which can be drawn only from such sources. It had been gravely urged by one of the strongest and most intelligent of their witnesses, that the mortality from intemperance was fifty thousand a year in the United States! And, when I called attention to the proof, that the deaths from "delirium tremens" were in 1860 but 575, that those from "intemperance' were returned as 931 in all, that the mortality from "diseases of the brain" (regarded by their own physiological authorities as the great seat of the diseases generated by alcohol,) was returned at only 5,726 in the aggregate, and when I vainly begged to know how the estimate of the witness was made, my facts and figures were received with incredulity. Now the whole sum of mortality in the whole country, from all causes, was less than 374,000 in 1860, of which number by the theory of the witness in question, about one in seven was due to drink. But, one of the leaves presented by Dr. Jarvis, on the stand, shows that, even in Boston, (bad as she is represented by the prohibitionists,) in the dark decade from the year 1820 to 1830, the mortality was but 309 from intemperance, to 10,000 of all known causes, or about three deaths from intemperance, out of 100 from all causes. And it also exhibits a descent, during the last five and forty years, from even that ratio, until during the fifteen

years ending with the year 1865, there was a ratio of 85.9 to the 10,000, or less than one to one hundred. And this is Boston, bearing as she must, not only the sins of her own people, but of strangers, of a large mass of entirely exceptional persons, dying under exceptional circumstances, and not representing at all the average health or the general sobriety.

In Lowell, Dr. Jarvis's tables show that in the decade ending with 1851, the mortality from intemperance was but 56.9 to the 10,000 deaths, or little more than half of one to an hundred; and that, as in Boston, so there also, without enforcing prohibition, but by the moral self-restraint of the people, that species of mortality has still further diminished and has for the past fifteen years, been at less than half the former ratio, or about one-quarter of one death from intemperance to one one hundred deaths from all causes. The same tables show, that taking all the counties but Suffolk, out of 81,473 deaths from all known causes, during the years 1861 to 1864, there were 298 from intemperance, or the ratio of 36.5 to the 10,000, less than four-tenths of one to the hundred deaths. And the seven counties of Barnstable, Berkshire, Franklin, Hampshire, Hampden, Dukes and Nantucket, from an aggregate of 113 deaths from intemperance, in the decade of 1841

to 1850, out of 24,684 from all known causes, fell down, in the next decade, to 123 deaths from intemperance, out of 39,991 from all causes. The former decade gave 45.8 to the 10,000, and the latter but 30.7 to the 10,000.

And all this proof of the conquering power of ideas, of reason and moral sentiment, to reform abuses, has accumulated during a time when the use is more general, and when the cause of true temperance is demoralized by a law on the statute book, constantly defied.

Accidents in 1860, from the discharge of fire-arms alone, destroyed 741 lives; railway accidents, 599; accidental poison, 950; while the aggregate of accidental causes was fatal to 18,090 persons, an army corps in number. Even "old age" which is intended to include only those who die from exhaustion of vital force from protracted use of life, without any disease or organic lesion-attended 4,899 men and 5,988 women, or 10,887 in all, to the last repose of our poor humanity.

Figures may be thought to be apparently in favor of the health and sobriety of the country populations as against the city. But it should be observed that the progress of sobriety has been as great in the city

as in the country, notwithstanding the exceptional disadvantages of crowded quarters and floating classes. I must afford time for one proof that the great body of young and middle-aged men in Boston, in spite of all the supposed temptations of the metropolis, are not behind their rural neighbors in the physical qualities of manhood. Of the 29,194 men drafted by the United States in the summer of 1863, and of the 9,830 who volunteered under the stimulus of high bounties and the short term of service, during the last eight months of the war, being 39,024 in all, there were rejected by the surgeons, 14,827. These two bodies are fairly representative—the first because raised on an equal draft, the second because stimulated by the same enthusiasms, and by State and town bounties, both large and similar. (No calculation covering the aggregate volume of physical examinations and the results, in this Commonwealth, during the whole war, is accessible.)

The number of these men, drafted or recruited and examined, in the two representative districts to which Boston belongs, (viz.: the third and fourth,) was 12,741, and the number in the other eight districts was 26,283. Of those examined in the two Boston districts, the number rejected by the surgeons was 3,946, or 310 to each thousand examined; while, of

those examined in the other eight districts, the rejections were 10,881, or 414 to each thousand,—thus exhibiting about three-fourths as many rejections to the thousand in the Boston districts as are found in the residue of the Commonwealth.

Mr. Chairman: The proof is clear that neither mortality nor insanity, nor any of the fatal exhibitions of intemperance, bad as they are, afford any ground for panic, or "military necessity in legislation." But one of the advocates before this Committee, and many of the witnesses, have declared they meant "to put it through," to "overcome obstacles," to "remember that Massachusetts can do whatever she undertakes." Another advocate, perhaps the most eloquent of them all, and not the least imprudent, has declared in public, that they intend to exhaust the ingenuity of the Yankee mind" in devising measures to compel the due subordination of their opponents.

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But, if gentlemen believe that a standing menace, a perpetual sneer, the denial of sincerity or conscientiousness, the positive accusation of being moved by appetite, or by gain, the habitual affectation of superiority, both of rights and of character (with which these petitioners, their advocates and witnesses have been met and opposed by persons on the stand and off of it, by public speech, and through the "prohibi