Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from An Address Delivered Before the Readfield Temperance Society: At Their First Anniversary, July 4, 1832
Nothing is more obvious, than that intemperance tends to superinduce poverty, ignorance and moral degradation. On this point all must be agreed. In a country where the rulers are such by divine right - where the govern ment is administered by a succession of hereditary nobles, it is a small matter, considered in a national point of view, that her subjects are degraded and abject. But in a free government it is not 'so. Here, every citizen, at regular periods, bears to the omnipotent ballot-box his full portion of the sovereignty. Here the voice of the most humble is heard in all our councils. The direct tendency of poverty, ignorance and moral degradation is to subject this tremendous power of the multitude to the will of the few; and to throw the direction of our public affairs into the hands of artful and designing demagogues. Intemperance is in this way exerting a fearful control in our country, by destroying that balance of in?uence which is founded on property, as well as that healthful mental equality, which is so essential to a self-ruled people. Indeed, so great are the political evils already effected by this degrading vice, that the true lover of his country can but entertain painful apprehensions for the future fate of this Republic.
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