Yet however appalling may be the vice that is adopted by those who do not fall into the habit of drunkenness, there is always more hope of reclaiming the unfortunate male offender, whatever may be his vice, than there is of inducing the female inebriate to forsake the bottle. Larceny is committed to supply some want, not to gratify an imperious appetite; it leads to solitary confinement for a length of time, and the thief is easily persuaded to reflect, and often induced to amend. He understands, indeed, that his offence is directly against others, and that it provokes the injured to visit upon him the penalty of the violated law, and the anger of an offended society, that arms itself against him. The poor drunkard awakens from his debauchery, and finds a craving thirst for that which prostrated him, and feels that as he has done little or no direct wrong to others beyond his family, his offence is against himself, and the offended one in such a case easily pardons. If it is a female, it is not merely the love of liquor, in the use of which “increase of appetite grows by what it feeds on,” but it is that desire for the forgetfulness of sorrow, that love for the excitement of the nerves, that oblivion of the unhappy past, and that elevation above the miserable future which distinguishes her delirium of drunkenness from the effects of intoxication in man.
The impure female, in her rapid descent, is rarely unmindful of her degradation; and thousands are redeemed from vice by the kind interference of the humane; but when once she has found in the use of intoxicating liquor that paradise of the drunkard, she is rarely ever led by persuasion to return to reason and sobriety; nothing but forceful restraint will keep the wretched victim from the use of the means, and that restraint will not quench the thirst, nor diminish the desire, for the deceptive dreams of happiness.
Prevention! Prevention! domestic discipline, social care, and social censure, can alone diminish this evil, and free our community from that awful scourge—a drunken woman—and alleviate the miseries which are found in the cell of the inebriate prisoner.
It is not to be denied that there has been a great increase in the habit of using intoxicating liquors within a few years. It is a growing evil of terrible dimensions and appalling effects; and the worst part of the curse is its continued augmentation. How is this evil to be lessened? How is society to be saved from the terrible maelstrom, which seems to draw all to its eddying circle, and involves in ruin all that it embraces. It is not the business of this Society, perhaps, to resolve itself into a “temperance association;” but there are precedents in its proceedings for direct action in the matter, at least so far as concerns the prisons. We have asked, by solemn resolve, that the use of tobacco may be restrained in the cells; not, perhaps, merely because tobacco is in itself so injurious, but principally because the use of that narcotic creates a thirst, which seems to have no appeasement but in strong drink. To use a salutary and direct influence, then, in diminishing drunkenness, must a fortiori be within the plan of our Society.
But it may be said that while the use of tobacco has generally been among the admissible indulgence of prisoners, strong liquors have not been allowed. It is by no means certain that in other times the laboring prisoners were not allowed a regular, limited, supply of strong drink, but certainly not lately; yet as it is admitted that most of the criminal and vicious that are sent to our prisons owe their confinement to drunkenness, or at least make their condition worse by intoxication; and especially, as it is evident, that efforts to redeem from crime the released, are defeated by the facility with which intoxication may be had, it can scarcely be doubted that the Society is in the exercise of its legitimate powers, and in the discharge of its assumed duties, when it encourages all good efforts to lessen the prevailing sin and disgrace of the age, and lends its sanction to efforts directed to the diminution of the habit and the means of drunkenness.
How shall that be done? Shall this Society initiate a plan for promoting temperance, or shall it lend its hearty co-operation to some association that shall have for its principal object that which could only be a branch, a true, living branch, indeed, but only a branch of the duties of the Society for alleviating the miseries of prisons?
This Society can at least, and by the adoption of this Report, does, bear solemn testimony against the prevalence, the multiplication, and the existence of the magazines of mischief, where drunkenness is secured by the cost of the honor of the inebriate, and the disgrace of Society. Citizens who watch with most painful vigilance the action of the City Councils that enhance or diminish by a single per cent. the tax upon property, would consult their own interest more if they would look into this one cause of the increase of rates. But our business with the subject is in the interest of humanity. That is cheapest, at whatever cost, which produces the greatest good of the greatest number; and the good of the greatest number must depend on the promotion of sound morals.
With such a view of the prevalence of intemperance, and with such an avowal of the motives of humanity with which this Society regards all vices or crimes that go to make up the sum of the miseries of our public prisons, it may not be improper to state that among the institutions which humanity has yet to establish in Philadelphia, (it has already suggested it,) is a hospital or place of reception and treatment of inebriates. The prison punishes them, it does not cure; and few, excepting those who have seen the drunkard in the agonies of delirium tremens, or the terrors of mania a potu, can comprehend all the evils which the drunkard accumulates upon his own head, (the domestic misery which he insures, and the general scandal which he causes, may be otherwise considered,) but the personal suffering of the drunkard, after his committal for protracted debauch, is beyond description. It is not without some reason that the cells of the prison which are especially devoted to cases of delirium and mania are denominated “Purgatory,” though it would seem from the unutterable agonies and indescribable apprehension of the inmates that even if they should “go farther,” they would scarcely “fare worse.”
It is hoped, that when the national troubles that now occupy public attention, and draw upon the fiscal means of our citizens shall have ceased, there will be some effort in the direction of a “Hospital for Inebriates,” where proper moral and physical treatment may restore to families and society, those whose intemperate habits have alienated them from the affections of friends, or failing to restore them to reason and propriety, a home may be provided where they cannot by habitual indulgence, degrade themselves further, and by which families and friends may be spared the disgrace of a drunken inmate.