New Hampshire Statesman And State Journal

On the first day of June, the New-Hampshire State Temperance Society, held its anniversary meeting in the Legislative Hall at Concord, Gov. Badger in the chair. A resolution was offered, by a member of the Society, involving an alteration of the pledge, and the adoption of a pledge of total abstinence from intoxicating liquors. After a discussion until ten o'clock in the evening, the meeting was adjourned to the next day, when the resolution passed unanimously. The same profitable alteration of the State Society's pledge has taken place in Pennsylvania, and some other States. At the meeting in Concord the hall was crowded to excess

Has the N. Hampshire State Temperance Society acted wisely? Have they shown a sufficient measure of deference for that invaluable principle, which we call PRUDENCE? "What is prudence? An old Major of the revolution affirmed, that prudence, on certain occasions. was a rascally virtue, That kind of prudence, in which the old veteran referred, was, I presume, such as a tortoise exhibits, when he contracts head and extremities within his shell, from an apprehension that he may go too fast and too far... For one, I respect the N. H. State Temperance Society, for its wisdom and decision, upon this occasion. When the total societies are springing up in every corner, at home and abroad, is it becoming in a State Temperance Society to remain behind all others? Is it in accordance with the fitness of things: for the extremities to go before the head? Upon one occasion, this revered order of movement may be expedient when the body is positively dead, the head a caput mortuum, and its "march is foremost to The grave" , "Then, indeed, the unprofitable trunk may go in its long home, and the mourner: (?) may go about the street,-and we offer no opposition to wine or other fermented liquors at such times, quite as these.

A. I. R.

Boston Mercantile Journal,