ient to defend the United States from the
combined force of all Europe. Convert our drunkards into good soldiers,
and one-tenth of them would redeem Greece from the Turks. Convert them
into apostles, and they would Christianize the world. And what are they
now? Strike them from existence, and who would feel the loss? Yes,
strike them from existence, and the United States would be benefited by
the blow.

But this is not half. I cannot tell you half the effects of ardent
spirits. And yet ardent spirits are said to be useful and necessary. It
is false! It is nothing but the apology that love of them renders for
their use. There are only two cases in which, Dr. Rush says, they can be
administered without injury, and those are cases of persons like to
perish, and where substitutes may be applied of equal effect. What
rational man would use them, for the sake of these two possible cases?
As well might he introduce rattlesnakes among his children, because
their oil is good in diseases with which they may possibly be afflicted.

The number of persons in the United States who are mentally deranged, I
do not know; probably there are several thousands; and it is
ascertained, that one-third of those confined in the insane hospitals of
Philadelphia and New York, are rendered insane by the use of ardent
spirits. Yes, one-third of the poor, miserable maniacs of our land, are
made such by the use of that which, in the opinion of some, is a very
useful and necessary article, and which they cannot do without. This
article has deprived one-third of the crazy wretches of our land of
their reason--of that which makes them men--of the very image of their
God.

Out of the number of the intemperate in the United States, ten thousand
die annually from the effects of ardent spirits. And what a death! To
live a drunkard is enough; but to die so, and to be ushered into the
presence of your angry Judge, only to hear the sentence, "Depart, thou
drunkard!" Ah! language fails, and I leave it to your imagination to
fill up the horrid picture.

This death happens in various ways. Some are killed instantly; some die
a lingering, gradual death; some commit suicide in fits of intoxication;
and some are actually burnt up.

I read of an intemperate man, a few years since, whose breath caught
fire by coming in contact with a lighted candle, and he was consumed. At
the time, I disbelieved the story, but my reading has since furnished
me with well authent