It is agreed further, and well understood, that this is the _regular effect of the traffic, and manufacture, and use of this article_. It is not casual, incidental, irregular. It is uniform, certain, deadly, as the sirocco of the desert, or as the malaria of the Pontine marshes. It is not a periodical influence, returning at distant intervals; but it is a pestilence, breathing always--diffusing the poison when men sleep and when they wake, by day and by night, in seed-time and harvest--attending the manufacture and sale of the article _always_. The destroyer seeks his victim alike in every hogshead, and in every glass. He exempts no man from danger that uses it; and is always secure of prostrating the most vigorous frame, of clouding the most splendid intellect, of benumbing the most delicate moral feelings, of palsying the most eloquent tongue, of teaching those on whose lips listening senates hung, to mutter and babble with the drunkard, and of entombing the most brilliant talents and hopes of youth, wherever man can be induced to drink. The establishment of every distillery, and every dram-shop, and every grocery where it is sold, secures the certainty that many a man will thereby become a drunkard, and be a curse to himself and to the world. The traffic is not only occasionally and incidentally injurious, but it is like the generation before the flood in its effects, evil, and only evil continually. Now the question is, whether this is an employment in which a moral man and a Christian man _ought_ to be engaged. Is it such a business as his countrymen ought to approve? Is it such as his conscience and sober judgment approve? Is it such as his God and Judge will approve? * * * * * In examining this, let it be remembered, that the _reason_ why this occupation is engaged in, and the sole reason, is, _to make money_. It is not because it is supposed that it will benefit mankind; nor is it because the man supposes that duty to his Creator requires it; nor is it because it is presumed that it will promote public health, or morals, or happiness; but it is engaged in and pursued solely as a means of livelihood or of wealth. And the question then is reduced to a very narrow compass: Is it _right_ for a man, for the sake of gain, to be engaged in the sale of a poison--a poison attended with destruction to the property, health, happiness, peace, and salvation of his neighbors; producing mania, and poverty, and curses, and death, and woes innumerable to the land, and to the church of God? A question this, one would think, that might be very soon answered. In answering it, I invite attention to a few very obvious, but undeniable positions.