towns, without any reason to be given for the fashion, but that it had been introduced by some popular examples. With this observation upon the spreading quality of drunkenness, let us connect a remark which belongs to the several evil effects above recited. The consequences of a vice, like the symptoms of a disease, though they be all enumerated in the description, seldom all meet in the same subject. In the instance under consideration, the age and temperature of one drunkard may have little to fear from inflammations of lust or anger; the fortune of a second may not be injured by the expense; a third may have no family to be disquieted by his irregularities; and a fourth may possess a constitution fortified against the poison of strong liquors. But if, as we always ought to do, we comprehend within the consequences of our conduct the mischief and tendency of the example, the above circumstances, however fortunate for the individual, will be found to vary the guilt of his intemperance less, probably, than he supposes. Although the waste of time and money may be of small importance to you, it may be of the utmost to some one or other whom your society corrupts. Repeated or long continued excesses, which hurt not your health, may be fatal to your companion. Although you have neither wife, nor child, nor parent, to lament your absence from home, or expect your return to it with terror, other families, whose husbands and fathers have been invited to share in your ebriety, or encour aged to imitate it, may justly lay their misery or ruin at your door. This will hold good, whether the person seduced be seduced immediately by you, or the vice be propagated from you to him through several intermediate examples. A moralist must assemble all these considerations, to judge truly of a vice, which usually meets with milder names and more indulgence than it deserves. I omit those outrages upon one another, and upon the peace and safety of the neighbourhood, in which drunken revels often end; and also those deleterious and maniacal effects which strong liquors produce upon particular constitutions; because, in gene ral propositions concerning drunkenness, no consequences should be included, but what are constant enough to be generally expected. Drunkenness is repeatedly forbidden by St. Paul : "Be not "drunk with wine, wherein is excess.' "Let us walk honest"ly as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness." "Be not "deceived neither fornicators, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor "extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God." Eph. v. 18; Rom. xiii. 13; 1 Cor. vi. 9, 10. The same apostle likewise condemns drunkenness, as peculiarly inconsistent with the Christian profession :-"They that be drunken, are drunken in the night but let us who are of the day, be sober." 1 Thess. v. 7, 8. We are not concerned with the argument; the words amount to a prohibition of drunkenness; and the authority is conclusive. It is a question of some importance, how far drunkenness is an excuse for the crimes which the drunken person commits. In t solution of this question, we will first suppose the drunken person to be altogether deprived of moral agency, that is to say of all reflection and foresight. In this condition, it is evident that be is no more capable of guilt than a madınan ; although, like him, he may be extremely mischievous. The only guilt with which he is chargeable, was incurred at the time when he voluntarily brought himself into this situation. And as every man is responsible for the consequences which he foresaw, or might have foreseen, and for no other, this guilt will be in proportion to the probability of such consequences ensuing. From which principle results the following rule, viz. that the guilt of any action in a drunken man bears the same proportion to the guilt of the like action in a sober man, that the probability of its being the consequence of drunkenness bears to absolute certainty. By virtue of this rule, those vices which are the known effects of drunkenness, either in general, or upon particular constitutions, are, in all, or in men of such constitutions, nearly as criminal as if committed with all their faculties and senses about them. If the privation of reason be only partial, the guilt will be of a mixed nature. For so much of his self-government as the drunkard retains, he is as responsible then as at any other time. He is entitled to no abatement beyond the strict proportion in which his moral faculties are impaired. Now I call the guilt of the crime, if a sober man had committed it, the whole guilt. A person in the condition we describe, incurs part of this at the instant of perpetration; and by bringing himself into this condition, he incured such a fraction of the remaining part, as the danger of this consequence was of an integral certainty. For the sake of illustration, we are at liberty to suppose, that a man loses half his moral faculties by drunkenness this leaving bim but half his responsibility, he incurs, when he commits the action, half of the whole guilt. We will also suppose, that it was known beforehand that it was an even chance, or half a certainty, that this crime would follow his getting drunk. This makes him chargeable with half the remainder; so that, altogether, he is responsible in three-fourths of the guilt which a sober man would have incurred by the same action. I do not mean that any real case can be reduced to numbers, or the calculation made with arithmetical precision; but these are the principles, and this the rule, by which our general admeasurement of the guilt of such offences should be regulated. The appetite for intoxicating liqours appears to me to be almost always acquired. One proof of which is, that it is apt to return only at particular times and places; as after dinner, in the evening, on the market-day, at the market-town, in such a company, at such a tavern. And this may be the reason that, if a habit of drunkenness be ever overcome, it is upon some change of place, situation, company, or profession. A man sunk deep in a habit of drunkenness will, upon such occasions as these, when he finds himself loosened from the associations which held him fast, sometimes make a plunge and get out. In a matter of such great importance, it is well worth while, where it is tolerably convenient, to change our habitation and society, for the sake of the experiment. Habits of drunkenness commonly take their rise either from a fondness for, and connexion with, some company, or some companion, already addicted to this practice; which affords an almost irresistible invitation to take a share in the indulgences which those about us are enjoying with so much apparent relish and delight; or from want of regular employment, which is sure to let in many superfluous cravings, and customs, and often this amongst the rest; or, lastly, from grief, or fatigue, both which strongly solicit that relief which inebriating liquors administer for the present, and furnish a specious excuse for complying with the inclination. But the habit, when once set in, : is continued by different motives from those to which it owes its origin. Persons addicted to excessive drinking, suffer, in the intervals of sobriety, and near the return of their accustomed indulgence, a faintness and oppression circa præcordia, which it exceeds the ordinary patience of human nature to endure. This is usually relieved for a short time by a repetition of the same excess; and to this relief, as to the removal of every longcontinued pain, they who have once experienced it, are urged almost beyond the power of resistance. This is not all as the liquor loses its stimulus, the dose must be increased, to reach the same pitch of elevation, or ease; which increase proportionably accelerates the progress of all the maladies that drunkenness brings on. Whoever reflects upon the violence of the craving in the advanced stages of the habit, and the fatal termination to which the gratification of it leads, will, the moment he perceives the least tendency in himself of a growing inclination to intemperance, collect his resolution to this point; or (what perhaps he will find his best security) arm himself with some peremptory rule, as to the times and quantity of his indulgences. I own myself a friend to the laying down of rules to ourselves of this sort, and rigidly abiding by them. They may be exclaimed against as stiff, but they are often salutary. Indefinite resolutions of abstemiousness are apt to yield to extraordinary occasion; and extraordinary occasions to occur per petually. Whereas, the stricter the rule is, the more tenacious we grow of it and many a man will abstain rather than break his rule, who would not easily be brought to exercise the same mortification from higher motives. Not to mention, that when our rule is once known, we are provided with an answer to every importunity. There is a difference, no doubt, between convivial intemperance, and that solitary sottishness which waits neither for company nor invitation. But the one, I am afraid, commonly ends in the other; and this last is the baseşt degradation to which the faculties and dignity of human nature can be reduced. CHAPTER III. SUICIDE. THERE is no subject in morality in which the consideration of general consequences is more necessary than in this of suicide. Particular and extreme cases of suicide may be feigned and may happen, of which it would be difficult to assign the particular harm, or demonstrate from that consideration alone the guilt; and these cases have chiefly occasioned confusion and doubtfulness in the question; albeit this is no more than what is sometimes true of the most acknowledged vices. I could propose many possible cases even of murder, which, if they were detached from the general rule, and governed by their own particular consequences alone, it would be no easy undertaking to prove criminal. :- The true question in the argument is no other than this :May every man who pleases to destroy his life, innocently do so? Twist, limit, and distinguish the subject as you can, it will come at last to this question. For, shall we say, that we are then only at liberty to commit |