doubted if the license-laws were constitutional; so they were openly set at nought, for wicked men seize on doubtful opportunities. Then, too, temperance had gone, a few years ago, as far as it could be expected to go until certain great obstacles were removed. Many leading men in the land were practically hostile to temperance, and, with some remarkable exceptions, still are. The sons of the pilgrims, last Forefathers' day, could not honor the self-denial of the Puritans without wine! The Alumni of Harvard University could never, till this season, keep their holidays without strong drink.[18] If rich men continue to drink without need, the poor will long continue to be drunk. Vices, like decayed furniture, go down. They keep their shape, but become more frightful. In this way the refined man who often drinks, but is never drunk, corrupts hundreds of men whom he never saw, and without intending it becomes a foe to society. Then, too, some of our influential temperance men aid us no longer. Beecher is not here; Channing and Ware have gone to their reward. That other man,[19] benevolent and indefatigable, where is he? He trod the worm of the still under his feet, but the worm of the pulpit stung him, and he too is gone; that champion of temperance, that old man eloquent, driven out of Boston. Why should I not tell an open secret?--driven out by rum and the Unitarian clergy of Boston. Whatsoever the causes may be, I think you see proofs enough of the fact, that drunkenness has increased within the last few years. You see it in the men drunken in the streets, in the numerous shops built to gratify the intemperate man. Some of these are elegant and costly, only for the rich; others so mean and dirty, that one must be low indeed to wallow therein. But the same thing is there in both, rum, poison-drink. Many of these latter are kept by poor men, and the spider's web of the law now and then catches one of them, though latterly but seldom here. Sometimes they are kept, and, perhaps, generally owned, by rich men who drive through the net. I know how hard it is to see through a dollar, though misery stand behind it, if the dollar be your own, and the misery belong to your brother. I feel pity for the man who helps ruin his race, who scatters firebrands and death throughout society, scathing the heads of rich and poor, and old and young. I would speak charitably of such an one as of a fellow-sinner. How he can excuse it to his own conscience is his affair, not mine. I speak only of the fact. For a poor man there may be some excuse; he has no other calling whereby to gain his bread; he would not see his own children beg, nor starve, nor steal! To see his neighbor go to ruin and drag thither his children and wife, was not so hard. But it is not the shops of the poor men that do most harm! Had there been none but these, they had long ago been shut, and intemperance done with. It is not poor men that manufacture this poison; nor they who