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should care nothing about death," And, said the officer, in relating the case to our Secretary, "He actually pleaded for whiskey while they were taking off his irons, with as much earnestness as a sinner ever pleads for salvation." He was furnished with a pint, and, under its influence, he was plunged into eternity; with the all consuming appetite strong in death. And four fifths of the capital crimes, and of the executions in the army, in the navy and in the community have been occasioned by the use of spirit. We furnish the cause, excite to crime, and then put the criminal to death. But a change with regard to the army has at last been effected; and one which if adopted and persevered in by the whole community will tend to render drunkenness and crime in the army and out of it, as rare, as it is guilty, mean, and disgraceful. Many are hoping and with high expectations, that a similar change will shortly take place in the Navy. Many of the officers and of the seamen most earnestly desire it. Most of the men in two squadrons have already voluntarily renounced entirely the use of spirit; and the consequent improvement, in their habits, health, and happiness, has become a topic of common remark among the surgeons and other officers.

The Secretary of the Navy states, that the Schooner Experiment had her men selected with a view to a full experiment on this interesting subject. And rightly, in view of the Committee, is she named EXPERIMENT; for few if any vessels have ever made an experiment on a subject of greater importance to mankind. The Secretary also adds, "that by perseverance in holding out inducements to the voluntary abandonment of the use of DAILY POISON, he trusts not only that the waste of human life, and the frequency and severity of punishment will be diminished, but that a great moral revolution will be permanently effected among a class of men, who have hitherto been too often considered irreclaimable."

This testimony to ardent spirit as a poison, and to the fatal evils occasioned by the use of it, the Committee view as important; and they would respectfully suggest whether, in the present state of information on this subject, it is not morally wrong, for legislators to wait, till seamen voluntarily refuse to accept the daily poison, before they cease to furnish it? especially as it is known, from the testimony of surgeons and officers, that their furnishing it is the cause of that waste of human life, and that frequency and severity of punishment which the Secretary and thousands of others so deeply deplore, and which is such a foul disgrace to the American Navy? and they would also suggest whether it is not the duty of the government, without delay to cease to furnish it? Many of the officers have expressed, in strong terms, their abhorrence of the practice; and to it have attributed by far the greatest portion

of their troubles with the men. And after it is known that, without any benefit, it causes more than one fifth of the deaths, and more than four fifths of the crimes among men who use it on the land; and that it is no less hurtful in proportion to its use on the ocean, must it not be considered as a high immorality and as vicious legislation to continue to furnish it? and will the people of this free country continue to consent to be thus taxed, for the sake of furnishing seamen, as a means, not of living, but of dying, with daily poison? to increase their diseases, augment their dangers, demoralize their characters, shorten their lives, and ruin their souls? Will they consent to continue to be taxed for the purpose of multiplying more than fourfold the difficulties of Naval officers; degrading the Naval service, and weakening the arm of National defence? Said an officer of high rank, who for his country had long and often braved the dangers of the deep, and faced the mouth of cannon, "If Congress will only cease to furnish ardent spirit for the Navy, we shall have comparatively no trouble with the men I have made the experiment, and I know, that when men cease to use ardent spirit, they cease to violate their orders; and are al most uniformly cheerful, healthy, respectful and obedient." And it is indeed humiliating and degrading, that the facts which have been developed have not before now produced entire conviction, and caused the practice of furnishing any class of citizens with ardent spirit to be universally, and forever abolished. Nothing but the blinding and palsying effect on the public. mind of the practice itself can account for this gross and long continued outrage upon the character and comfort, the health and usefulness, the lives and souls of men. Still greater if possible is the violence which is done to every correct principle, and the gloom which is cast over every bright prospect, when this poison is furnished, as it sometimes has been, by candidates for public office, as a bribe to electors. In this free country, raised by mercy high for all nations to look at, and making for the world the momentous experiment, whether free institutions can be permanent and men to future ages are to be governed by law or the sword; in this mighty, this stupendous conflict, where intelligence, and virtue, and morality, and religion, the religion of the Bible, are all, and in all, the pretended patriot who sighed, "O that I were made judge in the land," has taken this poison and offered it to freemen to buy for him their votes. And when charged with being so poisoned himself as to be unfit for the public service, he has had the effrontery to acknowledge in words and in deeds, that he loved it, and to declare before the world that if he could only have the votes of all in his district, who were in this respect like himself, he would not ask for more. And so enslaved have they sometimes been, that they have put him into office, and continued him in it, till, not his con

stituents, but drunkenness cast him out. The very beasts, on which some of them rode to elections, on their return, lightened of their burden, which could not ride, and much less could walk, stopped to gaze at them in the gutter.

Men, born of sires whose blood flowed freely to purchase the rich inheritance for their children, were bribed to be slaves, by a price which it would disgrace a slave to accept, and bound, not in fetters of brass but of mud, which they had not strength enough to break, and were doomed, while life remained, to wallow in the mire, an astonishment and a contempt to the most beastly spectator. The very dog was ashamed of his company, while his meanest feelings, as he, whom had he remained a man, he would gladly have continued faithfully to serve gasped in death, assumed a moral grandeur, compared with the best of those which led the destroyer of his master, by poisoning electors, to bribe himself into

office.

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Had the Genius of Liberty not herself been put to sleep by the lethean exhalations of that dark and putrid lake, her sword had leaped from its scabbard to avenge the first invasion like this; and make an example, which as far, and as long as known, would forever, among freemen, prevent its repetition. But she was asleep. Her sleep however was not the sleep of death. The purifying breezes have gone over her, and she begins already to stir; and in some cases she has opened her eyes. Nothing was more common a few years ago," says a distinguished Civilian, " in our part of the country, than for candidates for public office to furnish electors with spirit. They did it to obtain their votes; and elections were scenes of dissipation, outrage and riot. But no such thing is seen now. So great has been the change since the formation of Temperance Societies, that there is not a man in the country, who, should he take that course, could be elected to any office." Let Temperance Societies become universal, and attempts to poison electors will no longer bribe their authors into office. The cry of "Sectarianism," or "Church and State," will not hide from the eye of freemen the cloven foot; or shield him who wears it from their indignant execration.

Not a few associations have already been formed, whose members solemnly pledge themselves not to vote for any man to any office, who at elections offers ardent spirit. The right of suffrage, in their view, is too sacred, and liberty too precious to be bartered away for rum, or whiskey. The false hearted, traitorous pretenders to patriotism, who think thus to purchase its honours and emoluments, are in their estimation too base to be for a moment tolerated by freemen. They view it as greater guilt and meanness to buy votes with spirit, than with money; and fraught with greater dangers to the Republic. From supporting the man who

does it, to whatever party he may belong, they are resolved to abstain. Total abstinence is all that he will ever receive from them. Let others treat him in the same manner, let this become universal, and the change with regard to political corruption will be as strongly marked, as the change with regard to intemperance by abstinence from ardent spirit. Let no man be elected to public office whose qualifications and moral influence will not be a public blessing, and the dark portentous clouds which have been hovering around our horizon, and casting a broader and deeper shade over our national prospects, will be dispelled by that sun whose rising glories will grow brighter and brighter to the perfect day.

The quaking apprehensions of the venerable patriot who poured out his youthful blood to establish our freedom, that he should outlive its continuance, would then be hushed; and every christian bosom swell with high hope of the speedy and universal extension and unchanging perpetuity of that heaven-born freedom which makes all who partake of it to be "free indeed." Nor is the attention of our countrymen confined to the connection between ardent spirit, and the political or temporal welfare of men. They are tracing and exhibiting its more momentous connection with their spiritual and their eternal concerns.

The General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, composed of that denomination throughout the United States, at their last meeting, in addressing their churches, say, "God, who is the Author of nature no less than revelation, has abundantly provided for the essential happiness and relative usefulness of mankind; but the experience of all ages and nations has given the most indubitable proof that the use of ardent spirits is totally inconsistent with either; and, thus opposed to the benevolent intention of Heaven and provisions of nature, must be considered as a transgression of the will of God. The mischievous principle of inebriety, of which we now speak, cannot be made to nourish and invigorate the body. It is, by the appointment of Heaven and the constitution of our common nature rendered incapable of producing such a result. Its conversion into chyle, after being received into the stomach, and its subsequent appropriation by means of the blood vessels, for the purpose of renewing and invigorating the body, are known to be impossible." And after saying that few are aware of the insidious nature and great extent of the evil, they add, "A large portion we fear of the most important and responsible business of the nation is often transacted under the influence in a greater or less degree of alcoholic excitement. And can those be innocent who contribute to secure such a result, whether by the pestilential example of temperate drinking, as it is called, or the still more criminal means of furnishing the poisonous preparation by manufacture and traffic for the degradation and ruin of others?

The man who drinks intemperately ruins himself, and is the cause of much discomfort and inquietude, and perhaps actual misery in the social circle in which he moves; but manufacturers, and those who are engaged in the traffic in ardent spirit and other intoxicating liquors, do the work of death by wholesale; they are devoted by misguided enterprise to the ruin of human kind; and become directly accessory, though not intended by them, to the present shame and final destruction of hundreds and thousands. And we gravely ask, with no common solicitude, can God, who is just as well as good, hold that church innocent which is found cherishing in her bosom so awful and universal an evil? The father and founder of methodism,* says, "It is amazing that the preparation and selling of this poison should be permitted, I will not say in any christian country, but in any civilized State." He denounces the gain of the trafficker, as "the price of blood;" and says, "Let not any lover of virtue and truth say one word in favour of this monster. Let no lover of mankind open his mouth to extenuate the guilt of it. Oppose it as you would oppose the devil, whose offspring and likeness it is. None can gain in this way by swallowing up his neighbor's substance, without gaining the damnation of hell."

And it has been publicly announced by leading men in that Connection, as their settled conviction, that he who lives to see the year 1836, the time of the meeting of the next General Conference, will witness the entire Methodist Connection throughout the United States, free from makers and venders of spirituous liquors. May their anticipations be realized and their zeal and success in this work quicken and animate others, till every Christian Church of every denomination, shall be free from this disgrace. And the Church that shall be last to put away this abomination may expect to be the last on which shall descend the dew, the rain, and the sunshine of Millennial grace.

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States say, "It is now a well established fact, that the common use of strong drink, however moderate, has been a fatal, soul destroying barrier against the influence of the gospel. Consequently, whereever total abstinence is practised, a powerful instrument of resisting the Holy Spirit is removed; and a new avenue of access to the hearts of men opened to the power of truth. Thus in numerous instances, and in various places, during the past year the Temperance Reformation has been a harbinger preparing the way of the Lord; and the banishment of that liquid poison, which kills both soul and body, has made way for the immediate entrance of the spirit and the word, the glorious train of the Redeemer. But, a

* John Wesley.

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