The bases of the temperance reform: an exposition and appeal./ With replies to numerous objections. By Rev. Dawson Burns.

Dcstruici'-ec -fi itcilc.cs of Stronwg I)inle. 23
Taking the drinking system collectively, i.e., the production, circulation, and consumption of alcoholic beverages, we may sum up its effects under tlhe twofold division of DESTRUCTIVE and OBSTRUCTIVE:
I. DESTRUCTIVE in the following respects:
(I.) Economicaly, by wasting the alimentary products
of the earth, by causing destruction and theft of property, by weakening the power and desire of productive
labor, by entailing loss on commercial and mercantile
undertakings, by eating up savings and capital, and by
creating three-quarters of the national poverty and criminality, and much of the disease, all of which become a
necessary and oppressive burden upon society.
(2.) Piysically, by engendering and aggravating bodily
ailments which impair the corporeal stamina both of the
present and future generations, raising the national rate
of mortality, inflicting intense suffering, particularly on
children, and giving to epidemical disorders a fatality
they would not otherwise exert. Mental diseases dependent on congenital malady or physical malformation are
also thus fearfully increased.
(3.) Inftelleclzial,y, by indisposing to thoughit, study, and
the acquisition of useful knowledge-by the deterioration
and perversion of the mental powers -by rendering
adults brutish and animalized, by disabling and disinclining parents from supplying their children with school
instruction, and by reducing many intelligent and educated persons to a sensual state, till " the light that is in
them becomes darkness," and not unfrequently the reason is lost beyond recall.*
Rev. Sydney Smith has amusingly described, in letters to his daughter, Lady
Holland, his improvement in spirits by abstinence from wine.
* Callimachus of old sang that "wine shakes all the reason out of men";
and Butler, in his poem on" Drunkenness," puts this quaintly, where he says
that "man with raging drink inflamed " " Lays by his reason in his bowls, I
As Turks arc said to do their souls,'