Olive Leaf And New York Weekly Messenger

THE EVILS OF INTEMPERANCE.

Here then is the evil :--300,000 drunkards; $30,000,000 squandered; 150,000 paupers; 16,000 criminals; three-fourths of all the casualties; one half the insanities; and 30,000 deaths annually. Hence, said the Lecturer, is the evil. Patriots, philanthropists, mere men, will you look at it? First, let the 150,000 paupers pass along in their rags. Would the audience look at them? Sitting here, surrounded with comforts, they could not duly appreciate such a spectacle. But, said he, if your last bed were going under the hammer, and your wives and children were already on their way to join this motley group, then you could appreciate it without difficulty.

Next in the procession, came the 1500 insane persons--and now behold the maniac laugh! O if I had a brother,' say you, 'or a sister, a father or a mother, in that company of maniacs, how should I feel?' Multiply the distress you would feel by ten thousand, and you will know something of the sum total of distress thus occasioned.

Now make room, said he, for the 16,000 criminals, dungeoned by the use of intoxicating drink. Don't look at their wives and children--the evil is not there--but at the universal insecurity of life and property which quivered all the land over.

And now let the 300,000 drunkards join in the procession; see their spewing, and hear their dreadful oaths, as they pass along. And finally pile up 30,000 bodies of dead men, in all their blood--and then remember what God has said about the drunkard.

Firm-nerved men, he remarked, had cried like children, at the mimicry of the theatre. But here were facts, in comparison with which the highest wrought representations of the theatre were tame.