mmitted to
our prisons in a single year, 93,750 were excited to their commission of
crime by spirituous liquors."

Look at its destruction of intellect.

It reduces man to a beast, to a fool, to a devil. The excessive drinker
first becomes stupid, then idiotic, then a maniac. Men of the finest
geniuses, most acute minds, and profound learning, have dwindled under
the touch of this withering demon to the merest insignificance, and been
hooted by boys for their silly speeches and silly actions, or chained in
a madhouse as unsafe in society. Of eighty-seven admitted into the New
York hospital in one year, the insanity of twenty-seven was occasioned
by ardent spirit; and the physicians of the Pennsylvania hospital
report, that one-third of the insane of that institution were ruined by
intemperance. What if one-sixth of our maniacs were deprived of their
reason by the bite of the dogs, the friendly inmates of our houses, or
by some vegetable common on our table; who would harbor the dangerous
animal, or taste the poisonous vegetable? But, one-third of our maniacs
are deranged by alcohol. Indeed, every drunkard is in a temporary
delirium; and no man who takes even a little into his system, possesses
that sound judgment, or is capable of that patient investigation or
intellectual effort, which would be his without it. Just in proportion
as man comes under its influence, he approximates to idiotism or
madness.

Look at its waste of health and life.

The worm of the still, says the Missouri gentleman, never touches the
brute creation, but as if the most venomous of all beings, it seizes the
noblest prey. It bites man. And where it once leaves its subtle poison,
farewell to health--farewell to long life. The door is open, and in rush
dyspepsia, jaundice, dropsy, gout, obstructions of the liver,
epilepsy--the deadliest plagues let loose on fallen man--all terminating
in delirium tremens or mania a potu, a prelude to the eternal buffetings
of foul spirits in the world of despair. One out of every forty, or
three hundred thousand of our population, have taken up their abode in
the lazar-house of drunkenness, and thirty thousand die annually the
death of the drunkard. These sweeps of death mock all the ravages of
war, famine, pestilence, and shipwreck. The yellow-fever in
Philadelphia, in 1793, felt to be one of the greatest curses of heaven,
destroyed but four thousand. In our last war the sword devoured but five
hundred a year