dleness, and crime. Even granting, what cannot be established, that it
may promote the happiness of a particular portion of the community, yet
it must be at the expense of some other portion. You may export poison
to Georgia, and the immediate effect may be to introduce money into
Philadelphia, but the only important inquiry is, what will be the effect
on the _whole body politic_? Will it do more good than evil on the
whole? Will the money which you may receive here, be a compensation for
all the evil which will be done there? Money a compensation for
intemperance, and idleness, and crime, and the loss of the health, the
happiness, and the souls of men?

Now we may easily determine this matter. The article thus exported will
do as much evil _there_ as it would if consumed _here_. It will spread
just as much devastation somewhere, as it would if consumed in your own
family, and among your own friends and neighbors. We have only to ask,
what would be the effect if it were consumed in your own habitation, in
your neighborhood, in your own city? Let all this poison, which is thus
exported to spread woes and death somewhere, be concentrated and
consumed where you might see it, and is there any man who will pretend
that the paltry sum which he receives is a compensation for what he
knows would be the effect of the consumption? You keep your own
atmosphere pure, it may be, but you export the pestilence, and curses,
and lamentation elsewhere, and receive a compensation for it. You sell
disease, and death, and poverty, and nakedness, and tears to other
families, to clothe and feed your own. And as the result of this current
of moral poison and pollution which you may cause to flow into hundreds
of other families, you may point to a splendid palace, or to gay apparel
of your sons and daughters, and proclaim that the evil is hidden from
your eyes. Families, and neighborhoods, and states, may groan and bleed
somewhere, and thousands may die, but _your_ gain is to be a
compensation for it all. Is this an honorable traffic?

Suppose a man were to advertise consumptions, and fevers, and
pleurisies, and leprosy, for gold, and could and would sell them; what
would the community say to such a traffic? Suppose, for gain, he could
transport them to distant places, and now strike down by a secret power
a family in Maine, and now at St. Mary's, and now at Texas, and now at
St. Louis; what would the community think of wealth gained in such a