thousand complaints are made yearly in New York to the city police of
outrages committed by intoxicated persons; and the late city attorney
reports, that of twenty-two cases of murder which it had been his duty
to examine, every one of them had been committed in consequence of
intemperate drinking. "Nine-tenths of all the prisoners under my care,"
says Captain Pillsbury, warden of our own state prison, "are decidedly
intemperate men, and were brought to their present condition, directly
or indirectly, through intoxicating liquor. Many have confessed to me
with tears, that they never felt tempted to the commission of crime,
thus punishable, but when under the influence of strong drink." And the
Prison Discipline report states, "that of 125,000 criminals committed to
our prisons in a single year, 93,750 were excited to their commission of
crime by spirituous liquors."
Look at its destruction of intellect.
It reduces man to a beast, to a fool, to a devil. The excessive drinker
first becomes stupid, then idiotic, then a maniac. Men of the finest
geniuses, most acute minds, and profound learning, have dwindled under
the touch of this withering demon to the merest insignificance, and been
hooted by boys for their silly speeches and silly actions, or chained in
a madhouse as unsafe in society. Of eighty-seven admitted into the New
York hospital in one year, the insanity of twenty-seven was occasioned
by ardent spirit; and the physicians of the Pennsylvania hospital
report, that one-third of the insane of that institution were ruined by
intemperance. What if one-sixth of our maniacs were deprived of their
reason by the bite of the dogs, the friendly inmates of our houses, or
by some vegetable common on our table; who would harbor the dangerous
animal, or taste the poisonous vegetable? But, one-third of our maniacs
are deranged by alcohol. Indeed, every drunkard is in a temporary
delirium; and no man who takes even a little into his system, possesses
that sound judgment, or is capable of that patient investigation or
intellectual effort, which would be his without it. Just in proportion
as man comes under its influence, he approximates to idiotism or
madness.
Look at its waste of health and life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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