to shake off the hosts of an invader from our shores; if every heart
among us would swell with indignation at the attempt of an internal
power to break in pieces our free constitution, and substitute a
government of chains and bayonets; what does the love of country bid us
do, when by universal acknowledgment an enemy is now among us whose
breath is pestilence and whose progress desolation--an enemy that has
already done and is daily doing a more dreadful work against the
happiness of the people than all the wars and plagues we have ever
suffered?

What does the voice of common humanity say to us? Can we feel for human
woe, and not be moved at the spectacle of wretchedness and despair which
the intemperance of this country presents? Let us imagine the condition
of the hundreds of thousands who are now burning with the hidden flame,
and hastening to utter destruction by this most pitiless of all vices;
let us embrace in one view the countless woes inflicted by the cruel
tempers, the deep disgrace, the hopeless poverty, and the corrupting
examples of all these victims, upon wives, children, parents, friends,
and the morals of society; let us stand at the graves of the thirty
thousand that annually perish by intemperance, and there be still, and
listen to what the _voice of humanity_ speaks.

What does the exhortation of religion say to us? What undermines more
insidiously every moral principle of the heart; what palsies so entirely
every moral faculty of the soul; what so soon and so awfully makes man
_dead while he liveth_; what spreads through the whole frame-work of
society such rottenness, or so effectually opens the door to all those
powers of darkness by which the pillars of public order are crumbled and
the restraints of religion are mocked; what so universally excludes from
the death-bed of a sinner the consolations of the Gospel, or writes upon
his grave such a sentence of despair, as _intemperance_? Behold the
immense crowd of its victims! Where are they not seen? Read in the book
of God that declaration, "nor thieves, nor _drunkards_, shall inherit
the kingdom of God;" then listen to what the exhortation of Christian
benevolence speaks to us. Is it asked, _What can young men do?_ We can
do this one thing at least. _We can continue temperate._ What if every
one of us, now free from the appetite of strong drink, should hold on to
our liberty; how would the ranks of intemperance, which death is
continually wasti