Let me mention some of the statistics of this trade before I speak of its effects. If there are one thousand drink-shops, and each sells liquor to the amount of only six dollars a day, which is the price of only one hundred drams, or two hundred at the lowest shops, then we have the sum of $2,190,000 paid for liquor to be drunk on the spot every year. This sum is considerably more than double the amount paid for the whole public education of the people in the entire State of Massachusetts! In Boston alone, last year, there were distilled, 2,873,623 gallons of spirit. In five years, from 1840 to 1845, Boston exported 2,156,990, and imported 2,887,993 gallons. They burnt up a man the other day, at the distillery in Merrimack street. You read the story in the daily papers, and remember how the by-standers looked on with horror to see the wounded man attempting with his hands to fend off the flames from his naked head! Great Heaven! It was not the first man that distillery has burned up! No, not by thousands. You see men about your streets, all afire; some half-burnt down; some with all the soul burned out, only the cinders left of the man, the shell and wall, and that tumbling and tottering, ready to fall. Who of you has not lost a relative, at least a friend, in that withering flame, that terrible Auto da fe, that hell-fire on earth?
Let us look away from that. I wish we could look on something to efface that ghastly sight. But see the results of this trade. Do you wonder at the poverty just now spoken of; at the vagrant children? In the Poor House at Albany, at one time, there were 633 persons, and of them 615 were intemperate! Ask your city authorities how many of the poor are brought to their Almshouse directly or remotely by intemperance! Do you wonder at the crime which fills your jails, and swells the tax of county and city? Three fourths of the petty crime in the State comes from this source directly or remotely. Your jails were never so full before! When the parents are there, what is left for the children? In Prussia, the Government which imprisons the father takes care of the children, and sends them to school. Here they are forced into crime.
As I gave some statistics of the cause, let me also give some of the effects. Two years ago your Grand Jury reports that one of the city police, on Sunday morning, between the hours of twelve and two, in walking from Cornhill square to Cambridge street, passed more than one hundred persons more or less drunk! In 1844 there were committed to your House of Correction, for drunkenness, 453 persons; in 1845, 595; in 1846, up to the 24th of August, that is, in seven months and twenty-four days, 446. Besides there have been already in this year, 396 complained of at the Police Court and fined, but not sent to the House of Correction. Thus, in seven months and twenty-four days, 842 persons have been legally punished for public drunkenness. In the last two months and a half 445 persons were thus punished. In the first twenty-four days of this month, ninety-four! In the last year there were 4,643 persons committed to your watch-houses, more than the twenty-fifth of the whole population. The thousand drink-shops levy a direct tax of more than $2,000,000. That is only the first outlay. The whole ultimate cost in idleness, sickness, crime, death and broken hearts—I leave you to calculate that! The men who live in the lower courts, familiar with the sinks of iniquity, speak of this crime as "most awful!" Yet in this month and the last, there were but nine persons indicted for the illegal sale of the poison which so wastes the people's life! The head of your Police and the foreman of your last Grand Jury are prominent in that trade.
Does the Government know of these things; know of their cause? One would hope not. The last Grand Jury in their public report, after speaking manfully of some actual evils, instead of pointing at drunkenness and bar-rooms, direct your attention "to the increased number of omnibuses and other large carriages in the streets."
These are sad things to think of in a Christian church. What shall we do for all these little ones that are perishing? "Do nothing," say some. "Am I my brother's keeper?" asked the first Cain, after killing that brother. He thought the answer would be, "No! you are not." But he was his brother's keeper, and Abel's blood cried from the ground for justice, and God heard it. Some say we can do nothing. I will never believe that a city which in twelve years can build near a thousand miles of railroad, hedge up the Merrimack and the lakes of New Hampshire; I will never believe that a city, so full of the hardiest enterprise and the noblest charity, cannot keep these little ones from perishing. Why the nation can annex new States and raise armies at uncounted cost. Can it not extirpate pauperism, prevent intemperance, pluck up the causes of the present crime? All that is lacking is the prudent will!
It seems as if something could easily be done to send the vagrant children to school; at least to give them employment, and so teach them some useful art. If some are Catholics, and will not attend the Protestant schools, perhaps it would be as possible to have a special and separate school for the Irish as for the Africans. It was recently proposed in a Protestant assembly to found Sunday Schools, with Catholic teachers for Catholic children. The plan is large and noble, and indicates a liberality which astonishes one even here, where some men are ceasing to be sectarian and becoming human. Much may be done to bring many of the children to our Sunday and week-day schools, as they now are, and so brands be snatched from the burning. The State Farm School for juvenile offenders, which a good man last winter suggested to your Legislature, will doubtless do much for these idle boys, and may be the beginning of a greater and better work. Could the State also take care of the children when it locks the parents in a jail, there would be a nearer approach to justice and greater likelihood of obtaining its end. Still the laws act cumbrously and slow. The great work must be done by good men, acting separately or in concert, in their private way. You are your brother's keeper; God made you so. If you are rich, intelligent, refined and religious, why you are all the more a keeper to the poor, the weak, the vulgar and the wicked. In the pauses of your work there will be time to do something. In the unoccupied hours of the Sunday there is yet leisure to help a brother's need. If there are times when you are disposed to murmur at your own hard lot, though it is not hard; or hours when grief presses heavy on your heart, go and look after these children, find them employment, and help them to start in life; you will find your murmurings are ended, and your sorrow forgot.
It does not seem difficult to do something for the poor. It would be easy to provide comfortable and convenient houses and at a reasonable rate. The experiment has been tried by one noble-hearted man, and thus far works well. I trust the same plan, or one better, if possible, will soon be tried on a larger scale, and so repeated, till we are free from that crowding together of miserable persons, which now disgraces our city. It seems to me that a store might be established where articles of good quality should be furnished to the poor at cost. Something has already been done in this way, by the "Trade's Union," who need it much less. A practical man could easily manage the details of such a scheme. All reform and elevation of this class of men must begin by mending their circumstances, though of course it must not end there. Expect no improvement of men that are hungry, naked, and cold. Few men respect themselves in that condition. Hope not of others what would be impossible for you!
You may give better pay when that is possible. I can hardly think it the boast of a man, that he has paid less for his labor than any other in his calling. But it is a common boast, though to me it seems the glory of a pirate! I cannot believe there is that sharp distinction between week-day religion and Sunday religion, or between justice and charity, that is sometimes pretended. A man both just and charitable would find his charity run over into his justice, and the mixture improve its quality. When I remember that all value is the result of work, and see likewise that no man gets rich by his own work, I cannot help thinking that labor is often wickedly underpaid, and capital sometimes as grossly over-fed. I shall believe that capital is at the mercy of labor, when the two extremes of society change places. Is it Christian or manly to reduce wages in hard times, and not raise them in fair times? and not raise them again in extraordinary times? Is it God's will that large dividends and small wages should be paid at the same time? The duty of the employer is not over, when he has paid "the hands" their wages. Abraham is a special providence for Eliezer, as God, the universal providence, for both. The usages of society make a sharp distinction between the rich and poor; but I cannot believe the churches have done wisely, by making that distinction appear through separating the two, in their worship. The poor are, undesignedly, driven out of the respectable churches. They lose self-respect; lose religion. Those that remain, what have they gained by this expulsion of their brothers? A beautiful and costly house, but a church without the poor. The Catholics were wiser and more humane than that. I cannot believe the mightiest abilities and most exquisite culture were ever too great to preach and apply Christianity among the poor; and that "the best sermons would be wasted on them." Yet such has not been the practical decision here! I trust we shall yet be able to say of all our churches, however costly, "There the rich and poor meet together." They are now equally losers by the separation. The seventy ministers of Boston—how much they can do for this class of little ones, if they will!
It has been suggested by some kindly and wise men, that there should be a Prisoners' Home established, where the criminal, on being released from jail, could go and find a home and work. As the case now is, there is almost no hope for the poor offender. "Legal justice" proves often legal vengeance, and total ruin to the poor wretch on whom it falls; it grinds him to powder! All reform of criminals, without such a place, seems to me worse than hopeless. If possible, such an institution seems more needed for the women, than even for the men: but I have not now time to dwell on this theme. You know the efforts of two good men amongst us, who, with slender means, and no great encouragement from the public, are indeed the friends of the prisoner.[20] God bless them in their labors.