Some may say, that if they cease to manufacture spirits, others will take up the business and carry it on as extensively as they do. And since, therefore, the country will gain nothing by their discontinuance of distillation, they may as well have the profit of it as others. But what course of wickedness will not such reasoning justify? A highwayman robs you, or an assassin invades your dwelling at midnight and slaughters your wife and children. Now, would you think them justified, should they plead that they knew of others about to commit the same outrages, and therefore they thought their commission of these deeds was not wrong, since they needed the avails of the robbery and murder as much as any body? A man could pursue the slave-trade year after year on this principle, with no upbraidings of conscience, if he only suspected that the business would be carried on were he to stop. And a traitor might sell his country for gold, could he only ascertain that some one else was about to do it, and yet be exonerated from blame, if this principle be proper to act upon. Oh, how can any decent man plead a moment for a principle that leads to such monstrous results! Some will say, however, that they sell the spirits which they manufacture only to those whom they know to be temperate, and therefore they are not accessory to the intemperance in the land; for they are not accountable for the sins of those who sell spirits to improper persons. You supply them only to the temperate! The greater the blame and the guilt; for you are thus training up a new set of drunkards to take the place of those whom death will soon remove out of the way. Were you to sell only to the intemperate, you would do comparatively little injury to the community. For you would only hasten those out of the way who are a nuisance, and prevent the education of others to fill their places. But let not any man think that no blame attaches to himself because the poison goes into other hands before it is administered. _A man is to blame for any evil to his fellow-men which he could prevent._ Now, by stopping all the distilleries in the land, you could prevent men from becoming drunkards. The very head and front of the offending, therefore, lies with you. It is as idle for you to attempt to cast all the guilt upon others, in this way, as it was for Pilate, when he endeavored to fix the blood of Christ upon the people by washing his hands before them and declaring himself innocent, and then going back to his judgment-seat and passing sentence of death upon him. Good man! He did not touch a hair of the Saviour's head. It was the cruel soldiers who executed his orders, that, according to this plea, were alone guilty!