Christianity are presented in a way likely to impress an intelligent mind. Byron had no arguments to bring against Christianity; his prejudice against it was founded principally upon the faults of Christians, their superstition, their want of charity, and other abuses which are acknowledged to exist in the Christian world. He had no patience therefore to listen to a discussion, which did not approach the subjects that interested him; and such, we fear, will be the feeling of most of those for whose benefit this work was intended. They will not read labored arguments in proof of what they never seriously doubted, and they will look in vain through this work to find the grounds of their prejudices explained away. It is but just, however, to say that since the death of Dr. Kennedy, who did not live to publish this work, one of the persons who had attended his conversations without conviction, wrote to the Editor, that Lord Byron held Dr. Kennedy in the highest respect; and that he was so gentle, patient and kind, so earnest to secure the happiness of others, and so sincere in his belief and practice, that no one could help regarding the man with respect and attachment, and feeling grateful for his exertions to induce others to embrace that faith, which had so happy an effect on his own heart.

ART. VII.-Temperance.

The Reports of the American Temperance Society, and of the New York State Temperance Society.

We confess we were, for some time, among those, who doubted the possibility of effecting much good, through the agency of temperance societies. There was a seeming disproportion between the magnitude of the evil and the insignificance of the means employed to stem it. It was proposed, by the mere dint of reason, on the part of benevolent individuals, unaided by the power of the State, and at first without a very strong co-operation of public sentiment, to enter the field against one of the strongest of the physical appetites, as indulged to a great degree by that class of the community, least accessible, in all respects, to the force of reason and argument. Without allowing sufficiently for the power of the social prin

ciple, without foreseeing the thousand modes in which with a most heavenly ingenuity it has been applied in this blessed cause, we were too ready to reason from the difficulty of reclaiming the victim of intemperance in single instances to the impossibility of effecting a great comprehensive reform. We confess our error, and make it a duty to atone for it, in the only way in our power, by contributing our mite to second the efforts of the meritorious men, who earlier caught a glimpse of the practicability of this great enterprise of human improvement, and, with untiring industry and enlightened zeal, have pushed it forward to its present most gratifying and auspicious state.

;

Among the local associations, which have been formed for this work of humanity and love, we believe that it is generally admitted that the New York State Temperance Society has been perhaps the most fortunate in its organization, in its administration, and in its results. Its first annual report was presented to the Society by its Executive Committee in January, 1830; and on the 1st of September of the year just expired, there had been formed, under its auspices, the astonishing number of one thousand one hundred and fifty-eight auxiliary societies, in the State of New York, with one hundred and sixty-one thousand, seven hundred and twenty-one members being at least one in thirteen of the entire population of that State. During the past year, the New York State Temperance Society has added to its other means of impressing the public mind, and carrying on the noble work in which it has engaged, the publication of the Temperance Recorder, a monthly sheet of eight pages, exclusively devoted to this subject, furnished for fifty cents per annum to subscribers, but gratuitously distributed to a prodigious extent, by the munificence of individuals. While the political journals of the country have been carrying fierce controversy, detraction, and the aliment of almost all the bad passions, far and wide through the land, this modest sheet has been unobtrusively winning its way, upon its errand of social charity, and doing much to make atonement for the corruptions of the political press. It cannot be doubted, that such a vehicle will prove the means of carrying the principle of the temperance reform to many an individual, beyond the reach of the more elaborate publications. The thanks of the community are richly due to the Executive Committee of the New York State Temperance Society, for

the establishment of this little journal, and all their other judicious, untiring, and disinterested labors in the cause ;* and we trust we do not offend against the delicacy, which forbids comparisons where many have deserved so well, when we say, that we believe that as much, probably more, has been done by the amiable chairman of that Committee, E. C. Delavan, Esq. of Albany, in promoting this noble work, than by any other individual in the country. Ages may pass away, and mighty revolutions in human affairs take place, without presenting the recurrence of a juncture of things, by which so much real, solid good can be done to man,-body and soul, for time and for eternity, -as has been done by these temperance associations, and especially the New York State Temperance Society, and those who have performed the work in these admirable institutions.

It was really high time, that this tremendous evil should be taken in hand. The discoveries made by modern travellers and navigators have brought us acquainted with several most degraded tribes of the human family. To say nothing of some of the natives of our own forests, who wander almost naked over the interior steppes of the continent or the north-western coast, who eat dogs' flesh and rank blubber, we have accounts of some of the tribes of Southern Africa and of the Australian Islands, which cannot be read without nausea and horror. But suppose a navigator should come home and tell us, that he had discovered a new island in the Pacific Ocean, extensive, naturally fertile, blessed with all the bounties of nature,-happy climate, agreeable diversity of surface, accessible shores,-navigable rivers,-forests, hills and valleys,-and ample supply of all the productions of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, which are useful, agreeable and necessary to man. But instead of man himself, as he exists even in the most degenerate forms of humanity, the filthy Hottentot, or the cannibal warrior of New Zealand, in whom the vices and the sufferings of savage life are mixed up with some of its stoical virtues, and the exercise of the natural faculties of our race, according to their (most

* Chancellor Walworth is President of the New York State Temperance Society, and the Executive Committee consists of E. C. Delavan, John F. Bacon, John T. Norton, H. Trowbridge, Richard V. De Witt, A. Campbell, and Joshua A. Burke.

depraved it is true,) notions of what is right, useful and honorable, suppose our navigator should tell us, that this region was (not inhabited, but) infested with a most anomalous order of beings, wearing somewhat of the externals of our humanity, but strangely travestied, brutified, and demonized. Thus, suppose he should say, that this island was cumbered with three hundred thousand of these beings, whose limbs, it is true, resemble ours, but in which the muscles yield no obedience to the will, so that the hands, instead of the grasp of steel possessed by the wildest savage, feebly close on their object, with a paralytic inefficient hold;—and that when the poor being is fain to change his place, instead of planting his feet firmly on the ground, he can but reel forward a step or two, till he falls miserably prostrate. Suppose the features of his countenance, instead of being merely tatooed, (in doing which the curious skill and regularity of the process do a little to relieve its hideousness,) should seem wholly to have exchanged the variable hue and the curiously elastic texture of the human skin and integuments, for a kind of confluent leprous sheath, loathsome to behold, insensible to all agreeable impression, and living only to smart. Suppose the eye,-which nothing in mere savage manners robs of its lustre,-to be described in this degraded race as uniformly suffused with blood, or quenched in maudlin idiotic tears. Suppose the great organic functions of the frame, respiration, and digestion,-in the place of those natural processes, whose orderly co-existence and operation make up what we call health,-should be one unbroken succession of all that it is revolting to witness and agonizing and nauseous to suffer; so that food shall be but as physic in the stomach, and the blessed air of heaven be returned as a fetid pestilence from the lungs. Suppose that the intellectual, the social, and the moral condition of these beings should be described as on a level with their physical degradation, that they should pass their wretched lives a prey to the worst passions, strangers to all the endearments of our nature,-perpetrating inhuman and brutal violences on each other,-ignorant of any language but that of oaths, execrations, and blasphemies; frequently murdering each other with clubs, knives, and firebrands; and when their horrid existence closes, dying in agonies and despair.

Suppose this were the account brought home by the navigator. What would be thought of it? That he had been. guilty of an outrageous libel on humanity, if indeed beings

like these would be considered as belonging to our race; that he had contrived a senseless, because an extravagant and impossible, fiction;-that he had represented beings that could not exist; and which none but a depraved fancy would imagine.

What then, if we should say, that, with a slight change in the locality, this monstrous, revolting and impossible fiction is a chapter of authentic geography? The being we describe is the confirmed, habitual drunkard;-and all can judge whether we have too highly colored the picture. There exist, by the best calculations which can be made, more than three hundred thousand drunkards, not herded together in one island, it is true, but scattered over the face of the United States at the present moment; and there are no doubt as many more, for every twelve or thirteen millions of population, in Great Britain and the North and West of the continent of Europe. Such a race, then, as we have attempted to sketch, is not reported by returning navigators, to exist in some newly-discovered and benighted islands never trod by the foot of civilized man; and unapproached by the heralds of gospel truth. No; it exists in our own beloved, free, enlightened country. estimated by Judge Cranch, of the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, upon as good data as the nature of the case admits, that, in addition to 375,000 persons, who, upon an average, drink daily three gills of ardent spirits, and are in consequence, occasionally drunk, there are 375,000 more, who daily drink more than six gills per diem, and are confirmed drunkards. This is one for every thirty-two, in a population of twelve millions! This loathsome and wretched race is therefore actually in existence within our borders.

But they are unfortunately not concentrated in one spot, where they might be beheld at a distance, an afflictive but salutary spectacle. They are scattered all over the land. In other words, every thirty-two individuals of the United States have quartered upon them one of this degraded race. What should we think, were it made necessary, by some strange political state of things, that every thirty-two people of our twelve millions should have quartered upon them a savage from Nootka Sound, or a cannibal from the South Sea,-whom they were obliged to feed, clothe, furnish with the means of keeping up his calamitous existence, and whom they must tolerate before their eyes?