a notorious and
habitual sot. Many persons who are habitually intemperate do not get
this name _even now_; much less would they have done so twenty-five or
thirty years ago. By a pretty careful inquiry, with an especial view of
ascertaining the number of idiots of the lowest class whose parents were
known to be _temperate_ persons, it is found that _not one quarter_ can
be so considered.

From the pretty uniform action of a physiological law, which is now
becoming well understood, it appears that idiots, fools, and simpletons,
either in the first or second generation, are common among the progeny
of intemperate persons, and may be considered as an effect of the
_habitual_ use of alcohol, even in moderate quantities. If, moreover,
one considers how many children of intemperate parents there are who,
without being idiots, are deficient in bodily and mental energy, and
predisposed by their very organization to have cravings for alcoholic
stimulants, it will be seen what an immense burden the drinkers of one
generation throw upon the succeeding one.

IDIOCY AND THE MARRIAGE OF RELATIVES.--Out of the three hundred and
fifty-nine cases of congenital idiocy already referred to, in which the
parentage was ascertained, "seventeen were _known_ to be the children of
parents nearly related by blood; but, as many of these cases were
adults, it was impossible to ascertain, in some cases, whether their
parents, who were dead, were related or not before marriage. From some
collateral evidence, we conclude that at least three more cases should
be added to the seventeen. This would show that more than one twentieth
of the idiots examined are offspring of the marriage of relations. Now,
as marriages between near relations are by no means in the ratio of one
to twenty, nor even, perhaps, as one to a thousand to the marriages
between persons not related, it follows that the proportion of idiotic
progeny is vastly greater in the former than in the latter case. Then it
should be considered that idiocy is only _one_ form in which Nature
manifests that she has been offended by such intermarriages. It is
probable that blindness, deafness, imbecility, and other infirmities,
are more likely to be the lot of the children of parents related by
blood than of others. The probability, therefore, of unhealthy or infirm
issue from such marriages becomes fearfully great, and the existence of
the law against them is made out as clearly as though it were w