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SPECIAL PUBLIC EVILS.

[Part VI.

themselves throughout the system. The man wonders what canbe the reason, that he should be visited by such a complication ofdiseases, and betakes himself again and again to the physician,and tries every remedy but the simple one of temperance. Forthese pains are only the murmurings and^complainings of nature,through all the system, “ giving signs of woe, that all is lost.”At length, the excitability of nature flags, and stimulants of high-er power, and in greater quantities, are required to rouse theimpaired energies of life, until, finally, the whole process of dila-tory suicide, and worse than purgatorial suffering, having beenpassed through, “ the silver cord is loosed, the golden bowl isbroken, the wheel at the cistern stops, the dust returns to theearth, and the spirit to God who gave it, to receive, in judgment,according to the deeds done in the body.”

III. The evils of intemperance. This part of the subjecthas, in a great measure, been anticipated, so far as individuals areconcerned, but it admits and requires further amplification andillustration in a national point of view. My limits do not permitme even to touch upon the overwhelming distress and ruin,which the intemperate man brings upon his disconsolate wifeand children.

1. The effects of intemperance upon the health and physicalenergies of a nation are not to be disregarded, or lightly esteem-ed. No fact is more certain than the transmission of tempera-ment and of physical constitution, according to the predominantmoral condition of society, from age to age. Luxury produceseffeminacy, and transmits to other generations imbecility anddisease. Excesses unmake the man. The stature dwindles, thejoints are loosely compacted, and the muscular fibre has lost itselastic tone. No giants’ bones will be found in the cemeteries ofa nation, over whom, for centuries, the waves of intemperancehave rolled ; and no unwieldy iron armour, the annoyance anddefence of other days, will be dug up as memorials of its depart-ed glory. The duration of human life, too, and the relativeamount of health or disease, will manifestly vary, according tothe quantity of spirituous liquors consumed in the land. Nosmall proportion of the deaths, which annually make up ournational bills of mortality, are the cases of those who have been