Alexandria Daily Gazette, Commercial & Political

From the Connecticut Courant.

AGAINST DRUNKENNESS.

PART I.

If by an awful visitation of Divine Providence, there were spreading over all parts of this country, a foul and loathsome leprosy, which poisoned and disfigured the bodies of its victims and affected their minds with madness or with idiotism; if this leprosy had seized a great part of our useful laborers and rendered them a burden to the community; if the prospects and the hopes of a large portion of our promising young men had been already blasted and destroyed by it; if it had infected, more or less, every town and every village, and were spreading its ravages, from year to year, wider and yet wider; if this were the actual condition of our country, there is no telling how great would be the alarm. Neither this nor any similar calamity, Heaven be praised, has been brought upon our country by the direct hand of Providence, which has showered on us blessings without number and in great abundance. But human folly & wickedness abuse the kindness of Providence and change its blessings into curses.

Let sober reason judge, whether drunkenness, habitual drunkenness, be not as bad, nay even worse, than the fatal leprosy I have described. It impairs and corrupts both body and mind, and brings down the noble creature man to a level with the brute. It destroys all moral principle, all sentiments of honor, all feeling of humanity. It changes good nature to churlishness, a kind husband to an unfeeling monster, a dutiful son to an unprincipled villain without natural affections, an industrious thriving man to an idle vagabond. It preys upon and devours every thing that is estimable and amiable both in disposition and character; it eats up the substance of its votaries, and is an inlet to all other vices, and to every evil and calamity almost that can be named.

This detestable demon might say in truth, 'My name is Legion; for we are many.' Many indeed are the evils, the calamities and the abominations, that follow in the train of drunkenness.

'Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions? Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes?' The drunkard. Whose fields are neglected and overgrown with thorns and brambles? Whose house is tumbling in ruins for want of necessary repairs? Whose broken windows are repaired only with rough boards or stuffed with rags? Whose wives are consumed with weeping? Whose babes are suffering hunger and nakedness? The drunkard's. Who disturb peoples repose with their midnight revellings and yells? Who are the persons most commonly engaged in quarrels, in fightings, in riots, and in all scenes of confusion and uproar? Drunkards. Who are lowest of all madmen, the most despicable of all idiots? Drunkards.

The natural idiot, and the madman that has become so by the act of God, are objects not of reproach but of compassion. But the drunkard, who is in act an idiot or a madman for the time being, is so by his own voluntary act; he wilfully quenches in himself the lamp of reason, and with his own suicidal hand destroys that noble faculty which had distinguished him from the beasts that perish.