ed, or sold by a constable, to pay tavern
debts. See their names upon record in the dockets of every court, and
whole pages of newspapers filled with advertisements of their estates
for public sale. Are they inhabitants of country places? Behold their
houses with shattered windows--their barns with leaky roofs--their
gardens overrun with weeds--their fields with broken fences--their hogs
without yokes--their sheep without wool--their cattle and horses without
fat--and their children, filthy and half-clad, without manners,
principles, and morals. This picture of agricultural wretchedness is
seldom of long duration. The farms and property thus neglected and
depreciated, are seized and sold for the benefit of a group of
creditors. The children that were born with the prospect of inheriting
them, are bound out to service in the neighborhood; while their parents,
the unworthy authors of their misfortunes, ramble into new and distant
settlements, alternately fed on their way by the hand of charity, or a
little casual labor.

Thus we see poverty and misery, crimes and infamy, diseases and death,
are all the natural and usual consequences of the intemperate use of
ardent spirits.

I have classed death among the consequences of hard drinking. But it is
not death from the immediate hand of the Deity, nor from any of the
instruments of it which were created by him: it is death from _suicide_.
Yes, thou poor degraded creature who art daily lifting the poisoned bowl
to thy lips, cease to avoid the unhallowed ground in which the
self-murderer is interred, and wonder no longer that the sun should
shine, and the rain fall, and the grass look green upon his grave.
_Thou_ art perpetrating gradually, by the use of ardent spirits, what he
has effected suddenly by opium or a halter. Considering how many
circumstances from surprise, or derangement, may palliate his guilt, or
that, unlike yours, it was not preceded and accompanied by any other
crime, it is probable his condemnation will be less than yours at the
day of judgment.

I shall now take notice of the occasions and circumstances which are
supposed to render the use of ardent spirits necessary, and endeavor to
show that the arguments in favor of their use in such cases are founded
in error, and that in each of them ardent spirits, instead of affording
strength to the body, increase the evils they are intended to relieve.

1. They are said to be necessary in very cold weather. This