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Once more. Many justify their continuance in the trade in ardent spirits, by the belief that if they abandoned it, worse men would take it up; and therefore they had better continue, and sell with care, and only to sober men. Now the first part of this plausible argument proves too much, and of course is inadmissible. It supposes that good men may continue engaged in any traffic, however hurtful, which bad men might conduct in a more improper manner. A supposition full of danger; a supposition which would excuse us in the commission of any crime or fraud, whenever we could bring ourselves to believe that some villain would commit this crime or fraud, if we did not. Thus, if we were in a crowd, near a gang of pick-pockets, we might steal our neighbour's purse, because if we did not, some of these rogues would. In a word, this doctrine would justify a man in doing wrong whenever there is a strong probability that the wrong will be done; that is, a good man may innocently anticipate the wickedness of a bad man. The first part of this argument, then, will not answer; and the rest of it is founded on a mistaken view of the whole temperance movement. is not because ardent spirits are sold to drunkards only, or chiefly, that we wish the traffic in them ended. Were they alone concerned, this trade would soon purge the community of its worst members, and then die for want of customers. The great evil is not the satisfaction of the thirst of the intemperate, it is the continuance of the sin of drunkenness, - its existence in another generation, that we would prevent by putting a stop to the production and sale of alcohol. So long as this traffic is continued, new victims to intemperance will be made, new forms of wretchedness created. Our only hope is in total abstinence on the part both of producer and consumer. There is, then, no regulation about this matter; no degree of care which will suit the exigency of this case. The use of ardent spirits, is inseparable from the abuse of ardent spirits. This is the great fact. This pronounces the entire and everlasting banishment of alcohol. This excites the wish, and induces to the endeavour to drive it out of the commercial world; to expel it from distillery after distillery, warehouse after warehouse, shop after shop, until no respectable man will think of dealing in it, and it is sunk down among the hated things of earth.

The last excuse of those who deal in ardent spirits, which

we can now examine, is that upon which they probably lay the greatest stress, and which, without doubt, discloses the reason why those already considered, seem to them so weighty. This excuse is, that to give up their trade would be to subject themselves to pecuniary loss. Our capital, say they, is embarked in a business, with which this trade is connected; if, therefore, we abandon it, we make a great sacrifice, we throw away our means of subsistence. If this is true, it certainly is a very strong apology. It is expecting much of men to ask them to give up large profits, to abandon an employment hitherto reputable, to promote the welfare of their fellow-men. Still, this must be done. This strong excuse is of no avail in the sight of Christian benevolence. Were it otherwise, we should be weighing human happiness against pecuniary gain. And is the dealer in ardent spirits prepared to do this? Is he prepared to say that the peace and comfort of one immortal soul, of one happy family, shall be sacrificed to his profits, be they ever so great? Suppose we should go to the distiller, the importer, the vender of intoxicating drinks, and show them conclusively, as has been done again and again, that their business is productive of evil, and evil only, to their fellowmen, and therefore they ought to abandon it, would it be any answer to tell us that to do this would be to lose money? Certainly not. Yet many seem to argue as if it would. In this money-getting world, some men consider every question of morality, as a question of dollars and cents. But so it must not be. We would not be extravagant, we would not be fanatical, we would not cant. Religion does not clog the social system. It does not forbid any honest employment. It does not wish to diminish, in the least, the energy and activity of the merchant. It rejoices in commercial prosperity, so long as that prosperity is the result of right principles, and obtained by strict obedience to the law of God. Let us not be looked upon, then, as gloomy ascetics, as preaching a morality inapplicable to this world, when we say that it is the solemn duty of every man to abandon any trade which is deleterious to the community, be the personal sacrifice what it may. This, we think, is clear. Any loss, any suffering, any thing but the continuance of a business which is at war with the peace of man, the welfare of society. If it must be so, let poverty come.

The

duty is plain. The right hand must be cut off, and the right eye plucked out, to save the whole body. Unless, then, the dealer in ardent spirits is ready avowedly to make merchandise of the health and morals of his fellow-men, he is bound to give up his traffic, though it be true, as he says, that this will subject him to great pecuniary loss.

But is this true? Did such a course ever have this effect? We think not. Of the hundreds who have abandoned this business, not one individual has been produced, who has been reduced to penury, made a bankrupt, or even lost very large profits by this act. And had there been one such case, the enemies of the temperance movements would have brought it forward. The strong language, the rash assertions sometimes made upon this point, are quite unwarrantable. The trade in alcohol can be given up without great sacrifices. We suspect, that, with reference to some departments of this trade, it is not because their livelihoods depend upon it, that men are unwilling to turn their capital into other channels; but because the great profits in this business promise the speedy accumulation of a fortune. There may, now and then, occur peculiar cases, where positive loss of property would follow the giving up of the sale of alcohol. But such instances are rare, and we may apply to the sufferers, with slight variation, the words of Scripture, "Better is a dinner of herbs, with peace of conscience, than a stalled ox, and sin therewith." At any rate, such instances are rare. The dealers themselves, for the most part, and the community always, would be benefited by the abandonment of this traffic. In the first place, the dealers would be benefited, because, we suspect that our examination of the day-book of any grocer's shop, where there has been dram-drinking for a long time, would show that twothirds, at least, of the bad debts were incurred by those who bought and used ardent spirits; and further, that an account of the profits and loss on the whole custom of the dramdrinking patronage would show, that in twenty years the latter far outbalance the former. In the second place, the community would be benefited, because it would be saved two-thirds of the sum now paid for the support of pauperism, for the maintenance of criminals, and have a large portion of its members transformed from bills of expense into productive laborers. This, then, the most plausible of all the

excuses for the trade in ardent spirits, will not answer; for if we grant the fact assumed in it, the duty is not changed; it only requires a greater sacrifice to perform it; and this fact we cannot grant, since the further we carry our calculations, the nearer should we probably come to a demonstration of the truth, that godliness, in this matter, is literally great pecuniary gain, and that more money would, in the end, be made than lost, by the complete extinction of the traffic in ardent spirits.

We have now noticed, and, as we hope, answered some of the most common apologies for the traffic in ardent spirits. If they are as weak and sophistical as we have supposed them to be, how remarkable it is, that they should be considered powerful and conclusive by so many respectable and intelligent men. This fact is worth investigating; for the discovery of the causes of it, would seem to promise valuable assistance in our efforts to do away the trade in alcohol. Some of these causes appear to us very evident, and we will therefore endeavour to point them out.

One of the first of these causes, is, without doubt, to be found in the fact, that dealers in ardent spirits are blind to the full effects of their trade. They make very little personal inquiry on the subject. Self-interest naturally renders them averse to it. Were they to enter upon the investigations, which the friends of temperance have so industriously conducted, they would end in their own condemnation. We do not think it, then, judging harshly of human nature to suppose, that in some cases they are almost unconsciously kept from the inquiry, by the fear lest this should be its result. At any rate, we consider this explanation of their conduct, decidedly the most charitable. We are not willing to believe, that so many respectable men are engaged in the production and sale of ardent spirits, fully aware of all their horrible consequences. This cannot be. An individual may stand behind his counter and sell the poison to this or that man whilst he is sober, or he may sell casks of it out of his warehouse, and not think of the evil he is doing, because it is not immediate and palpable. But could the history of one rum-hogshead, the destination and effects of every drop it contains be plainly told, and strongly brought home to his heart, much would be done, we are persuaded, to induce him to give up his trade. And such a thing might be easily

done. As the hogshead is set up in the dram-shop, and made ready for sale, imagination might easily picture its work of destruction. There would be the generous-hearted sailor purchasing madness and disgrace with his hard earnings; there the miserable mechanic, leaving his starving family, his sorrowing wife, and half-clad children, and getting credit for rum, where he could not get it for bread; and there the little child, sent by its brutal mother, to buy the destroyer of her body and soul. These would be visible scenes, but these would feebly represent the whole misery. There are things that the pencil cannot draw. The broken heart, the deep hate, the burning revenge, the going out of the intellect, the crushing of all good and generous feelings, the moral desolation of the soul, these cannot be made evident to the eye of man. But they may be imagined. A slight acquaintance with the annals of intemperance, a few visits to the house or the death-bed of the drunkard, will but too soon lead us to associate all that is dreadful with the distillery and the rum-hogshead.

But even thus much inquiry, this little exertion of the imagination, is not necessary. A short arithmetical calculation will bring out the effects of ardent spirits in too strong a light to be resisted. Every hogshead of rum contains eight hundred and eighty pints. Now, assuming that every customer buys one pint, and that one out of six gets intoxicated with his purchase, and what is the melancholy result? It is this; that every hogshead of this liquid fire causes one hundred and forty-six cases of drunkenness, and that every distillery which turns out five hundred such hogsheads, causes seventy-three thousand, three hundred and thirtythree cases of drunkenness per annum ; i. e. about twentyone cases every day. When, with this calculation before us, we remember how many distilleries there are in the land, and how much importation there is of ardent spirits, what an immense, overwhelming amount of sin and misery, is brought to view, as the inevitable result of the trade in alcohol. But producers and sellers do not carry out these calculations, nor trace thus the effects of intoxicating liquors. They confine themselves to their own stores and manufactories. They treat ardent spirits merely as an article of merchandise, without thinking about its effects on the community; and it is not until the friends of temperance