III. From the consideration of the ruinous effects of tobacco upon the intellect.
Here, again, let Professor Hitchcock speak. Says he, "Intoxicating drinks, opium and tobacco, exert a pernicious influence upon the intellect. They tend directly to debilitate the organs; and we cannot take a more effectual course to cloud the understanding, weaken the memory, unfix the attention, and confuse all the mental operations, than by thus entailing upon ourselves the whole hateful train of nervous maladies. These can bow down to the earth an intellect of giant strength, and make it grind in bondage, like Sampson shorn of his locks and deprived of his vision. The use of tobacco may seem to soothe the feelings, and quicken the operations of the mind; but to what purpose is it that the machine is furiously running and buzzing after the balance wheel is taken off?"
The late Gov. Sullivan, speaking of the use of tobacco, says, "It has never failed to render me dull and heavy, to interrupt my usual alertness of thought, and to weaken the powers of my mind in analyzing subjects and defining ideas."
The actual loss of intellectual power, which tobacco has hitherto occasioned, and is still causing, in this Christian nation, is immense. How immense, it is impossible accurately to calculate. Many a man who might have been a giant, has not risen above mediocrity; and many a man who might have been respectable and useful, has sunk into obscurity, and buried his talents in the earth. This is a consideration of deepest interest to every philanthropist, patriot, and Christian in the land, and especially to all our youth. We live at a time, and under circumstances, which call for the exertion of all our intellectual strength, cultivated, improved and sanctified, to the highest measure of possibility. Error, ignorance, and sin, must be met and vanquished; they must be met and vanquished by light and love. The eye of angels is upon us,—the eye of God is upon us,—and shall we fetter, and palsy, and ruin our intellectual capabilities, for the paltry pleasure of using one of the most poisonous, loathsome, and destructive weeds found in the whole vegetable kingdom? Let us rather shake off this abominable practice, and rise, as individuals and as a nation, in all our intellectual potency,—and let us go forth from day to day, to the noble purposes of our destiny, untrammelled by the quid, or the pipe, or the snuff-box; and before another generation shall lie down in the grave, our efforts and our example may cause the light of human science, and the light of civil and religious liberty, and the light of Bible truth, to blaze through all our valleys,
and over all our hills, from Greenland to Cape Horn,—and with a lustre that shall illumine the world.
I maintain my position,
IV. From a consideration of the ruinous effects of tobacco upon public and private morals.
The ruinous effects of tobacco upon public and private morals, are seen in the idle, sauntering habits, which the use of it engenders,—in the benumbing, grovelling, stupid sensations which it induces,—but especially in perpetuating and extending the practice of using intoxicating drinks.
Governor Sullivan has truly said, "that the tobacco pipe excites a demand for an extraordinary quantity of some beverage to supply the waste of glandular secretion, in proportion to the expense of saliva; and ardent spirits are the common substitutes; and the smoker is often reduced to a state of dram drinking, and finishes his life as a sot."
Dr. Agnew has truly said, that "the use of the pipe leads to the immoderate use of ardent spirits."