procures his accustomed supply of the poison that
consumes him; he staggers through mud and through filth to his hut; he
meets a weeping wife and starving children; he abuses them, he tumbles
into his straw, and he rolls and foams like a mad brute, till he is able
to go again. He calls for more rum--he repeats the scene from time to
time, and from day to day, till soon his nature faints, and he becomes
sober in death.

Let us reflect, that this guilty, wretched creature had an immortal
mind--he was like us, of the same flesh and blood--he was our brother,
destined to the same eternity, created by, and accountable to, the same
God; and will, at last, stand at the same judgment-bar; and who, amid
such reflections, will not weep at his fate--whose eye can remain dry,
and whose heart unmoved?

This is no picture of the imagination. It is a common and sober reality.
It is what we see almost every day of our lives; and we live in the
midst of such scenes and such events. With the addition or subtraction
of a few circumstances, it is the case of every one of the common
drunkards around us. They have not completed the drama--they are
alive--but they are going to death with rapid strides, as their
predecessors have already gone. Another company of immortal minds are
coming on to fill their places, as they have filled others. The number
is kept good, and increasing. Shops, as nurseries, are established in
every town and neighborhood, and drunkards are raised up by the score.
They are made--they are formed--for no man was ever born a
drunkard--and, I may say, no man was ever born with a taste for ardent
spirits. They are not the food which nature has provided. The infant may
cry for its mother's milk, and for nourishing food, but none was ever
heard to cry for ardent spirits. The taste is created, and in some
instances may be created so young, that, perhaps, many cannot remember
the time when they were not fond of them.

And here permit me to make a few remarks upon the _formation, or
creation of this taste_. I will begin with the infant, and I may say
that he is born into rum. At his birth, according to custom, a quantity
of ardent spirits is provided; they are thought to be as necessary as
any thing else. They are considered as indispensable as if the child
could not be born without them. The father treats his friends and his
household, and the mother partakes with the rest. The infant is fed with
them, as if he could not kn