It is easy to praise the Fathers of New England; easier to praise them for virtues they did not possess, than to discriminate, and fairly judge those remarkable men. I admire and venerate their characters, but they were rather hard drinkers; certainly a love of cold water was not one of their loves. Let me mention a fact or two: it is recorded in the Probate office, that in 1678, at the funeral of Mrs. Mary Norton, widow of the celebrated John Norton, one of the ministers of the first church in Boston, fifty-one gallons and a half of the best Malaga wine were consumed by the "mourners;" in 1685, at the funeral of the Rev. Thomas Cobbett, minister at Ipswich, there were consumed one barrel of wine and two barrels of cider--"and as it was cold," there was "some spice and ginger for the cider." You may easily judge of the drunkenness and riot on occasions less solemn than the funeral of an old and beloved minister. Towns provided intoxicating drink at the funeral of their paupers; in Salem, in 1728, at the funeral of a pauper, a gallon of wine and another of cider are charged as "incidental;" the next year, six gallons of rum on a similar occasion; in Lynn, in 1711, the town furnished "half a barrel of cider for the Widow Dispaw's funeral." Affairs had come to such a pass, that in 1742, the General Court forbade the use of wine and rum at funerals. In 1673, Increase Mather published his "Wo unto Drunkards." Governor Winthrop complains, in 1630, that "The young folk gave themselves to drink hot waters very immoderately."[41] But I need not go back so far. Who that is fifty years of age, does not remember the aspect of Boston on public days; on the evening of such days? Compare the "Election day," or the Fourth of July, as they were kept thirty or forty years ago, with such days in our time. Some of you remember the celebration of Peace, in 1783; many of you can recollect the similar celebration in 1815. On each of those days the inhabitants from the country towns came here to rejoice with the citizens of this town. Compare the riot, the confusion, the drunkenness then, with the order, decorum, and sobriety of the celebration at the introduction of water last autumn, and you see what has been done in sixty or seventy years for temperance.