that reared them have turned to dust, and all this by the regency of that fine intellectual principle which sits modestly concealed behind its veil of clay, and moves its subject. organs, I find no words to express my admiration of the union of mind and matter by which these miracles are wrought. Who can thus contemplate the wonder, the beauty, the vast utility, the benevolence, the indescribable fitness of this organization, and not feel that this vice of intemperance, which aims directly to destroy it, is the arch-abomination of our natures; tending not merely to create a conflict between the nicely adjusted principles, but to assure the triumph of that which is low, base, sensual, and earthly, over the heavenly and pure; to convert this so curiously organized frame into a disordered, crazy machine, and to drag down the soul to the slavery of grovelling lusts?

us

In the first place, there is the shameful abuse of the bounties of Providence, which, after making the substantial provision for the supply of our daily wants, after spreading out the earth, with its vegetable stores, as a great table for our nutriment, and appointing the inferior animals for our solid food, was pleased, as it would seem, of mere grace and favor, to add unnumbered cordial spirits to gratify and cheer sweet waters and lively spices; to fill the fibres of the cane with its luscious sirups, the clusters of the vine with its cooling juices, and a hundred aromatic leaves, berries, and fruits, with their refreshing and reviving essences; and even to infuse into the poppy an anodyne against the sharpest pains our frail flesh is heir to, I say, it is the first aggravation of the sin of intemperance, that it seizes on all these kind and bountiful provisions, and turns them into a source, not of comfort and health, but of excess; indecently revelling at the modest banquet of nature, shamefully surfeiting at the sober table of Providence, and converting every thing that has a life and power, alike the exhilarating and the soothing, the stimulant and the opiate, into one accursed poison.

Next come the ravages of this all-destroying vice on the health of its victims. You see them resolved, as it were, to anticipate the corruption of their natures. They cannot wait

to get sick and die. They think the worm is slow in his approach and sluggish at his work. They wish to reconvert the dust, before their hour comes, into its primitive deformity and pollution. My friend, who spoke before me, (Dr Pierson,) called it a partial death. I would rather call it a double death, by which they drag about with them, above the grave, a mass of diseased, decaying, aching clay. They will not only commit suicide, but do it in such a way as to be the witnesses and conscious victims of the cruel process of selfmurder; doing it by degrees, by inches; quenching the sight, benumbing the brain, laying down the arm of industry to be cut off; and changing a fair, healthy, robust frame for a shrinking, suffering, living corpse, with nothing of vitality but the power of suffering, and with every thing of death but its peace.

Then follows the wreck of property, the great object of worldly pursuit; the temporal ruin, which comes, like an avenging angel, to waste the substance of the intemperate; which crosses their threshold, commissioned, as it were, to plague them with all the horrors of a ruined fortune and blasted prospect; and passes before their astonished sight, in the dread array of affairs perplexed, debts accumulated, substance squandered, honor tainted, wife, children cast out upon the mercy of the world, and he who should have been their guardian and protector dependent for his unearned daily bread on those to whom he is a burden and a curse.

Bad as all this is, much as it is, it is neither the greatest nor the worst part of the aggravations of the crime of intemperance. It produces consequences of still more awful moment. It first exasperates the passions, and then takes off from them the restraints of the reason and will; maddens and then unchains the tiger, ravening for blood; tramples all the intellectual and moral man under the feet of the stimulated clay; lays the understanding, the kind affections, and the conscience in the same grave with prosperity and health; and having killed the body, kills the soul!

Such, faintly described, is the vice of intemperance. Such it still exists in our land; checked, and, as we hope, declin

ing, but still prevailing to a degree which invites all our zea for its effectual suppression. Such as I have described it, it exists, I fear, in every city, in every town, in every village in our country. Such and so formidable is its power. But belief that an antagonist principle of equal

Public opinion, in Men, that agree in

I rejoice in the power has been brought into the field. all its strength, is enlisted against it. nothing else, unite in this. Religious divisions are healed and party feuds forgotten in this good cause. Individuals and societies, private citizens and the government, have joined in waging war against intemperance; and, above all, the press the great engine of reform is thundering, with all its artillery, against it. It is a moment of great interest, and also of considerable delicacy. That period in a moral reform in which a great evil, that has long passed comparatively unquestioned, is overtaken by a sudden bound of public opinion, is somewhat critical. Individuals, as honest as their neighbors, are surprised in pursuits and practices sanctioned by the former standard of moral sentiment, but below the mark of the reform. Tenderness and delicacy are necessary to prevent such persons, by mistaken pride of character, from being made enemies of the cause. In our denunciations of the evil, we must take care not to include those whom a little prudence might bring into cordial coöperation with us in its suppression. Let us, sir, mingle discretion with our zeal; and the greater will be our success in this pure and noble enterprise.

THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR THE SCHOOL OF THE REVOLUTION.*

FELLOW-CITIZENS :

I HAVE accepted, with great cheerfulness, the invitation with which you have honored me, to address you on this occasion. The citizens of Worcester did not wait to receive a second call, before they hastened to the relief of the citizens of Middlesex, in the times that tried men's souls. I should feel myself degenerate and unworthy, could I hesitate to come, and, in my humble measure, assist you in commemorating those exploits which your fathers so promptly and so nobly aided our fathers in achieving.

Apprised by your committee that the invitation which has brought me hither was given on behalf of the citizens of Worcester, without distinction of party, I can truly say that it is also, in this respect, most congenial to my feelings. I have several times had occasion to address my fellow-citizens on the fourth of July; and sometimes at periods when the party excitement-now so happily, in a great measure, allayed -has been at its height; and when custom and public sentiment would have borne me out in seizing the opportunity of inculcating the political views of those on whose behalf I spoke. But of no such opportunity have I ever availed myself. I have never failed, as far as it was in my power, to lead the minds of those whom I have had the honor to address to those common topics of grateful recollection which unite the patriotic feelings of every American. It has not been my fault, if ever, on this auspicious national anni

* Oration delivered at Worcester, on the 4th of July, 1833.

versary, a single individual has forgotten that he was a brother of one great family, while he has recollected that he was a member of a party.

In fact, fellow-citizens, I deem it one of the happiest effects of the celebration of this anniversary, that, when undertaken in the spirit which has animated you on this occasion, it has a natural tendency to soften the harshness of party, which I cannot but regard as the great bane of our prosperity. It was pronounced by Washington, in his valedictory address to the people of the United States, "the worst enemy of popular governments;" and the experience of almost every administration, from his own down, has confirmed the truth of the remark. The spirit of party unquestionably has its source in some of the native passions of the heart; and free governments naturally furnish more of its aliment than those under which the liberty of speech and of the press is restrained by the strong arm of power. But so naturally does party run into extremes, so unjust, cruel, and remorseless is it in its excess, so ruthless in the war which it wages against private character, so unscrupulous in the choice of means for the attainment of selfish ends, so sure is it, eventually, to dig the grave of those free institutions of which it pretends to be the necessary accompaniment, -so inevitably does it end in military despotism and unmitigated tyranny, that I do not know how the voice and influence of a good man could, with more propriety, be exerted, than in the effort to assuage its violence.

We must be strengthened in this conclusion, when we consider that party controversy is constantly showing itself as unreasonable and absurd as it is unamiable and pernicious. If we needed illustrations of the truth of this remark, we should not be obliged to go far to find them. In the unexpected turns that continually occur in affairs, events arise, which put to shame the selfish adherence of resolute champions to their party names. No election of president has ever been more strenuously contested than that which agitated the country the last year; and I do not know that party spirit, in our time at least, has ever run higher, or the