espectable gentlemen into
the cases of those who died of the cholera in that city in 1832, over
sixteen years of age. The result was examined in detail by nine
physicians, members of the medical staff attached to the board of health
in that city--all who belong to it, except two, who were at that time
absent--and published at their request under the signature of the
Chancellor of the State, and the five distinguished gentlemen who
compose the Executive Committee of the New York State Temperance
Society, and is as follows: number of deaths, 366; viz. intemperate,
140; free drinkers, 55; moderate drinkers, mostly habitual, 131;
strictly temperate, who drank no ardent spirits, 5; members of
Temperance societies, 2; and when it is recollected that of more than
5,000 members of Temperance societies in the city of Albany, only two,
not one in 2,500, fell by this disease, while it cut off more than one
in fifty of the inhabitants of that city, we cannot but feel that men
who furnish ardent spirit as a drink for their fellow-men, are
manifestly inviting the ravages, and preparing the victims of this fatal
malady, and of numerous other mortal diseases; and when inquisition is
made for blood, and the effects of their employment are examined for the
purpose of rendering to them according to their work, they will be
found, should they continue, to be guilty of knowingly destroying their
fellow-men.

What right have men, by selling ardent spirit, to increase the danger,
extend the ravages, and augment and perpetuate the malignancy of the
cholera, and multiply upon the community numerous other mortal diseases?
Who cannot see that it is a foul, deep, and fatal injury inflicted on
society? that it is in a high degree cruel and unjust? that it scatters
the population of our cities, renders our business stagnant, and exposes
our sons and our daughters to premature and sudden death? So manifestly
is this the case, that the board of health of the city of Washington, on
the approach of the cholera, declared the vending of ardent spirit, _in
any quantity_, to be a _nuisance_; and, as such, ordered that it be
discontinued for the space of ninety days. This was done in
self-defence, to save the community from the sickness and death which
the vending of spirit is adapted to occasion. Nor is this tendency to
occasion disease and death confined to the time when the cholera is
raging.

By the statement of the physicians in Annapolis, Maryland, i