On the 4th of July, 1825—that jubilee of the Declaration of Independence of which the president had just spoken, and which was celebrated throughout the Union as a great national festival—died two venerable ex-presidents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both members of the early colonial congresses; the former of whom nominated Washington as commander-in-chief of the army, the latter drew up the celebrated Declaration of Independence. CHAPTER XXI. EVENTS OF TWENTY YEARS. We must now rapidly pass over the remaining quarter of a century, and in so doing merely pause upon such events as give a marked character to the progress of the years. The first which we shall notice is of a moral rather than a political character; one calculated to produce infinite results for the happiness of humanity. It was in the year 1826 when temperance societies took their first organised form. At that time one of the besetting sins of the Americans was the use of ardent spirits; and so widely-spread was this pernicious habit of dram-drinking, that the statistics of that period present a calculation that, out of a white population of 10,000,000, between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000 were habitual spirit-drinkers, of whom 375,000 drank daily on an average three gills of ardent spirits, while an equal number consumed more than twice the quantity, and of course were drunkards—a disgrace to themselves and their country, and a perpetual source of discomfort to their relatives and friends. In this situation of things, continues Hinton, in his History, from which we have taken the above calculations, a few individuals in the state of Massachusetts undertook the gigantic and seemingly impracticable task of bringing about a reformation. The means which they proposed was the establishment of temperance societies, the members of which bound themselves to total abstinence from spirituous liquors. The scheme was considered as ridiculous; and even many who beheld drunkenness with disgust smiled at the inadequate weapon with which it seemed to them this monster vice was about to be attacked. But God crowned their grain-of-mustard-seed-effort with gigantic success. Societies on the plan of the parent-institution, and zealously co-operating with it, sprang up in all parts of the Union. In September, 1832, there were in the state of New York alone, about 4,000 temperance societies, of which one-thirtieth of the whole population were members. And since that time the cause has progressed immensely. In 1841 there were 2,000,000 pledged teetotallers, 15,000 whom were reformed drunkards; and in 1846 about 5,000,000. In Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, Maryland, Wisconsin and Michigan, legislative enactments have first restrained, then prohibited, under pains and penalties, the traffic in intoxicating liquors.