The Rhode Island American, And General Advertiser

Letter from the Honourable Mr. Adams,
Quincy, February 21, 1819.

Dear Sir--I thank you for your address to the New-Bedford Auxiliary Society for the Suppression of Intemperance, which I have read with pleasure and edification. It abounds in ingenuity and information; it is elegant and pathetic; it is pious and virtuous; it addresses itself to the understanding and the heart.

A drunkard is the most selfish being in the universe. He has no sense of modesty, shame or disgrace. He has no sense of duty, or sympathy of affection with his father or mother, his brother or sister, his friend or neighbour, his wife or children; no reverence for his God; no sense of futurity in this world or the other--all is swallowed up in the mad, selfish joy of the moment.

Is it not humiliating, that Mahometans and Hindoos should put to shame the whole Christian world, by their superior examples of temperance? Is it not degrading to Englishmen and Americans, that they are so infinitely exceeded by the French in this cardinal virtue? And is it not mortifying beyond all expression, that we Americans should exceed all other eight millions of people on the globe, as I verily believe we do, in this degrading, beastly vice of intemperance.

I am, Sir, your obliged friend and humble servant,
JOHN ADAMS.

William Willis, Esquire.