most pernicious one, in every point of view. And when they testify to the vast increase of intemperance, in the community as a whole, I cannot accept their statements.

In the first place, they do not set such an example, according to their own testimony, on this subject, as warrants us in taking their opinion as final proof. We know that every man draws to himself others of his class. A drinking pulpit will be surrounded, in Boston, by a drinking auditory; and a total abstinence pulpit, if its opinions be emphatically pronounced, will be in general surrounded by a total abstinence auditory. I can point out congregations in the city of Boston, in which habits of drinking have not increased, and in which numerous families, who twenty years ago placed liquors on their sideboards, have removed them, and proffer them to no guest at their homes.

Then the law of appetite has its natural sway. If these men have been drinking twenty years, their testimony but confirms the law. The habit of indulgence increases gradually upon them and their friends, and they are obliged to confess that in their circles the evil is growing greater.

I cannot forbear, gentlemen, to adduce the testimony of the late President Nott, of Union College,

upon this subject of personal influence. Having spoken of the little influence of the debauched inebriate, who in his own person is a warning against indulgence, he says:

"But reputable [careful] Christian wine-drinkers are the men who send forth, from the high places of society, and sometimes even from the portals of the sanctuary, an unsuspected, unrebuked, but powerful influence, which is secretly and silently doing on every side, among the young, among the aged, among even females, its work of death. It is this reputable drinking of these disguised poisons, under the cover of an Orthodox Christian name, which encourages youth in their occasional excesses, reconciles the public mind to holiday revelries, shelters from deserved reproach the barroom tipplers, and furnishes a salvo even for the occasional inquietudes of the drunkard's conscience.

"Regard this conduct as we may, there can be no question how God regards it. He has not left Himself without a witness of His displeasure in any city, town, or hamlet, throughout the land.”

But there is a greater than Dr. Nott, a greater than any of the witnesses who have been on this stand, that has spoken on this subject,-the man who knew his liberty and his duty, the holy apostle Paul:

"Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.

"It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak."

Observe that last phrase. No right has a Christian man, (I say it with entire respect to everybody who has testified here, for I cannot forget that 'we have had ministers of eminence before us,) I repeat, no Christian man under heaven, in a state of health, seeing the tendency of weak men to run into excess, and fall under the dominion of these social evils, has a right to use his liberty in swelling the tide of influence that has swept so many thousands away.

How shall we explain the fact that so many godly men, conscientious men, are in this error? By the very law which they themselves illustrate in their testimony. They are residents of the city of Boston; and I solemnly aver before you that, if any man-any young man especially-steps into a Boston pulpit and is silent for six months on this question of the character of the liquor traffic, he will find himself surrounded by a class of wealthy men, who will invite him to their homes, seduce him by the wine-cup, and lay him under obligation in a thousand ways. Whenever he finds himself degraded to this humiliating condition, though he

may remain in the pulpit, he has ceased to be a minister of God.

Look at this city of Boston. The learned counsel on the other side told us that there are $25,000,000 here invested in the liquor traffic. The valuation of Boston is stated by Hon. Otis Clapp at $415,000,000, and the liquor interest at $40,000,000. John Glancy, (who he is I don't know,) at the liquor-dealers' meeting, placed the sum at $90,000,000 to $100,000,000. I think the valuation confirms the last statement. We all know that full valuations are rarely obtained; and when you consider the difficulty of valuing that which is valueless, you will conceive how Mr. Glancy and the Assessors may differ. I cannot doubt that very much of the testimony we have had, illustrates the power of this vicious interest, even over reputable men, especially when seconded by corrupted appetites.

Why, gentlemen, call to mind the testimony of that witness whom we were not allowed to question on the points for which we summoned him before the Committee, but who testified to various other things, and among them deliberately said that if a young man-a friend or brother of his-a novice, not initiated into drinking liquor, were to ask his

counsel-though a liquor-dealer, though now pleading for power under the law to sell, and declaring that the business ought to be made respectableyet if this novice should ask his counsel, he would say to him, "You had better not touch it." Contrast with this the pious cant of the Reverend Doctor of Divinity, who, ejaculating that "nothing impure can enter heaven," drew down upon himself the applause of a liquor-selling and liquor-loving audience, by an exhibition of the glories of moderate drinking.

Yes, the counsel will say, you may make your especial case-you may make your case on this ground, that it is a duty under social law to forego a good, in fulfilment of the Christian obligation of example and sacrifice-the very law that the Lord Jesus Christ illustrated in laying down his life for the world; but you have no right, the Commonwealth has no right, to require that sacrifice. A, B, C and D, may voluntarily make the sacrifice, but the State has no right to command it. I reply: if it were a good to the individual, and that individual were Robinson Crusoe, and his man Friday were dead, Robinson Crusoe might use wine, if it pleased him, in his normal condition as a man. But Robinson Crusoe does not represent you, gentlemen, nor