DEAR BRETHREN: - The committee to whom, at your last session, was referred the subject of Temperance, beg leave to submit the following as their report. Your committee, feeling a deep interest in the subject of Temperance within the bounds of this Association, were desirous of obtaining accurate statistical information as to the amount of liquor consumed as a beverage and the number of professors of religion who were consumers. But in this they have failed. No man could be found who used it as a beverage. Every one used it for some complaint which nothing in the whole range of Materia Medica could remove, or else it was employed solely for mechanical purposes. Your committee have been obliged to give up the idea of furnishing you with any accurate statistics as to the extent of the traffic in ardent spirits, or the number of consumers connected with the Churches, and confine themselves to a few general remarks upon the physical and moral effects of alcoholic drinks upon those who use them, and the constituent elements of those drinks.1. PHYSICAL EFFECTS. For the facts which follow we are indebted to eminent Physiologists, Physicians and Chemists. We claim no originality. We are proud to circulate their opinions, because they will bear the severest scrutiny. Alcohol is not found in any living substance which God has caused to grow out of the earth. It if not a living agent, but springs out of death and decomposition like the miasma which arise from stagnant pools. Not a living vegetable, so far as has been discovered,
contains a particle of pure alcohol. It is produced by vinous fermentation only. The stomach is the receptacle for food and drink. When alcohol is taken, it is alcohol in the stomach; alcohol in the arteries, veins, heart, LUNGS and brain; it is alcohol in all the nerves, tissues and fibers of the whole body. Not a blood vessel, however minute, not a thread of the smallest nerve escapes its influence. It enters the organs of the nursing mother, is taken into the circulation and passes through the whole system of the child. The gastric juice cannot change its nature and the whole system becomes saturated with alcohol. Now look at the physical, effects. The whole system is literally set on fire of hell. It darts through the system, drinks up the vitality of the blood, deprives it of red color and renders it unfit to stimulate the heart and other organs through which it passes; unfit la supply materials for the several secretions to renovate the different tissues of the body and to sustain the action of the brain. The blood of the drunkard is several shades darker than that of a temperate person. All the functions of the body become sluggish and irregular and the whole system loses its tone and energy. Lassitude, weakness and depression follow. The rosy hue of health is exchanged for a deep scarlet; the eye loses its intelligence; the appetite is impaired; the muscles waste; the face bloats; the digestive organs, the lungs, the heart and brain lose their vital forces; the sensibilities are destroyed; the man becomes a brute; the constitution breaks down; disease ensues and death closes the scene on earth; but from the throne of God, we hear his doom: No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of heaven. The children of the intemperate are literally conceived and born, tainted with this deadly poison. They often have an appetite for spirit and are more likely to become drunkards than others. Physiologists affirm that they are smaller, less healthy, have less firmness of nerve, less ability of body and mind and are more subject to the attacks of disease and the vicissitudes of climate arid seasons. Thus are the iniquities of the fathers visited upon the children.II. THE MORAL EFFECTS. What of pure morality could we expect from the man who has destroyed the God-like scion, upon which his Maker ingrafted the moral
bud? We could expect no pure morality from such a man. We do not expect any? Men do not gather figs from thistles. If we hear of a murder, robbery, arson, theft, assault, or a brawl, we immediately inquire, Was not the perpetrator of the crime intoxicated? Why this inquiry? Simply and solely because such are the legitimate streams from such a fountain. We should as soon expect to explode a cannon with an icicle as look for pure morality in connection with alcoholic drinks. The mind shudders to trace the scenes of moral desolation which alcoholic drinks have caused. Read the records of crime, the murders, robberies, thefts, assaults, violations of the peace, &c. Nine-tenths of these are traceable directly to the influence of alcoholic drinks. Visit our poor houses and asylums. Three-fourths of all this poverty and woe spring from the same source. Go through the lanes and alleys of oar huge cities; ascend to the garrets and descend to the cellars; see them crowded almost to suffocation with immortal beings. There, wan poverty is the household god, profanity, licentiousness, starvation and filth are her prime ministers. Alcoholic drinks are the cause of nine-tenths of all this wretchedness and crime - this miniature of hell. If you wish to see more of the moral effects of alcohol, a more revolting picture, go to one of our precincts on the day of election. The man who holds in his hand the control of all that is dear to us - our properly, our lives, the chastity of our wives and daughters, yea, and our holy religion - comes reeling up to the polls and deposits his vote. Among this crowd, like a demon incarnate, skulks the candidate for popular favor, who has opened the surrounding hells and bribed the presiding spirits so brutify freemen for the sake of a vote. This game is enacted by all classes of office seekers, either personally or through their imps, from the throne to the dunghill. This influence, so demoralizing, is brought to bear upon the election of our Presidents, National and Slate Legislators, Judges, Governors, Sheriffs, Mayors, Councilmen, &c., &. Go to the Crystal Palace, where the nations are vieing with each other in works of art and utility, and see the hundreds of grog-shops which encircle it. Go through the streets of our cities; see the yawning gulfs of ruin, gaping to receive the unwary youth,
the presiding genius dealing out perdition by the gill; mark the crowd as they reel forth to pollute the pure air of heaven with the noxious exhalations of their fetid bosoms. Trace the flow of this moral leprosy as it winds its way through all the ramifications of society from the palace of the wine-bibbing millionaire to the sunless cellar of ragged sot, tainting with its death-touch all that is fair and loyely and pure. How wide spread is the influence! The picture, however, is not completed. Visit the domestic circle, consecrated in heaven's name to love and peace. There lies the wife and mother, weltering in her blood, and the husband, who had sworn to love and protect her, stands over her with the death weapon in his hand. The children are flying in terror from the face of their own father. If the scene has not yet reached this point, you will, at least, see a heart-broken wife in one corner, with a pale and timid flock around her, and in the other, a worse than savage brute, or venemous reptile, ready to enact this last sad scene. This is no fancy sketch. You can scarcely take up a city weekly, but you see, Wife Murder!! Another Wife Murder!! To know all we must ourselves listen to the groans and witness the agonies of the hunger-bitten wife and children of the drunkard. We must hear the heart strings of the woe-stricken mother, wife, or child, break one by one, under the intensity of their anguish, as they follow the doomed son, husband or father to his ignominious end. We must witness the mental agony of the sobered murderer, as he looks upon the mangled form of his once loved wife, as he surveys the chains that bind, the gibbet that rises before him, the sins of a life upon him, grave open to receive him, the inflexible Judge upon the throne and the eternal destiny that awaits him. Yea, more; we must uncover the bottomless pit and listen to the clank of those chains of everlasting darkness; the gnawings of the undying worm; the crackling of the quenchless fire; the chattering of those anguished teeth that feed upon their own tongues, and those wails of torture which rise forever, but never reach mercy's ear. Turn for a moment to that domestic circle, upon whoso door-posts and lintels is inscribed, "Total Abstinence from all that intoxicates."
There dwells love, joy, peace, &c., &c. Fill up the outline of this picture till each of the happy inmates of this circle casts his bright crown at the foot of the Saviour and tunes his harp to immortal joys. Look on this picture, then on that, and you will be able, in some degree, to comprehend the baleful moral influence of intoxicating liquors as a beverage.III. YOU WILL ASK, who hath wrought this woe? I answer: Alcohol, in his various costumes; for their name is Legion. Pure alcohol is never used as a beverage. It is too expensive to be easily obtained and too strong to be pleasant to the taste; hence in all intoxicating liquors used as a beverage, alcohol is more or less diluted. Pure wine, brandy, rum, whisky, &c, as they are termed (for they exist only in name in a pure state) range from 12.80 to 54.32 per cent of alcohol. White Champagne 12.80 and Scotch Whisky 54.32. Avarice being the leading motive which induces man to make and vend liquors, the spirits, sold in all our liquor stores, undoubtedly, contain a far less amount of alcohol. From this supposition it might be supposed that these liquors would be less hurtful. This might be so, were not fraud practiced in the adulteration of these spirits. They are diluted and then drugged to preserve the color, flavor and bead. A merchant, who manufactures wines, brandy, &c., has 1000 barrels of whisky. A good pump will make it 1500. Drugs will preserve the color, flavor and bead. Here is a saving of 500 barrels, and he can still meet the demands of his whisky customers. But when whisky is so cheap, why resort to this method? For this there are two reasons. First, The man who is mean enough to make or vend ardent spirits as a beverage is mean enough for any conceivable act. But, secondly, listen to a chapter on wines and you will see that the leading motive in all this business has full play. From 1829 to 1833, five years, not ONE pipe was exported to the Channel Islands from Oporte, yet some ingenious merchants managed to export to London 1515 pipes of Port Wine. This fact shows us to what use the surplus whisky is put. An extensive dealer in New York said: Few persons who drink wine have any conception what they drink. Frauds committed in the adulteration of wine and spirit in New York City are estimated to amount to $3,000,000 annually. A cargo of wine, so called, arrives; it is immediately bought up and in twenty-four hours the whole character of it is changed. It is emptied into large vats and mixed with whisky, cider, sour beer and drugs. Here comes in the reserved whisky. Country merchants are supplied with every kind of wines from this one source. The real cost is from 15 to 20 cents per gal. and is sold from 50 cents to $5, per gal. A grocer in New York affirmed that he had bought whisky of a country merchant, and before he left town sold the same back to him turned into wine, at a profit of from 400 to 500 per cent. But what are the drugs used for? Lead, sugar of lead, litharge or oxyd of lead, sometimes arsenic; all of which are active and destructive poisons; logwood, beets, &c. to preserve the color. I might quote similar extracts by the hour from the writings of eminent physicians
and chemists, but these are sufficient, especially when joined with the confessions of wine manufacturers. Perhaps some wine-bibbers would like a recipe to make Port wine. Here it is. Take a good cider four gills; red beets two quarts; logwood four oz., rhatany root, bruised, half a pound. First infuse the logwood and rhatany root in brandy and one gal. of cider for one week, then strain off the liquor, and mix the other ingredients. What ingredients? Why, whisky, cider sour beer, drugs, &c. Keep it one month and it will be fit to bottle. But says one, I prefer Madeira. Give us a recipe for Madeira also. O yes. Use the same. Have we not shown, from the confession of a wine merchant, that all the different wines can be drawn from one cask. But say you, It will not have the peculiar flavor of Madeira. Well, friend, just add to the other ingredients, a bag of cockroaches. Rev. T. P. Hunt, of Wyoming, Penn., writes: While I lectured in Philadelphia, I became acquainted with a man who was extensively engaged in making wine, brandy, &c. He informed me that in order to produce the "nutty flavor" for which Madeira wine was so much admired, he put a bag of cockroaches into the liquor and let it remain till the cockroaches dissolved. Brethren and sisters, is not that delicious? Does not the thought of it make our mouths water? Young ladies, when a wine-bibbing young man seeks society, just tell him, Cockroaches are very offensive to you. Such is the stuff made and sold for men and women to drink. So perfect was the deception that George the IV if England and his court, even in their day did not detect the fraud. This traffic is not simply fraudulent, it is absolutely murderous. The ingredients used are, in many instances, deadly poisons and act upon the human system with unerring effect. The man who makes, or vends, these abominable mixtures, knows that he is not only defrauding, but poisoning his fellow-man; that these liquors, when taken into the stomach, tend to the premature death of those who use them. The danger of those who drink the poisoned liquors of the modern manufacturer is greatly increased. Never were the filthy and poisonous adulterations carried to such an extent as at the present time. The fact is stated by a chief of police, that formerly persons taken up drunk and kept in the station house to recover, usually became sober in three or four hours, but now they rarely come to their senses under seven or eight hours. Formerly drinking men might hope to live old age, but it cannot be expected now. It is no longer worthy of the name, it is a living death. This fact shows that the use of poisonous materials is on the increase. Yet this traffic, horrid as it is, lives and fattens upon the bodies and souls of men, women and children. See writings of Nott and Delevan.IV. NOW THE SOLEMN QUESTION COMES UP, BY WHAT POWER IS IT UPHELD? I answer: By the laws of this most free and happy nation - Christian America - the envy of tyrants, the hope of the oppressed!!! The friends of humanity are struggling to destroy this monster. In a remote State, the law is on the side of God and Humanity. A few sister States have added their names to the bright roll. The Empire State has put her shoulder to the tottering care of King Alcohol and shouted "long live our King and God."
Other States are striving to etch their names high up with the bright Eastern Star. The horizon around noble, chivalrous, glorious old Kentucky, looks dark and gloomy. This traffic is sustained by every one who gives to it his example, his vote, his influence, whether of character, station or talent. In a word, he who is not openly, boldly unwaveringly against the sale and use of all that intoxicates, as a beverage, in any and every form, is for it. See how mighty is the army in its support. How sure are death and hell of yet unnumbered victims. Except those above described, this army embraces all in civil offices from the wine drinking Head to the lowest beer guzzling functionary - in the army from the major general to the lowest subaltern, or private - in the navy from commodore to cook - in commerce from the prince merchant to the cabin boy - in agriculture from the rich planter to the boor who tills his potato patch - in the Church from the powdered prelate to the veriest hanger-on whose only spiritually is the inspiration of his God - Alcohol. Not that all are actually tipplers, but they support the traffic just as surely as if they were. The reasons are various. One prefers his party to the cause of God and Purity. Another in the language and spirit of Cain, coolly asks: Am I my brother's keeper? A third cries, Fanaticism; and thus to the end of the chapter. Has the accursed traffic any supporter in the Churches of Campbell County Association? I would that the unanimous response might be, a hearty and emphatic No! Let every one who bears the Christian name take a firm stand against the traffic and it could not survive one year. Brethren, let us look calmly at this subject and in the fear of God choose our position. May the time soon come when the maker and vender of ardent spirits shall be put on a level with other murderers! May the day soon dawn when the CHRISTIAN would as soon be known as the inmate of a house of ill-fame as be seen drinking one glass of intoxicating liquors. Amen.Committee on Temperance J. W. Brown ======== [From Campbell County (KY) Baptist Association Minutes, 1853, pp. 6-12. From a photocopy at the Campbell County Historical Society Library, Alexandria, KY. Transcribed and scanned by Jim Duvall.]
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