But general concerted measures on a scale commensurate with the evil to be overcome must be dated from the organization of the "American Society for the Promotion of Temperance," in 1826. The first aim of the reformers of that day was to break down those domineering social usages which almost enforced the habit of drinking in ordinary social intercourse. The achievement of this object was wonderfully swift and complete. A young minister whose pastorate had begun at about the same time with the organizing of the national temperance society was able at the end of five years to bear this testimony in the presence of those who were in a position to recognize any misstatement or exaggeration: "The wonderful change which the past five years have witnessed in the manners and habits of this people in regard to the use of ardent spirits--the new phenomenon of an intelligent people rising up, as it were, with one consent, without law, without any attempt at legislation, to put down by the mere force of public opinion, expressing itself in voluntary associations, a great social evil which no despot on earth could have put down among his subjects by any system of efforts--has excited admiration and roused to imitation not only in our sister country of Great Britain, but in the heart of continental Europe."[287:1] It is worthy of remark, for any possible instruction there may be in it, that the first, greatest, and most permanent of the victories of the temperance reformation, the breaking down of almost universal social drinking usages, was accomplished while yet the work was a distinctively religious one, "without law or attempt at legislation," and while the efforts at suppression were directed at the use of ardent spirits. The attempt to combine the friends of temperance on a basis of "teetotal" abstinence, putting fermented as well as distilled liquors under the ban, dates from as late as 1836.