traffic? Suppose he could, with the same ease, diffuse profaneness, and
insanity, and robberies, and murders, and suicides, and should advertise
all these to be propagated through the land, and could prevail on men to
buy the talismanic nostrum for gold--what would the community think of
such a traffic as this? True, he might plead that it brought a vast
influx of money--that it enriched the city, or the country--that the
effects were not seen there; but what would be the public estimate of a
man who would be willing to engage in such a traffic, and who would set
up such a plea? Or suppose it were understood that a farmer from the
interior had arrived in Philadelphia with a load of flour, nine-tenths
of whose barrels contained a mixture, more or less, of arsenic, and
should offer them for sale; what would be the feelings of this community
at such a traffic? True, the man might plead that it would produce gain
to his country; that they had taken care to remove it to another
population; that his own family was secure. Can any words express the
indignation which would be felt? Can any thing express the horror which
all men would feel at such a transaction as this, and at the
cold-blooded and inhuman guilt of the money-loving farmer? And yet we
witness a thing like this every day, on our wharves, and in our ships,
and our groceries, and our inns, and from our men of wealth, and our
moral men, and our _professed Christians_--and a horror comes through
the souls of men, when we dare to intimate that this is an immoral
business.

4. A man is bound to pursue such a course of life as _not necessarily to
increase the burdens and the taxes_ of the community. The pauperism and
crimes of this land grow out of this vice, as an overflowing fountain.
Three-fourths of the taxes for prisons, and houses of refuge, and
almshouses, would be cut off, but for this traffic and the attendant
vices. Nine-tenths of the crimes of the country, and of the expenses of
litigation for crime, would be prevented by arresting it. Of 653 who
were in one year committed to the house of correction in Boston, 453
were drunkards. Of 3,000 persons admitted to the workhouse in Salem,
Mass., 2,900 were brought there directly or indirectly by intemperance.
Of 592 male adults in the almshouse in New York, not 20, says the
superintendent, can be called sober; and of 601 women, not as many as
50. Only three instances of murder in the space of fifteen years, in New
Yo