INEBRIATE ASYLUMS. REMARKS IN OPPOSITION TO THEM BEFORE THE COM- MITTEE ON CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS. By NATHAN C1WSBY. OK1 LOWELL. BOSTON. NATION PRESS, 21 AND 27 CORN II ILL. 18 7 1. SPEECH. Mr. Chairman, and Gentlemen of the Com- mittee :—I have come to-day before you, to throw my experience and opinions against the current of philanthropy of the present day, touching inebriates. I am aghast at the sta- tistics presented, in one form and another, before this Legislature, of the number of com- mitments of drunkards to the various Station houses in the Commonwealth—of the number of prosecutions—of the number “helped home” and of the probable number who are not seen—who secrete themselves or are pro- tected by friends. I need not detain you with figures. It is enough to say that in view of the temperance efforts for forty years, in view of the anxious legislation of Massachu- setts against the sale of intoxicating liquors, and endeavors to enforce the laws by tem- perance men,— with the schools, churches, and benevolence pressing in the same direc- tion, it is simply appalling, that on this day, there are more drunkards, more men becom- ing drunkards, and, of consequence, more suffering and disappointed hopes, than ever before witnessed in the Commonwealth. | And, strange to say, it seems to me, the sug- gestions and conclusions of reformatory' Jloards in certain particulars, will only ag-1 gravate the terrible evil. The American Association for the cure of inebriates say inebriety is a disease. The Board of Charities say it must not be punished, but reformed. And the Commissioners on Inebriate Asylums, report the building of Asylums for detention, and recovery. A re- markable triumvirate of excuses—of protec- tion and of encouragement for intemperance. Most of us have seen too many drunkards, have watched their progress, and known the influences about them to admit “constitu- tional susceptibility,” “transmission,” “in- tensity of life,” “nervous energy,” “inhar- monious organization,” “a defective condition of body and mind,” “an appetite,” as causes of the intemperance about us. We would hardly charge total depravity with it, much less admit the glorying of drunkards, “that only generous, whole-souled men become drunkards—none of your mean pinching fellows, who never spend a cent.” We have seen the victim in every family,—the forming of the appetite, the struggles of friends to prevent it, and the catastrophe, too often for us to excuse or palliate the responsibility in any such way. The fact, that so many o the lowest grade of drunkards have reformed, disproves the theory that they could not resist the “tendency,” “susceptibility,’ 4 “hereditation.” There are undoubtedly ex- ceptional cases, but the great truth, the great general fact, remains that the drunkard is self-made, progressively self-taught, and ob- stinately selfurnmolated. I regard the doc- trine of “disease” and “iusauity,” a new in- centive to intemperance, the waiver of im- prisonment, of prosecutions, a removal of criminality, and an asylum, a bounty on drunkenness. Mr. Chairman: Who are these Yankee drunkards ? They are Massachusetts men—of Pilgrim descent, trained in our schools, taught in our churches, cherished in all the blandishments of society, upheld by friend- ships, restrained by example, and infiueoced by our free institutions.—men of the highest civilization, and useful culture. The degrada- tion and loss of one such a man is no small matter—not small to himself, nor to his friends, or to society; of the foreigner, I need not now speak. Every man has a mission in this world, if he is murdered, we hang the murderer; if he is despoiled of his goods, we cause a return of them—we make his castle inviolate; if he is defamed, we restore his reputation with money amends, we honor him in life, and cherish his memory after. But if he mur- ders himself, if he despoils himself, if he throws away his castle, and degrade? and vag- abondizes himself, his mission fails; he is worse than a blank, a broken cog in the wheels of society—a disturbing element, a leper, a man so terrifically described as “living without God in the world.” I aver there is no crime like his—no sorrow like that he oc- casions, no degradation so disgusting, and no punishment so swift and awful as he meets. His first and great crime is self-destruction. He corrupts his morals, perverts his intellect, wastes his strength, and begets habits of in- dolence, improvidence and exposure of life. He becomes a burden to himself, his friends, and the public. Charities towards him are scantily and grudgingly bestowed, because so utterly undeserved and hopelessly made, as they administer strength and opportunity for further excess. Instead of making a man of himself, and becoming the pride offarnily and neighborhood, he is a lost man, a degraded outcast—an object of disgust and danger. What crime is equal to such self-destruction ? His next great crime consists in the disap pointment and grief of his friends. If he is a husband, imagine first the fears of a wife, then the tears and sorrows over his long hours of absence, then her entreaties and her remon- strances, then her mortification, hard work, poverty and suffering; children left to contend with loss of position, want of proper care and encouragement, and exposure to all the ca- lamities of the drunkard’s home. In high life such disaster brings the keenest anguish and the struggles against exposure and impending ruin are destructive alike of health and hap- piness. With the poor, the sad h’'story is one long record of unfed children, of wives abused and turned out of doors, and of desolation which can be alleviated only by the poor- house. What crime is equal to all this? If he is a son, see how the father counsels him, how he follows him to bis haunts of dissipa- tion ; what sleepless nights he spends over him! what anguish of mind and heart which finds vent only in the old words of despair: “O, my son Absalom ! my son, my son! Would God I had died for thee! O, Absalom! my sou ! my son!” What a crime is here! to de- stroy the peace, the joy, and pride of a father, and bring down his gray hairs with sorrow to grave! I might follow this strain for hours, and leave his criminality still undescribed, hut must take time only to add: all his civil obli- gations are ignored—all social and moral sen- timents are repudiated, all domestic ties and duties are unfulfilled, the meanest subject of the most reluctant charity in the world, and at last the tenant of the most dishonored the grave. Is, now, all this recklessness and waste to to be covered or protected by professional en- dorsement, that it is “disease” or “constitu- tional tendency,” or “feeble intellect?” I pro- test, our young men fall because tiny are im- patient of quiet culture, and prefer jolly good times and evening carousals to the restraints and blandishments of home, because idleuess is seductive; advice is of no account, and sub- mission or obedience is unmanly, becarse light drinks exhilarate, and strong drinks qualify conscience and responsibility. Who has not seen how the occasional drinker be- comes the moderate drinker, and then the drunkard, even under all the warnings and entreaties of friends, whose sorrow, sadness and mortification were ignored as of no conse- 5 quence, in the downward progress of the ap- petite. I forbear; it is too odious and sicken- ing to describe the course and results of drink- ing customs of the men who throw themselves away by indulgence. Disease, imbecility, va- cuity, and vice are all legitimate results. Physicians presiding over inebriate asylums may be right in calling the appetite and disor- ganization of tissues, disease. We know health and strength fail, and delirium and death follow. So the knife cuts off the arm, and it perishes, but we do not say that the knife is a disease. The remedies of the hos- pital are fit, and tend to recovery, undoubted- ly, and benevolence is justified. At this stage of my remarks, Mr. Chairman, I wish to say, that, in our temperance influ- ences and teachings, we have not pressed upon the drunkard his own individual guilt—his own self-destruction—his personal sin and shame in making himself a drunkard, his friends miserable, and the public his almoner. To induce his recovery we have approached him with pity, sympathy—relief. We have treated him as4if some accident, or calamity had befallen him beyond his control; as if a sunstroke had demented him, or a fall pro- duced paralysis, or flood or fire had impover- ished him. We have overlooked the criminali- ty of the drunkard, and spent our anathemas upon the ruinseller, as if he alone was charg- able with the destruction of the victim—as if he sprung his trap upon an unwilling subject. The awful guilt of the rumseller does not make the drinker’s guilt less. They both need a resolution of the Legislature to admit of their testifying safely. The seller gives oppor- tunity, invites, allures and seduces his victim, who, with eyes wide open to the consequences, yields willing lips. The seller is most wicked of the two; his object being gain only, while the poor victim is impelled by appetite or moved by companionship or recklessness. Let us classify the drunkards. Children of our common schools are not, and only here and there is a child fed with any thing intox- cating but not enough to form an appetite. Our young men from fifteen to twenty-five in the higher schools, in work shops learning trades, in shops as clerks, find temptations in their surroundings. Some yield and form com- panionships for sport, then festivities, and then carousals, falsehoods are then brought in to excuse and secrecy is maintained till ex- i posure waits no longer, when parents, sisters, and friends labor with them, first to change their course of life, next to keep their habits from the view of others, but long before they imagine it the public are in full possession of their dissipations. These youug men did not intend to become drunkards, of course, but instead of changing their companions and course, they allowed sad to come upon them. Then( come a class of business men who for various causes, and as variously insignificant, drink with each other, go to billiard saloons and club rooms and suppers and sports, leav- ing wives to linger out the long evenings alone, and causing tears of anxiety, entreaties and remonstrances, till life becomes a burden even if spent in luxury and wealth, or the climax comes of failure in business, of poverty, mortification and wretchedness. Now, Mr. Chairman, instead of holding out an asylum to receive them at last, I think we should throw back upon them day by day, their own responsibility and the wickedness of such a course of life and make them fear the House of Correction, where they must be shut from the world as unworthy of it, and must work and make amends as far as possible, for their failure to do the proper duties of life and for causing unhappiness to others, more terrible than can befall them by imprisonment. Sir, instead of asylums, would it not be better to build places more odious than our jails and houses of correction, to bring back again the stocks and pillory and iron cage, that the people might be terror stricken at the view and flee as for their lives, from every ap- proach of the appetite and no longer permit the evil to come upon us by carefully shut- ting the victims from sight with better living than the honest poor man can obtain by his best exertions. Sir, if we follow the present wave of philantrophy, our human sympathies will soften punishment till prisons must have parlors and hops, plum puddings and Thanks- giving turkeys. Sir, did it occur to that man in Rhode Island who gives turkeys for dinner to the prisoners in State Prisons that there were honest poor men under his eyes who had families to pro- vide for from their hard daily toil, who rich- ly deserved a turkey, but could not get it from one year’s end to another and to whom 6 such little encouragement would have been f grateful. Our poor men, under the shadows of our prisons, cannot get as good bread or coffee, or have as much beef, or work as lightly as the inmates of the prison. Poor encouragement this, to toil early and late on humble fare, while the prisoner is so tenderly cared for. What poor man buys a bath once a year, while the culprit is allowed one twice a week, or gets a pinch of salt without working hard for it? Sir, in my city of Lowell, stands a humble brick grammar school house and across the Common a splendid stone jail, with porticoes and domes and shrubs and flowers. Tell me, sir, if our school children are trained to ab- hor crime and shudder at imprisonment ? Punishment must be punishment, and it must be for high and low alike, or our lives and property will grow more and more inse- cure,—it must be certain,—technicalities, posi- tion or philanthrophy must not ward off the blow. I understand, Sir, the plan of the State Board of Charities is not to prosecute for drunkenness, or impose fine or imprisonment, but simply arrest and detain till sober, and when in the opinion of somebody, I hardly know by whom, where, or how expressed, the habit has become inveterate, without the lighter punishments he is to be kept in some reformatory institution for a term long enough to secure his reformation and by some grab judgment to have a sentence for an indefinite period. This may look well as a theory but utterly unsound in law in practice. I have an experi- ence as a magistrate, of twenty-five years have ing had more than ten thousand cases from in- temperance before me. Education and posi- tion restrain men in the upper classes but the drunkard, among the lower classes, gives full vent to his passions and there are none to de- liver but the police. I suppose the history of this matter is elsewhere in the State as in Lo- well. Our police first help men home, then shut them up for the night to sober them. Af- ter trying this restraint a few times they are brought before the court and a small fine is imposed, in hope that public exposure and loss of money may deter them in future. Af- ter that come heavier fines and in the end imprisonment in jail or House of Correction. Many feel this discipline and change. Unless men live near the drunkard’s home —unless they see the black eyes and bruised arms of wives—unless they hear the cries of children and witness a whole family in the streets at midnight, turned out by th * drunk- en lord within—they cannot judge wisely of the necessities in the case—they have faint impressions of the terror and dismay occasioned by the return of the drunkard to his home,or his expected return in the night, when aid is not at hand—when the watchman is at a distance and sleep holds hard the ears of sleeping, fa- tigued men of the neighborhood. Of course, such men are to be taken to the lock-up. But when are they to be adjudged sober so as to let them out to repeat their orgies and their crimes ? If men are arrested they must be brought into court and discharged, to pre- vent action of false imprisonment against the officer—for it is not uncommon that persons full of liquor, are as full of liberty and being rather oblivious next day, deny all oc- casion or right to be thus taken and kept for a night, and sometimes the public sustain the prisoner under the indignation of sympathizers. The watchman is charged with having a grudge against him, or that he took a proper indignation at being accosted on the street with offer of assistance home an insult and then the arrest becomes a personal affair and abuse of power. It is quite too common to abuse watchmen for arresting disturbers of the peace, or men who were too balmy to re- member what they did or said. I may as well here devote a remark or two upon the broad platform taken by the asylum Superintendents and the Board of Charities in dealing with the drunkard with only reforma- tory measures. He is to be taken to their places of seclusion—is to have medical remedies, the mental and physical energies are to be restor- ed to theii normal condition—social comforts and bland encouragements are to win him back to sobriety and manhood. This is all very well. But what then ? Is he a reformed man ? He has been a total abstinent there— liquor is out of him and there is no grog-shop to arouse the sleeping lion in his bosom or old companions to incite him away. But is he reformedf Dr. Day has told us here how diffi- cult the men find it to hold fast to their in- egrity when they return to the field of their old temptations and how the paroxysms of appetite overwhelm them. The history of the men at the Washingtonian Home, as given by the Superintendent and Mr. Potter, at your fbr- 7 mer hearing, requiring untiring and persis- tent labor on their part, might well have sur- prised us, that men for whom so much had been done should not stand. Sir, the words in our statute are simply farcical though long there and long acted on; that Commissioners may discharge from the House of Correction, common drunkards when they are satisfied the “ person has re- formed and desires to return to a sober life.” No doubt the prisoner desires to return to a sober life—but that he has reformed is sim- ply that he has been shut up where he could not get any liquor and where no temptations were known. Reformation, ‘‘ cure ” as Dr. Day says, is when the man can resist tempta- tion and abhor the drunkard’s drink, after he is allowed his freedom. Sir, let us look at the number of men to be sent to the proposed asylum. Our friend here, Mr. Yibbert, proposes to have all sent and kept till reformed, in county asylums and the cost of committing and keeping them to be charged to the cities and towns from which they were sent, with a view to make it so ex- pensive to the people that they would put down their grog-shops. Our Commissioners on Inebriate Asylums rec- ommend two acts, one to establish an asylum at individual expense for a class of men who will voluntarily resort to it for reformation, and the other to build an asylum at the pub- lic expense, with capacity to hold fifty drunk- ards. These two institutions, if established, might take one hundred, while Mr. Vibbert’s plan must require accommodations for ten to twenty thousand. There are said to be thir- ty-four thousand vagrants in the Common- wealth, and as there were thirty thousand station lodgers in Boston last year, and as there were about ten thousand drunkards committed to the various prisons, I think there is a prospect of some twenty thousand candidates, beside all who paid fines, for the county asylums ! Well, sir, and Gentlemen, allow me to say it is simply preposterous, to select one hundred out of ten thousand, and to undertake to build asylums for twenty thou- sand is monstrous. Are the sober men of this Commonwealth to meet such enormous expenses in addition to the costs of crime and pauperism, already chargeable to intemper- ance ? Are the labors and sacrifices of tem- perance men to aid in building palaces for drunkards who have spurned their warnings and entreaties to reform, and are men to be employed to take care of them, amuse them, and play with them, while their families are left behind to toil hard and live on the most stinted charity ? Sir, do more for the family and less for the drunkard. Let our pity fall on the innocent sufferer rather than on the guilty. Let me ask, where are these asylums to be built? I remember in the palmy days of the Prison Discipline Society, Eev. Louis Dwight, the agent, in visiting the prisons found so many drunkards under his eye, he formed the very kind idea that they could be gathered together aud reformed. So he bought a large farm in his own town of Stockbridge, for a good home for them. As soon as the Stock- bridge people heard of it, they protested against having a lot of drunkards brought into their model town, to be fed and reformed. They didn’t want such neighbors, such people ; they would not have the danger, the poverty or ob- loquy of becoming a great home for such men, and the farm was after some years re-sold. What towns will crave the honor ? Do land- holders in the vicinity of our almshouses ad- mire their neighbors? What say the Bing- hampton people? If all are not taken, where is the dividing line, and who is to grant and administer this great patronage ? Are friends ? or courts ? or officers who find them ? Shall the Board of Charities manage them as they do children under sixteen years of age, or shall there be a commission, as proposed by Dr. Day, to se- lect them, as the most promising ? or most de- graded ? the old or the young ? If all are to be taken, the magnitude of the load will prevent its accomplishment ; if only a few, complaint and discontent will fill the Commonwealth. Every neighborhood will desire to send off their subjects ; and too many people, who have friends they wish to put under the trial of reformation, or shut up out of sight under a long sentence, will claim this favor. Shall the sons of the rich or of the poor only be taken, or only those who beat, their wives, or wont work to feed them? Shall one suite of rooms and a choice table be given to great men and another for the low ? Shall there be no distinction ; are white, black, native and foreign to be thrown into a common hotch-potch ? How are they to spend their time ? in play or work ? If they are to work, what work is there for a thousand men in one place? and 8 for men who don't like to work? What trades what manufactures can be found for them? Perhaps, sir, an asylum at either end of the Hoosac tunnel, so as to compel the in- mates to dig the hole through the mountain, would answer for the first years, and I am inclined to think would secuie a reformation in some of them, or pretty effectually prevent them from a second conviction. Making brushes lias failed to do it. Perhaps asylums around the Back Bay lands, or at the Quincy Ledges would afford labor. The value of their labor, however, may well be expressed in the old adage of, “skinning flints.” Sir, in my judgment, the current of philan- thropy towards criminals is uncalled for, and is seriously objectionable and dangerous. As civilization advances, every man should find increasing encouragement to virtue, and in- creasing abhorrence of crime. If crimes are known to increase with civilization, may not the tendency of civilization to philanthropy tend to the increase of crime by softening its penalties ? Crime not only involves injury to individu- als, but its especial character comes from in- jury to the State. Prosecutions of criminals are in the name of the King, or Common- wealth, because there is a violation of public rights or duties; the public is damnified; ever- body is injured by every infraction of public law. Society suffers; criminals must suffer the penalties of the law, and why should one man, or a society of men, suspend or mitigate the punishment when the well being of all the people is involved ? Security ofthe whole consists in certainty and full punishment. But the philauthropy of the day softens, mitigates, comforts—cherishes. It is no wonder that crimes increase when of- fenders find many chances of escape and sym- pathy to befriend them when caught. We need more Blackstone and less Howardism. We need philanthropy, and favor and protec- tion toward the virtuous, and less toward the vicious. Sir, the drunkard, and the man who takes a solitary drink, to some extent,meets his reproof instanter. God not only makes the awful decla- ration that the drunkard shall not inherit the kingdom of God, but warns men by following the first and every successive inebriation with his sudden and terrific punishment, confusion of intellect and languor of muscle, reeling and falling; then stupefaction and paralysis; then indolence, ending in poverty. The mark is as indelible as Cain’s. Other crimes are not thus visited upon the perpetrator; other crim- inals may remain without suspicion, may run or hide, or fail of punishment for want of evidence; but when man wrongs himself, his own body, the temple of his soul, God re- bukes him by instant pain, suffering, demoral- ization of body and mind He is the High Court to administer his own penalties upon the man who defiles himself, made in God’s own image. In this hand-to-hand fight with God, who wonders that men grow worse and worse, to the dreadful end? Who wonders that men come to delirium tremens and sui- cide, to vagrancy and death? How far shall we excuse and mitigate where God is so se- vere? Let me ask you, gentlemen, what society suffers from intemperance ? See the wretched men themselves—what a loss of service to the State! see the poverty and wretchedness of the drunkard’s family! see the unhappiness of those families where a son is lost or a fa- ther fails! what brawls and disturbances in the streets! what dangers in all the departments of life and business by their incompetency and recklessness! what cost in pauperism and crime! Call to mind, too, the frightful statis- tics of intemperance. More than twenty-five hundred places in Boston for selling liquor and nearly twenty thousands arrests for drunkenness. Drunkenness increasing over population at the rate of 175 to 53! Gentlemen? where are we drifting ? What has the State done in this matter ?— Are the men who have in charge the well-be- ing of the people of the State alive to this substraction of our productive power and the vice and cost of intemperance ? Are thirty thousand drunkards and as many vagabonds and half as many paupers and quarter as many criminals of other types, to create no alarm? Why not give this matter into the hands of a Commission to investigate —to collect facts and suggest remedies ? We have a Board of Education, Board of Charities, Board of Agriculture, Rail-Road Commission- ers, Bank Commissioners, Insurance Commis- sioners and Commissioners of Back-Bay lands. We have Boards of Health to protect us from contagion and when our cattle were diseased we appointed men to visit infested herds, with authority to kill. When fish failed us in coun- try waters, men were charged with building 9 fish ways and establishing spawning beds. But what has been done to allay or lessen, or remove this chiefest of all evils by the State ? Alas! alas! The State is allowing more free- dom of sale, with a diminished constabulary to impose the restraint we have, and is, con- sidering the reports of public Boards who recommend new plasters for the old sore! I know the histor y of the cause of temper ance. When Edwards, and Hewett, and Kit- tredge took the field, backed by Tappan, Judge Hubbard, Homes and Homer, Sargent, and others too numerous to mention—but mostly Massachuetts men—I was with them. We have held meetings, taken pledges, with- held licenses, prosecuted rumsellers, obtain- ed prohibitory laws and used a constabulary. Almost every year the friends of temperance have been knocking at these Halls of Legisla- tion for the strong arm of the State, as the controversy between mere benevolence and appetite, and interest, has been too onerous and long, and has become almost hopeless. Only by severest pressure have the friends of temperance been abie to gain increa ed pow- er of law from the legislature, and thrice when a mass of cases have been pending in the courts ready to fall upon the rumsellers with fines and imprisonment, some new en- actment relieved those rumsellers and allowed them to go free. Legislation favoring the cause of temperance, has been grudgingly and spasmodically given and then taken back again. Tappan still lives, Delavan is just gone. But who is there among us to write Tem- perance tales like Sargent’s “ Mother's Gold lting,” or give money and service as did Del- avan?—who, again to fill the place of the elo- quent Pierpont; or battle for the right as has Jewett? Gentlemen, temperance men are weary somewhat disorganized and help and progress must soon come or the rum power and drink- ing habits will bring Diagues upon us worse than those of the frogs and locusts in Phara- oh’s time. If the temperance cause is ignored by this Legislature, if preventive influences are not put forth, if the law is made null and void, or the Constabulary starved, if our thoughts are all to be turned to reformatory instead of preventive measures and any act shall point to submission to the rum power, I do not hesitate to say that I believe temperance men will soon be compelled to say, “ they are joined to their idols, let them alone” every neighborhood must then have an asy- lum and every grog-shop will become a pan- demonium. Dr. Day, Mr. Chairman, when asked what plan he had in view, for the management of drunkards by the State for its Asylums, answered, he had none definitely matured, but said perhaps there should be Commission- ers appointed to investigate and originate measures. Sir, how many other Boards are to be established, to mitigate the sorrows and conceal the burdens of intemperance with- out grappling the evil itself. Establish, Sir, a commission charged with the high duty of finding out the causes of intemperance and of applying preventives. Look back to the terror of the people, when the cholera was here, how the Doctors were sent to the earliest victims in our Southern cities to learn the symptoms, the character of the persons seized, and the localities for cleanliness! What public and local excitement there was! how all sources of filth were brought to light! all gutters cleaned, and back yards scraped, and cellars whitewashed! and yet there were few deaths. Shall we take less thought of an alcoholic pestilence which kills, by thou- sands? Again, when the cattle disease ap- peared, the farmers cried out for remedies and pieventives. Commissioners were ap- pointed, and laws enacted by which imported cattle were seized and huddled together and slaughtered, as if the world was coming to an end. And, Sir, if the State will give us live Commissioners, with powers corresponding to the evil, we shall soon be told by authority, and not by the one idea temperance men, “fanatics,” how, and wherefore it is that we have thirty-four thousand vagabonds, and ten thousand drunkards in prisons, and as many more “helped home,” and a hundred thousand others “exposed,” by daily increasing habits, with the consequent pauperism, to the amount of half a million. It is reported, Sir, that there were two thousand three hundred deaths from in- temperance last year in this Commonwealth, and probably as many more incidentally caused by it. And shall we chase the cattle disease, and authorize men all over the Com- monwealth to see that horses are not whipped, and leave rum-shops to kill 2,:i00 men per year and send home thousands of demented biutalmen every night to flog their wives, and turn their children into the streets ? “How much better is a man than a sheep?” Sir, let this new Board have power to bar- ricade all grog shops, and cracker-and-salt-fish saloons, all gambling houses, and club rooms all infected places, and pour into the nearest cesspool everything that makes drunk come, Let them put the men within into the pest house, to drink worm wood tea and eat soups, or chain them to the nearest lamp-post, till sober. The Commonwealth cannot afford to put off this all-important question of in- temperance. We must have remedies to sub- due the disease. Is there no alarm, that in- temperance increases over our population as 175 to 53, and that 2,300 drunkards’ graves are filled annually? and that we have so many vagabonds, and paupers among us ? Gentle- men, give us the Commissioners I suggest, and some of your other Commissioners will soon be relieved of their labors. Sir, another field of inquiry lor such Com- missions would be found in finding out, and telling us who are the rum-sellers in this Commonwealth, and trace the business from the distillery to the lowest rum-hole, in the dirtiest cellar. Let them show us the profits of the trade, how grains of one cent value run up to twenty cents, and how men of in- dustrious habits become idle and vicious; ex- pose to the world the vile and damnable con- coctions made up by the trade, as mitrailleurs arms, to kill in every direction, and all sorts of customers—tell us how many Yankees, and how many coming from other lands are get- ting rich by making others poor, and drunken. Count up the jugs carried round in red Marias at the last end of the trade, to supply daily the'publican who cannot be trusted be- yond a day. Let them throw a little calcium light, into those holes and report the men and women, and children even, found there play- ing cards, fooling and fighting—who they are, and what becomes of them. Sir, this may seem to some chimerical, but wise men should find an antidote. Let the evil be exposed by competent authority. Let us see who gets all the money in the trade, as well as who be- come the victims of it. Sir, such facts will make honest men loathe the man who drinks, that he is such a fool and sinner, and abhor the man who sells because, for the love of gain, he makes him such. Our law, Sir, is only a half way covenant and the constabulary have been threatened with starvation if they did what they were appointed to do. Will not the State regard 2,- 300 drunkard’s graves per year, 10,000 commit- ed to prisons, 10,000 sobered off in the lockups of police stations, 34,000 vagabonds and all the pauperism and crime reported to this General Couit, of more importance in their investiga- tions than all the railroads, or Back Bay lands, or cattle disease, or preservation of fish, or birds ? Better forego your proposed new re- sources till you check up your losses. Until the State puts forth its strong arm to prohibit the sale and confiscate liquor and declare out- lawry against the man who sells, and stands up to the work with all necessary police and judicial power, we labor in vain; until then our charities will cover up the evil, our sym- pathies will soften the penalties, and death and destruction will ere long overwhelm us. Gentlemen, I am not a fanatic, nor have I a monomania upon temperance, but I am hor. rifled at the progress of intemperance; I am disgusted at the bland way of excusing it by calling it a“disease” and “deserves no punish- ment,” and I am tired of the philanthrophy which so kindly alleviates suffering without resort to the better philanthrophy which would prevent it. The wheels of this Jugger- naut must be stopped that its devotees may no longer be crushed to death. While we have two temperance men to one drunkard and while occasional and moderate drinkers are halting between two opinions, let us strike for the life of the State, for its peace and pros- perity . Let our legislators say, we have tem- porized long enough—like a pendulum at the call of temperance men, restraining the sale, and at the clamor of the rum interest re- tracing our steps. Let them say the sale shall cease ; liquor shops shall be closed; we will reconstruct society and disband Klu Klux organizations. It is of very lit- tle use to form new temperance societies and preach moral suasion, expecting to reach men who drink, or men who sell. The bat- tle has been going on for forty years between the temperance hosts and rum, and it may drag along as many more and the miserable fruits, of liquor drinking still appear in every family and fill all our penitentiaries and almshouses. Mark my words, Sir, nothing short of the strong, honest, persistent power of the State can do it. Gentlemen, there is no evil to be compared 11 to this. It causes more unhappiness in the domestic circle, more sickness, a heavier pres- sure upon all our prosperities; a greater in- crease of public burdens ; more crimes and pauperism : more disappointment and sorrow, than comes from any other source, and yet the call upon our Legislature is to alleviate and not prevent. The law and constabulary, as Gov. Andrew left them, would have brought relief. But the one was submissively altered, and the other has been ridiculed, de- famed, lessened and starved. The Legislature must grapple the rumseller and stand up to the fight. Politicians must appreciate our condition, and put “brakes” upon this engine of ruin, and thus prevent further calls for charitable appropriations. The trade is an outrage—viciousness of the most deplorable kind. With full knowledge of its disastrous influence, the dealer in rum pushes on from love of money only. He has not the slightest apology in any present or prospective good. He might as well lay in ambush, and use a re- volver upon every passer-by. When we look at his business and at his victims, he should be held in abhorrence of all men who love our institutions, and should have the strongest anathemas of the law against him, and con- stables enough after him to put the law in force. Don’t talk about mercy, respect, or kindliness for him who shows none to others. Gentlemen, why all this anxiety and expen- diture about the care and reformation of drunkards, about Washingtonian Homes, In- ebriate Asylums, about restraints and sympa- thies, kindness and pity? Stop the sale and all is done in one short quarter of a year ; without sales, without the drinking of liquor, health and joy will spring up in every dwelling ; parents, wives, children, will shout for joy ; and in a year, lands will bring forlh their increase, peace and prosperity will re- turn to the drunkard’s home, and the gates of our almshouses will begin to rust upon their hinges. Why all this “ado about nothing ?” The State has only to wheel about, change her course, protect the people and not the rumseller; pity the drunkard less and his fam- ily more; only to act like men approaching the Falls of Niagara who do not cast anchor and try to find bottom in the middle of the mighty stream, but cast about and pull every oar for the shore, and cry for help, that every man, woman, and child may run to deliver. Gentlemen, the intense pressure of the liq- uor trade and the sustaining appetite of drinking men are too stro’ g for all the moral suasion, for all the Temperance Societies, Alli- ances, Good Templars. Sons of Temperarce, and Rechabites, we can bring to bear upon this enormous evil. Nothing, let me re- peat, nothing short of the strongest arm of the State with laws and executive force that shall admit neither change nor re- lief, will bring us to the blessed consummation of our wishes in this great matter. Let us not wait till the earth shall quake with our impurities, or a tornado of vice shall sweep away our schools and churches, and there be none to deliver. Let not the words of the Prophet rest upon us, who were planted and have been nourished, “That they might be unto Me a people, and for a name, and for a praise, and for a glory, but they would not hear. Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, every bottle shall be filled with wine. Behold, I will fill all the inhabitants of this land, even the lyings that sit on the throne, and the priests and the prophets, and all the inhabitants with drunkenness, and I will dash them one against another. I will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy them.” Mr. Commissioner WVlls says the daily producing power of the country is 900,000 gal- lons of spirit of which Massachusetts contrib- utes 13, 432. In New York city, 15,000 per- sons are employed in the wholesale and retail sales of liquors, according to the Tribune, amounting to $38,000,000. The Chicago grog shops are said to use 1,000,000 gallons of whiskey a year. The whole cost to the peo- ple at retail prices is computed at $15,000,000. The net profit to the trade, of $10,000,000. Let me repeat the Boston figures: 18,698 ar- rests last year, 2,500 places for sale of liquor with 34,000 vagrants in the State and 30,000 lodgers in Boston and 54,000 persons who have received aid from the State. Gentlemen, it is frightful to look into our future with such a power to destroy. It is time for good men, for benevolent men, for men of the State and of the Nation to awake and resist this de- solation with instant and inflexible action. Gentlemen, I am done. I enter my protest against all sales of intoxicating drinks, against the rumseller and against the drunkard. I would make the first a hissing and a by-word, to be despised of men and hated of children, 12 and upon the last I would bestow the most stinted charity and would not lighten his sor- row, or responsibility, by telling him he had a “constitutional defect” or “tendency” or “disease,” or “ought not to be punished.” Tie must be restrained, in mercy to all about him, he must be punished until we can stop the sale of liquor. I am not to be charged with inhumanity or want of kindness and charity. First stop the contagion, then care for the sick. Do not, I pray you, en- dorse the doctrines in the reports which lay upon your table and build asylums to per- petuate and increase our sot rows in this re- gard when4,he right law and the competent executive force could and would remove the ne- cessity for asylums, or prisons, or almshouses. Take not the wages of honest, sober men to build palaces for men who will drink and won’t work; discourage not temperance men by any doubtful action here. I pray you to take heed to the volcano which is rumbling beneath you and which threatens to destroy the people and institutions yon are charged to cherish and perpetuate. Gentlemen, in view of the wretchedness brought upon us from the sale and use of intox- icating liquors, without boasting, or thanking God that I am not like other men, in the words of Goveuor Andrew, l may be allowed to say, “that I know not what record of sins there may be against me in another world, but I do know, I have not been so mean” as to sell, or drink, rum—I have not held the bot- tle to my neighbor’s lips, or looked upon the wine when it was red—1 have not caused a wife to moisten her pillow with anxiety, or entreaties at my irregularities, or preferred the club room, or drinking saloon to her soci- ety, the wit of the barroom to the prattle of children—I have not made parents, or children, or friends ashamed of me from in- temperance; nor do I fear, when the dead come to judgment, any poor drunkard will bear my label, and I am here to-day to avoid the terse language of our Saviour, “When in prison”—in the power of the rumseller—“ye visited me not.”