In protracted watching by the bed of sickness, food and intervals of rest are the only real securities against disease and weakness. Spirits peculiarly expose a man to receive the disease, if it be contagious, and if not, they wear out the strength sooner than it would otherwise fail.
The most exposed and trying situations in life, then, need not the aid of ardent spirits; nay, they are in such cases decidedly injurious. They are not, therefore, necessary, but injurious for men in all other situations. The distiller must, therefore, give up the necessity of using them in the community as a reason for continuing their manufacture.
But spirits, it may be said, do certainly inspire a man with much additional strength. Yes; and physicians tell us how. It is by exciting the nervous system, and thus calling into more vigorous action the strength that God has given the constitution to enable it to resist heat, cold, and disease. If this strength do not previously exist in the system, spirits can never bestow it; for they do not afford the least nourishment, as food does. They merely call into action the stock of strength which food has already implanted is the body. Hence the debility and weakness which always succeed their use when the excitement has passed by. Hence, too, it follows, that spirits can never give any additional permanent strength to the body.
But this is not all; for physicians infer from this statement, that the use of spirits, even in moderate quantities, tends prematurely to exhaust and wear out the system. It urges on the powers of life faster than health requires, and thus wears them out sooner, by a useless waste of strength and spirits. True, a moderate drinker may not notice any striking bad effects upon his health, from this cause, for many years; nay, the excitement it produces may remove, for the time being, many uncomfortable feelings which he experiences, and which are the early warnings that nature gives him that she is oppressed, for the secret poison is at work within; and if such a man is attacked by a fever, or other acute disease, physicians know that he is by no means as likely to recover as the water-drinker, because the spirits have partially exhausted the secret strength of his constitution, all of which is now wanted to resist the disease. Let every man who indulges in the use of spirits ponder well the declaration of a committee of one of the most enlightened medical societies in our land: “Beyond comparison greater is the risk of life, undergone in nearly all diseases, of whatever description, when they occur in those unfortunate men who have been previously disordered by these poisons.” Such men, too, it may be added, are much more liable to the attacks of disease than those who totally abstain from alcohol. In both these ways, therefore, the use of spirits, even in the greatest moderation, tends to shorten life.
Distillers of ardent spirits, I entreat you, think seriously of these things, as you tend the fires under your boilers. Farmers, as you drive your load of cider or rye to the distillery, meditate upon them, I beseech you. You have here the opinions and advice of the most able and impartial physicians in this country and in Europe. True, you may find here and there one, of little or no reputation and learning, who, either because he thinks it for his interest, or is attached to ardent spirits himself, will oppose such views of the subject. But no physician of distinction and good moral character would dare, at this day, to come out publicly in opposition to the principles above advanced, sanctioned as they are by the united testimony of science and experience. O, shut not your ears against this powerful voice.
In the third place, I would expostulate with these men as a friend to my country. Can it be that they are acquainted with the extent of the mischiefs which our country already suffers from intemperance? Do they know that fifty-six millions of gallons of ardent spirits are annually consumed in the United States, or more than four and an half gallons to each inhabitant; and that about forty-four millions of this quantity are prepared in the distilleries of our own country; that ten millions of gallons are distilled from molasses, and more than nine million bushels of rye are used for this purpose? Do they know that these forty-four millions of gallons, as retailed, must cost the community not less than $22,000,000; that they render from two hundred to three hundred thousand of our citizens intemperate; that in consequence of this intemperance the country sustains an annual loss, in the productive labor of these drunkards, of not far from $30,000,000; and a loss of more than twenty-five thousand lives, from her middle-aged citizens, who are thus cut off prematurely? That two-thirds of the pauperism in the country, costing from $6,000,000 to $8,000,000, and two-thirds of the crime among us, perpetrated by an army of eighty or ninety thousand wretches, result from the same cause; and that from forty to fifty thousand of the cases of imprisonment for debt, annually, are imputed to the same cause? That the pecuniary losses proceeding from the carelessness and rashness of intemperate sailors, servants, and agents, are immense; and that the degradation of mind, the bodily and mental sufferings of drunkards and their families, and the corruption of morals and manners, are altogether beyond the reach of calculation to estimate, and of words to express?[E]
Can it be that these men have ever soberly looked forward to see what must be the ultimate effects, upon our free and beloved country, of this hydra-headed evil, unless it be arrested? Can they be aware that, judging by the past proportion of deaths from intemperance in the most regular and moral parts of the land, one third of the six million adults now living will die from the same cause? Do they know how the intemperate entail hereditary diseases and a thirst for ardent spirits upon their descendants, and how rapidly, therefore, the bodily vigor of our citizens is giving way before their deadly influence? And can they doubt that vigor of mind will decay in the same proportion? Corruption of manners and morals too, how rapidly it will spread under the operation of this poison! Nor can religious principle stand long before the overwhelming inundation; and just in the degree in which alcoholic liquors are used, will the Sabbath, and the institutions of religion, and the Bible be neglected and trodden under foot. And when the morality, and religion, and the conscience of the majority of our nation are gone, what but a miracle can save our liberties from ruin? Corrupt the majority, and what security is there in popular elections? Corrupt the majority, and you have collected together the explosive materials that need only the touch of some demagogue’s torch to scatter the fair temple of our independence upon the winds of heaven.
But admitting that this picture is not overdrawn, yet the distiller and the furnisher of materials may perhaps say, that all this does not particularly concern them. They are not intemperate, they force no man to drink, or even to buy their spirits: nay, they generally refuse to sell to the intemperate. The intemperate are the persons to whom these expostulations should be addressed. As for the distiller and the farmer, who manufacture the poison, they are following a lawful calling, and have a right to the honest proceeds of their business.
The principle, then, which I understand you to advocate, is this: that provided your employment be not contrary to the laws of the state, you are under no obligation to inquire particularly as to its influence upon the public happiness after the products of your labor get out of your own hands. If this be a correct principle for your guidance, it is certainly a correct one for others. Let us apply it to the intemperate man.