etted, and the rather, as it was the sole _cause_
of a scarcity in that article which arose from the proceedings of men
themselves: I mean the stop put to the distillery.

The hogs (and that would be sufficient) which were fed with the waste
wash of that produce did not demand the fourth part of the corn used by
farmers in fattening them. The spirit was nearly so much clear gain to
the nation. It is an odd way of making flesh cheap, to stop or check the
distillery.

The distillery in itself produces an immense article of trade almost all
over the world,--to Africa, to North America, and to various parts of
Europe. It is of great use, next to food itself, to our fisheries and to
our whole navigation. A great part of the distillery was carried on by
damaged corn, unfit for bread, and by barley and malt of the lowest
quality. These things could not be more unexceptionably employed. The
domestic consumption of spirits produced, without complaints, a very
great revenue, applicable, if we pleased, in bounties, to the bringing
corn from other places, far beyond the value of that consumed in making
it, or to the encouragement of its increased production at home.

As to what is said, in a physical and moral view, against the home
consumption of spirits, experience has long since taught me very little
to respect the declamations on that subject. Whether the thunder of the
laws or the thunder of eloquence "is hurled on _gin_" always I am
thunder-proof. The alembic, in my mind, has furnished to the world a far
greater benefit and blessing than if the _opus maximum_ had been really
found by chemistry, and, like Midas, we could turn everything into gold.

Undoubtedly there may be a dangerous abuse in the excess of spirits; and
at one time I am ready to believe the abuse was great. When spirits are
cheap, the business of drunkenness is achieved with little time or
labor; but that evil I consider to be wholly done away. Observation for
the last forty years, and very particularly for the last thirty, has
furnished me with ten instances of drunkenness from other causes for one
from this. Ardent spirit is a great medicine, often to remove
distempers, much more frequently to prevent them, or to chase them away
in their beginnings. It is not nutritive in _any great_ degree. But if
not food, it greatly alleviates the want of it. It invigorates the
stomach for the digestion of poor, meagre diet, not easily alliable to
the human constitutio