of Christians, and of other men, this
business is incapable of vindication, and is to be regarded as immoral.

In this proposition, however, it is important to be understood. We mean
to confine it simply to the business where it is sold as an article of
_drink_. For to sell it as a medicine, with the same precaution as other
poisons are sold, would be no more immoral than it is to sell arsenic.
And to sell it for purposes of manufacture, where it is necessary for
that purpose, is no more immoral than to sell any other article with
that design. Between selling it for _these_ purposes, and selling it as
an article of drink, there is, as any one can see, the widest possible
difference.

When we speak of this business as _immoral_, it is also important to
guard the use of the word _immoral_. That word, with us, has come to
have a definite and well understood signification. When we speak of an
immoral man, we are commonly understood to attack the foundations of his
character; to designate some gross vice of which he is guilty, and to
speak of him as profane, or licentious, or profligate, or dishonest, or
as unworthy of our confidence and respect. Now, we by no means intend to
use the word in such a wide sense, when we say that this business is
immoral. We do not mean to intimate that in no circumstances a man may
be engaged in it and be worthy of our confidence, and be an honest man,
or even a Christian: for our belief is, that many such men have been,
and are still, unhappily engaged in this traffic. The time has been,
when it was thought to be as reputable as any other employment. Men may
not see the injurious tendency of their conduct. They may not be
apprized of its consequences; or they may be ignorant of the proper
rules by which human life is to be regulated. Thus, the slave-trade was
long pursued, and duelling was deemed right, and bigamy was practised.
But for a man to maintain that all these would be right _now_, and to
practise them, would be a very different thing.

In this view of the subject, we do not of course speak of the dead, or
offer any reflection on their conduct