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ROBERT C,

BY

PITMAN, LL.D.,

Associate Justice of the Superior Court of Massachusetts.

"We are convinced that if a Statesman, who heartily wished to do the utmost
good to his country, were thoughtfully to inquire which of the topics of the day
deserved the most intense force of his attention, the sure reply-the reply which
would be exacted by full deliberation-would be, that he should study THE MEANS
by which this worst of plagues can be stayed."-C. Buxton, M.P.

NEW YORK:

National Temperance Society and Publication House,
58 READE STREET.

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PREFACE.

THOMAS CARLYLE, in a letter written in 1872, after expressing his wish for the "success, complete and speedy," of the English "Permissive Bill," and acknowledging the receipt of certain pamphlets relating to Intemperance, curtly added: "The pamphlets shall be turned to account, though I myself require no argument or evidence further on that disgraceful subject."

I can sympathize with the bluff Scotchman's impatience. There are times when this subject is exceedingly wearisome to me, and nothing but a positive sense of duty can hold me to its contemplation. I can easily excuse those who are conscious of having well-grounded opinions, formed upon evidence, from reading what I have to say in this volume.

But if there are any who have been heretofore prone to dismiss the whole subject as a vulgar one, I beg them to ponder the rebuke given by Dr. Channing, more than a generation ago, to a similar moral indifference, substituting intemperance for slavery, and inebriate for slave:

vulgar modes of Because the slave

"There are not a few persons who, from thinking, can not be interested in this subject. is a degraded being, they think slavery a low topic, and wonder how it can excite the attention and sympathy of those who can discuss or feel for anything else. Now the truth is that slavery,

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