or the other
class. Is not this a horrid state of society? But any one can satisfy
himself of the truth of the statement, by making the examination
himself.

The quantity of ardent spirits yearly consumed in our towns, varies from
six to ten thousand gallons. It will answer the argument I intend to
draw from it, to state the annual quantity in this town to be six
thousand gallons, although short of the truth. This would be three
gallons to every inhabitant, or twenty-one gallons to every legal voter.
The cost of this liquid, at the low price of fifty cents per gallon,
will be three thousand dollars, which will pay all your town, county,
and state taxes three years, and is as much as it costs you to support
and maintain all your privileges, civil, religious, and literary. In one
hundred years you would drink up all the town in ardent spirits; or it
would cost just such a town as this, with all your farms, stock, and
personal property, to furnish the inhabitants with ardent spirits, at
the present rate of drinking, only one hundred years. But should the
town continue to drink as they now do for fifty years, and in the mean
time suffer the cost of the spirits to accumulate by simple interest
only, the whole town, at the end of the term, could not pay their rum
bills. It can be no consolation that all other towns would be alike
insolvent.

But this is not all. Add to this sum the loss of time and the waste of
property occasioned by it, independent of its cost, and it swells the
amount to a monstrous size. Here you have an account of the cost of
ardent spirits, calculated within bounds. At present there is a great
complaint about the pressure of the times, and the complaint is
doubtless well-founded. "Hard times" is in every body's mouth; but if
you had for the last year only abstained from the use of ardent spirits,
you would now have been independent and easy in your circumstances.
Three thousand dollars, which you have paid for them, divided among you,
would pay all the debts you are called upon to pay. I do not mean that
no one wants more than his proportion of this sum, but there are some
who want none of it, and who would circulate it, by loan or otherwise,
among those who do want it, and it would relieve the whole town from the
distress they are now in.

If this town had an income that would pay all its taxes, you would
consider it a matter of great joy and congratulation. But if it had an
income that would discha