shame, fear and remorse, will be found to be prejudicial both to health and morals.

Therefore, to ensure a healthful constitution, a vigorous mind and long life, we must obey the great physical and moral laws of our being; for if we fail to do this, the inevitable consequences will be disease, misery and premature death; and it may be to leave behind us a progeny to perpetuate evil and to cast a dark shadow on our memories.

INDIVIDUAL DUTIES.

AGAINST DRUNKENNESS.

DRUNKENNESS may be said to be a species of temporary insanity, induced by the use of intoxicating ingredients, its symptoms varying according to the quantity taken; commencing in uproarious folly-proceeding to outrageous madness—and ending in maudlin stupidity. In the first stages the drunkard gradually loses the mental power for controulling his actions, in the last the muscular power for supporting his body.

Having thus divested himself of the great distinguishing characteristics of manhood, he becomes brutish in his behaviour, ungovernable in his passions, and filthy in his appearance; he has, in fact, become a grade lower than the lowest animal, being less capable of governing his actions than the meanest reptile.

Thus reduced, by his own act, to such a state of mental and bodily imbecility, he has rendered himself unfitted for the duties of husband, parent or citizen; has made himself a helpless loathsome being, to be despised by his wife, feared by his children, and condemned by all who value either rationality or reputation.

Nay, still worse! for by drowning his reason in cups of madness, the fumes of which have driven conscience from her judgment seat, he has made himself mentally powerless, and morally guideless; an unconscious instrument to be played upon by any knave, a ready tool at the hand of any villain for the perpetration of any crime.

Such is no overcharged picture of the individual, who, from thoughtlessly sipping a mind-destroying poison, has gradually acquired a craving for it beyond his controul; till at last, regardless of his self-respect, position, family or friends, he quaffs it like a grovelling idolater, being its guzzling slave, its sure and fated victim.

And when such are the effects of intoxicating drink on the individual, need we ask whether the act of drunkenness is immoral? When it thus degrades and sinks the man below the brute; leading to the destruction of his health, the ruin of his domestic peace, the wretchedness of his family, and the deterioration of society, by his neglect, his incapacity, and corrupt example.

And that it does lead to the destruction of health the proofs are numerous and notorious, it being found baneful to the whole bodily and mental structure; the prolific cause of most of the physical maladies that afflict society; the chief source from whence madness and imbecility spring.

For by unnaturally stimulating the vital action it weakens in its course every delicate vessel, overgorges and injures every organ. Its poisonous current irritating the nervous system into frenzy, leaves it weakened, depressed, apprehensive and trembling. Unfitted, in its nature, to supply the various tissues with the bland and healthful nutriment required for enabling them properly to perform their functions, it leaves the body weak and the mind injured; the memory and reasoning faculties gradually becoming impaired, the judgment and power of self-controul prostrate.

That the use of intoxicating drink tends to produce imbecility, insanity, delirium tremens, and other mental diseases, is proved from the fact that upwards of one-seventh of the lunatics of the United Kingdom alone are the victims of intoxicating drink. This too, apart from the hereditary

results of the evil, as seen in the children of the drunkard, not only producing in them a weakened constitution, and inferior brain, but even idiotcy itself; for one-half of those unfortunate beings are found to be the children of drunken and dissipated parents.

And if such are the physical and mental effects of intoxicating drink, what do we find to be the social evils that flow from it? Go we to the drunkard's home, where misery may be said to dwell, and despair to have taken up her abode. There may we witness his shivering famished children craving for food, barefooted and in rags; their cries and lamentations vainly sought to be pacified by a heart-broken wife, who, scantily clothed, starving and encompassed by misery, is apprehensive that her wretchedness may be increased, by blows and upbraidings, when the brutal being returns whom she must call her husband.

If we look abroad in society we shall find that to this debasing vice, the inordinate thirst for intoxicating drink, may be traced a larger amount of human misery, suffering and crime, than to all the collected vices of humanity.

If we enquire into the cause of that great social anomaly, which makes our philanthrophists mourn and legistors despair; of our pauperised thousands growing up in the midst of our industrial abundance, how large a proportion of this evil may we trace to the love of drink ?

If we ask the cause of the wide-spread ignorance of our population, in the midst of so many teaching, reading and preaching advantages, shall we not find it springing from parental improvidence and neglect? evils which had their origin, for the most part, in the fondness for intoxicating drink.

If we wouder at the enormous extent of crime prevailing in the midst of an orderly, peaceful and well-disposed people, we shall be told by the judges and magistrates of

the land, that by far the greater proportion of it had its origin in the love of drink.

We may further learn that drunkenness still forms the largest tax upon individual industry; and through the idleness, carelessness and incompetence, consequent upon it, sacrifices the largest amount of national wealth by waste, fire, and shipwreck.

We may also perceive that it is by the wide-spread taste for this intoxicating poison, that despots are enabled to entrap and secure their fighting tools, and political tricksters bribe their way to power; as, to gratify an insatiate appetite for drink, the heedless sot will sell himself and enslave his country.

Seeing then, that the effect of intoxicating drink is to destroy health and shorten life-to render a person less competent and less trustworthy for the performance of his duties-causing those who think themselves strong in honesty to sink in crime-converting the father into a besotted helot to corrupt his child-and causing that child to grow up ignorant, vicious and depraved; seeing that this monster vice stands so prominently in the way of all social progress and political advancement, are we not morally bound, not only to eschew the evil ourselves, but to exert every effort to remove so foul a curse from our land?

Shall our likings and our appetites, our moderation and boast of temperance, be made the plea for that indulgence which may vitiate the taste of our children, teach drinking habits to the members of our families, cause our neighbours to err by our example, keep the drunkard in countenance, and thus help to perpetuate the evil, the effects of which we so much deplore and condemn ?

Were the sober to unite in forming a circle of opprobium around the drunkard, warning others from the contact of pollution, the evil would be but of short endurance.