it.

CONSCIENCE. Yes, certainly _they_ must answer for it; but will that
excuse those who furnish the poison? Did you never hear of abettors and
accessaries, as well as principals in crime? When Judas, in all the
agony of remorse and despair, threw down the thirty pieces of silver
before the chief priests and elders, exclaiming, _I have sinned, in that
I have betrayed the innocent blood_--they coolly answered, _What is that
to us? See thou to that._ And was it therefore nothing to them? Had
they no hand in that cruel tragedy? Was it nothing to Pilate--nothing to
Herod--nothing to the multitude who were consenting to the crucifixion
of the Son of God--because they did not drive the nails and thrust the
spear?

O, when I think of what you are doing to destroy the bodies and souls of
men, I cannot rest. It terrifies me at all hours of the night. Often and
often, when I am just losing myself in sleep, I am startled by the most
frightful groans and unearthly imprecations, coming out of these
hogsheads. And then, those long processions of rough-made coffins and
beggared families, which I dream of, from nightfall till daybreak, they
keep me all the while in a cold sweat, and I can no longer endure them.

DEALER. Neither can I. Something must be done. You have been out of your
head more than half the time for this six months. I have tried all the
ordinary remedies upon you without the least effect. Indeed, every new
remedy seems only to aggravate the disease. O, what would not I give for
the discovery of some anodyne which would lay these horrible phantasms.
The case would be infinitely less trying, if I could sometimes persuade
you, for a night or two, to let me occupy a different apartment from
yourself; for when your spasms come on, one might as well try to sleep
with embers in his bosom, as where you are.

CONSCIENCE. Would it mend the matter at all, if, instead of sometimes
dreaming, I were to be always wide awake?

DEALER. Ah, there's the grand difficulty. For I find that when you do
wake up, you are more troublesome than ever. _Then_ you are always
harping upon my being a professor of religion, and bringing up some text
of Scripture, which might as well be let alone, and which you would not
ring in my ears, if you had any regard to my peace, or even your own.
More than fifty times, within a month, have you quoted, "_By their
fruits ye shall know them._" In fact, so uncharitable have you grown of
late, that from the