Jenks's Portland Gazette

Miscellany.

AGAINST THE IMMODERATE USE OF SPIRITUOUS LIQUORS, DELIVERED IN A NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF THE CREEKS UPON THE BREAKING OUT OF A WAR.

IN this solemn and important council, rising up before the wisdom and experience of so many venerable sachems, and having the eyes of so many heroic chieftains upon me, I feel myself struck with that awful diffidence, which I believe would be felt by any one of my years, who had not relinquished all the modesty of his nature.

Nothing O Creeks! could enable me to bear the fixed attention of this illustrious assembly, or give to my youth the power of an unembarrassed utterance, but the animating conviction, that there is not one heart among us, that does not glow for the dignity, the glory, and the happiness of his country. And in those principles how inferior soever my abilities may otherwise be, I cannot without violating my own consciousness, yield to any one the superiority.

After some observations upon the state of the nation, the speaker in the most artful manner introduces his subject; and with the greatest respect for the age and names of the sachems before whom he speaks, takes occasion to touch upon the many violations of civil order, the irrational perversions of character and all the other fatal consequences of immoderate use of spirituous liquors. His words at the conclusion of this are worthy of notice.

'Tis true (says he) these violations of civil order, &c. are past—may they never be repeated. But tremble, O! Creeks! when I thunder in your ears this denunciation: that if the cup of perdition continues to rule among you with sway to intemperance, ye will cease to be a nation! Ye will have neither heads to direct nor hands to protect you. While this diabolical juice undermines the powers of your bodies and souls, with what feeble zeal he warrior's enfeebled arm will draw the bow, or launch the spear in the day of battle to no purpose. In the day of Council, when national safety stands suspended on the lips of the head sachem, he will take his seat with uncollected spirits and drivel the babbling of a second childhood. Think not, O Creek—that I presume to fright you with an imaginary picture. Is it not evident (alas! too fatally so) that we find our military ardour abating, our numbers decreasing: our ripened manhood a premature victim to disease to death, and our venerable sachems, a solitary scanty number.

Part of what follows a few pages after this, it would be almost a criminal omission not to quote, the sentiments are so elevated, and at the same time natural.

And now, Creeks if the cries of your country, if the pulse of glory, if all that fires the hero and exalts the man has not swelled your hearts with a true indignation against the immoderate use of this liquor: if the motives are insufficient to produce such resolutions as may prove of consequence there are yet other ties of humanity, tender, dear and persuasive. Think on what we owe to our children, and to the gentle sex.

With regard to our children, besides effecting their health, enervating all their powers and endangering the very existence of our nation, by the unbounded use of these pernicious draughts; think how it must affect their tender minds, to see them in that gave them being, thus sunk in the most brutal state, in danger of being suffocated by his own intemperance, and standing in need of their infant arm to support his staggering steps, or raise his feeble head while he vomits forth the foul debauch.

O Warriors! O Countrymen!—How despicable must such a practice render us, even in the eyes of our own children! Will it not gradually deprive us of all authority in the families which we ought to govern and protect! What a waste of time does it create, which might be otherwise spent round the blazing hearth, in the most tender offices. It perverts the great designs of nature, and murders all those precious moments, in which the warrior should recount to his wondering offspring his own great actions and those of his ancestors—By these means the tender bosom has often caught the patriot flame, & illustrious succession of sachems and warriors was formed among us from generation to generation, before our glory was eclipsed by the introduction of this destructive liquid.

O Creeks! you all remember the great Carhagala, who is now gone to our fathers, and from whose loins I immediately sprung. You know how often he has led forth our warriors to conquest, while his name sounded like thunder and shed terror on our foes. You will then pardon the necessary vanity, if I presume to remind you how piously he adhered to the original simplicity of life. O ten has he said, that if men did not fly from this cup of perdition, his name would never be sounded from hill to hill by the tongue of posterity; and I can affirm, that if he had wasted his time in such practices, my bosom would never have been fired to glory by the repeated story of our family virtue and achievements: nor should I have dared, on this occasion, fondly to emulate them, by raising my unpractised voice in the cause of my country, before such a venerable assembly of chiefs and warriors.