rge all its taxes, and each man, instead of
paying, should receive the amount he now pays, you would consider your
situation highly prosperous and enviable. Discontinue the use of ardent
spirits, and you have it. Use none, and your situation, as a town, will
be as good, yea, far better than if you had an income of three thousand
dollars yearly, to be divided among its inhabitants.

If we carry this calculation farther, we shall find, on the principle
adopted, that there are in the state of New Hampshire 2,441 common
drunkards, and 3,663 intemperate, or occasional drunkards--in the whole,
6,104; and that the state consumes 732,483 gallons of ardent spirits
annually, which cost, at 50 cents a gallon, $366,241. In the United
States, there would be 96,379 common, and 240,949 common and occasional
drunkards; and the country would consume annually 28,913,887 gallons of
ardent spirits, which cost, at 50 cents per gallon, $14,456,943--as much
as it costs to support the whole system of our national government, with
all that is laid out in improvements, roads, canals, pensions, etc.,
etc., and is more than one-half of the whole revenue of the Union for
the last year. It must be remembered that this calculation embraces only
the quantity and cost of the spirits, and is on the supposition that
this town consumes only 6,000 gallons, at 50 cents per gallon, and is a
fair criterion for the state and nation. As it regards this state, it
would be safe nearly to double the quantity, and to treble the cost of
the spirits; and as it regards the nation, it would be safe to double
all my calculations. In the United States, the quantity of ardent
spirits yearly consumed, may be fairly estimated at 60,000,000 gallons,
the cost at $30,000,000, and the number of drunkards, of both kinds, at
480,000.

But we all know, and it is common to remark, that the cost of the
article is comparatively nothing; that it hardly makes an item in the
calculation of pernicious consequences resulting from the consumption of
ardent spirits. Were we to embrace the usual concomitants, and estimate
the value of time lost, the amount of property wasted, of disease
produced, and of crime committed, where ardent spirits are the only
cause, it would transcend our conceptions, and the imagination would be
lost in the contemplation. The number of drunkards in the United States
would make an army as large as that with which Bonaparte marched into
Russia; and would be suffic