LIQUOR wont to produce misery, and wretchedness, and
death? Has this been testified to those who make and deal in it as a
beverage? If these two things can be established, the inference is
inevitable--they are responsible on a principle perfectly intelligible,
a principle recognized and proclaimed, and acted upon by God himself.

Turn then your attention to these two facts. 1. Intoxicating liquor _is
wont to produce misery_. 2. Those who make or traffic in it, _know_
this.

1. Upon the first point it will be sufficient to remind you of the hopes
which intoxicating liquor has blasted, and the tears it has caused to
flow. Let any one of us count up the number of its victims which we have
known--consider their character and standing in society--their once
happy families and prospects, and what a fearful change has a few years'
use of strong drink produced. Very few but remember twenty, thirty,
fifty, or one hundred families ruined in this way. Some of them were
once our intimate friends--and their story is soon told.

They drank occasionally, for the sake of company, or merely for
exhilaration. The relish for stimulants was thus acquired, and habits of
dissipation formed. They became idle, and of course uneasy. And they
continued to drink, partly to gratify taste and partly to quiet
conscience. They saw the ruin that was coming upon them, and they made
some earnest but ineffectual struggles against it. But the resistance
became weaker and weaker--by and by the struggle is ended--they float
with the current, and where are they? One has been found by the
temperance reformation, a mere wreck in property, character, body, and
mind, and reclaimed. Another is dead: his constitution could not bear
his continued dissipation. Another died in a fit; another was found by
the road-side one cold morning, a stiffened corpse. Another was thrown
from his horse, and is a cripple for life, but still can contrive means
to pay a daily visit to the dram-shop. Another is a mere vagabond,
unprincipled and shameless--wandering from shop to shop, a fit companion
for the lowest company, a nuisance to society and a curse to his
kindred. Another is in the penitentiary for a crime which he committed
in a drunken frolic.

Go into the crowded court-house and you may see another; his countenance
haggard and ghastly, and his eye wildly rolling in despair. What has he
done? One night, after spending all his money for drink, and loitering
about till all