are informed by the Temperance Prize-Essay of Doct. Lees, that in the second century, Argadus, the administrator of the realm, pulled down the houses of the sellers of strong drink, confiscated their goods and banished the men; that in the ninth century Constantine II. added the punishment of death to the taverners who resisted the decree; that in the sixteenth century, although there were no public taverns known, the citizens brewed their own ale, “their usual drink," and they entertained the travellers; that in just one hundred years later, multitudes of drunken beggars infested Scotland, and in plentiful years, robbed poor people living remote from neighbors, and used to meet in the mountains feasting and rioting for days together, and that on all public occasions they were found, both men and women, "perpetually drunk." The sheriff of Lanarkshire, Mr. Allison, testified* in 1838, that at every tenth house in Glasgow spirits were sold, and that the whiskey drunk in Glasgow was probably twice or thrice as much as in any similar population on the globe.

The report by the Secretary of the Board of State Charities of Massachusetts, just printed (covering the year 1866,) declares in these emphatic

* Porter's Progress of the Nation, p. 679.

words: "It is notorious that the great mass of criminals is made up of the poor, the ill-taught, the ill-conditioned, and, in a double sense, the unfortunate."

"The proportion in the Commonwealth of those who cannot read and write, among persons capable of crime, is between six and seven per cent., while the proportion of criminals who cannot read and write, for the last ten years, has been between thirty and forty per cent. or more than five times as great."

"Out of 11,260 prisoners, only 429, or less than one in twenty-five, are reported as ever having owned the value of $1,000."

The Secretary mentions that 7,343, or about twothirds of this number, are set down as intemperate, which he deems too low an estimate.

Those figures show that the social law I have so often affirmed, holds good in Massachusetts, and up to the present time. It is from "the poor, the illtaught, the ill-conditioned, and in a double sense, the unfortunate," that the ranks of pauperism and insanity, and crime and drunkenness, are yearly reinforced. It is true that the Secretary speaks of drunkenness as the "chief occasion of crime." And that it is connected or associated with crime,

being one of the symptoms of the same disease of which crime is another, one of the manifestations of social degradation, one of the proximate causes too of many an offence, is true. But-let me put a case which will illustrate the true relation of drinking to crime. A few years ago, a young man, not twenty years old, who had never been to school, nor to church, had never learned his letters, had never heard the blessed name of Jesus, save when profanely uttered, urged by the desire of his wife for money, and goaded by her taunts, loaded his gun with powder and shot, and loaded himself with whiskey and gunpowder, and marched forth to the highway, and shot to death another man, (then travelling his rounds to deliver, as it happened, liquors to his country customers,) and robbed him on the spot. At his trial nearly all the witnesses, being residents of the same neighborhood, unable to write their names, made their mark only, on the certificate-book of the officer. I suppose this murder is reckoned among the crimes chargeable to drinking. And, perhaps, the mixture of whiskey and gunpowder which he drank, blunted his nerves and calmed his agitation, and thus fortified his audacity, to the extent of enabling him to do what would otherwise have been too much for him. Without

such drink, perhaps, and without a gun, certainly, he would never have shot his victim. But the purpose of violence and robbery was formed before he drank. The crime was sufficiently complete, as a purpose of the mind, without the draught. What made him a felon in the purpose of his heart? What degraded him into an ignorant heathen, living in the midst of a society where the fashions and customs and desires of modern civilization serve to inflame the natural passions of those who are forbidden to share in its opposing influences of refinement and religion? If you should urge the prohibition of alcoholic drinks because of such an event, attributing the event to their having passed the lips of the felon-in one word, charging the murder to the whiskey—let me ask you what you would say about the thousand or thousands of the young men, who no doubt, drank on that same day, in the same county, and whose reputations are unspotted by offence? But-those young men, you will reply, did not drink to madness, or inebriation. Then, it was not the use of the draught, but its abuse-voluntary and wicked—which, logically, you ought to hold up to rebuke, and hold out as a warning. Nor is that all. There were many young men that very day, who drank when they ought to have abstained,

who drank foolishly, dangerously, intemperately— but who otherwise committed no offence. Why were not they, too, felons, or at least peace-breakers? Why did they not even overstep the bounds of apparent, public decorum? Because they had culture, means of high enjoyment, were restrained by fine influences and social happiness; because they were not of "the poor, the ill-taught, the illconditioned, and in a double sense, the unfortunate."

When you charge crime to drunkenness, as one of the frequent proximate causes of crime; and when you charge the sinking of many a man into deeper degradation, by abandoning hope, and abandoning himself to drinking as one of the seductive forms of sensuality, you are right. But much that I hear, leads me to dread the return to our Christian community, of that pharisaic morality which substitutes a ritual conformity, in matters not essential in nature nor by the divine law, for the heart of love and the embrace of charity.

The report of the Secretary, in 1864, avows the belief that no less than three-fourths of what is technically called crime among us, is the direct result of poverty and its attendant evils." A year later, alluding to that remark, he adds, "I did not mean to be understood that mere lack of money is