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justly merit; and that, too, by those who are apologists, if not the advocates of the excise law. Statutes may be framed to aid the common law in punishing offences against society; but they cannot tolerate, upon any terms or conditions, an acknowledged evil, and at the same time vindicate either their own justice or purity. Take away all statutory obstacles, and the salutary influences of the common law will come up to do battle in this great crusade for moral reformation. The common law walks hand in hand with morality and religion. Like the vast luminary of heaven, it imparts its genial influences to all the children of men. It visits the palace of affluence, and forgets not the tenant of the dungeon, where "the iron enters into the soul." It sits by him who is clad in purple and fine linen, and fares sumptuously every day, and lies down too with the bumble beggar at his gate. It stretches out its hand at the cry of the orphan, and arrests in his career of rapacity the guilty and fraudulent oppressor. It stays up the hands of those who minister in the holy duties of religion, and drags to light and punishment the blear-eyed miscreant from the dens of crime and pollution. It serves as a shield for the defence of virtue, and a sword for the punishment of vice. It guarantees, like our great charter of freedom, the enjoyment of life and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and wars only with those who forfeit all claims to its protection, and the confidence and respect of their fellow-men.

If we would leave the great and interesting question of temperance and morals to the guidance of public opinion and the common law, unshackled by the arbitrary restraints which illconceived legislation has thrown around it, we should find that all good citizens would yield submissively to that opinion which some have hitherto defied and disregarded; and that the common law would vindicate itself. The contest would then be upon equal ground, and a complete and signal triumph would reward the efforts of those who have so long struggled in unequal combat with the vicegerents of legislation. It, too, would be a triumph, not of arbitrary power over unwilling subjects, yielding slavish submission to the iron rigor of the law, nor the success of a sect or party, who in their turn are destined to be overthrown by the next move upon the political shuffleboard, but the triumph of truth and philosophy over ignorance,

vice, and error; where the understanding has been enlightened, the judgment convinced, the heart rectified and chastened, and the whole moral and intellectual being elevated and dignified. But to accomplish these sublime results, opinion must be unfettered. If we would drain the foul morass or stagnant pool, all obstructions must be removed before impurity will find its level. If we would rid the dungeon of its foul and deadly vapor, it must be thrown open to the healthful current of the playful breeze and the cheering light of day; and if we would witness the triumph of truth and reason over ignorance, error, and delusion, opinion must be free.

But the efforts of benevolence to banish the evils of intemperance from society will prove unavailing unless aided by its

blind and deluded votaries.

"Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow."

Intemperance, though often the cause, is much oftener the effect of indolence and its kindred vices, which, like certain birds and animals, are gregarious. Nor is temperance a mere abstraction, consisting alone in abstaining from the use of inebriating drinks; nor can it be successfully cultivated in a soil where noxious weeds are cultivated, or suffered to shoot up in undisturbed luxuriance. Comparatively few who have been trained to some useful calling, and fewer still who prosecute such calling with industry and attention, contract habits of intemperance. This tyrant king has been deposed in the workshop of the mechanic, and driven from the field of the husbandman; but he still sits upon his throne, which partial and mistaken legislation has erected, dealing out his fiery curses; and nods over the wine-cup with the votaries of fashion and pleasure.

Next to the evils which flow from the retailing dram-shop, is that of habitual wine-drinking by the affluent and influential. Their example is mighty for good or for evil, and their responsi bility fearful. They, too, are the professed friends of the cause of temperance, and of every benevolent enterprise; but like the publican, they have worshipped afar off-they have given of their abundance to disseminate the light of the gospel in heathen lands, and "when that the poor have cried, Cæsar hath wept." They have lent their aid to banish the evils of intemperance, and, flushed with wine, have admonished the inebriate of an

ignoble death and a drunkard's grave, and have pointed to his weeping wife and breadless children. But they have not shown him the stern self-denial in indulgence, which alone can gain respect for sincerity, and add to precept the mighty influ ence of example. They would gladly prescribe a remedy for the cure of this moral leprosy, but cannot themselves submit to the pure and simple process of washing in Jordan.

The practice of wine-drinking, though justified for a time by many a plausible tissue of sophistry, is now acknowledged to be a mere indulgence, induced by no necessity, tending to no good end, and pursued only because it is the right and the choice of those who practise it, and adds to their pleasurable indulgence and gratification. But will not they forego this mischievous indulgence, if they can rescue from the fangs of intemperance the most degraded and abject of the human race? Let them look for a single moment upon this, as a fountain from which so much human degradation and misery flows. Turn for a moment from contemplating the splendor and magnificence of the monuments of wealth and enterprise, which adorn this city, to its narrow lanes and impure alleys, where squalid and houseless wretches remind us that the "foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." What ill-starred demon of malignity, with blight and desolation in his train, has scathed and blackened this portion of God's heritage, and written upon the fair image of our Maker the scowl of the fiends of darkness? It is intemperance! Intemperance which intoxicates the soul! Intemperance, which, more ruthless than Satan, spares not the sacredness of the domestic circle, nor the endearing fire-side of home. Around these hearths, so cold and desolate, no kindly affections cluster, no accents of tenderness or love gush from the fountains of the heart, no invocations to the living God ascend on high. Hope, that charmer of the world below, which cheers and gladdens the varied pathway of our pilgrimage with flowers of sweeter fragrance and deeper loveliness, and gilds the unseen hill-tops with a brighter and a fairer sunshine, has never entered these sombre portals. But the Promethean vulture of intemperance perpetually gnaws at their bleeding heartstrings. Let men band themselves together in one common cause, in expelling from their borders this fell enemy of their

race. Let woman raise her gentle voice at the domestic altar, and inculcate lessons of temperance, purity, and peace. Let her prepare the "fire fair blazing and the vestment warm; light up her home with a resistless charm, and thus alleviate her own sufferings and sorrows, and contribute the influence of her example to dry the tears and soothe the anguish of her sex. Let children raise their little hands in testimony against this ferocious spirit which has come hither to torment them before their time, and dim with blood and tears the lustre of their birth-star. Let youth cry out against a vice which writes upon its own fair brow untimely wrinkles; and its curses tremble on the lip of drear old age. Fearful and successful ally of the great tempter of our race! How hast thou "glutted the grave with untimely victims, and helped to people the world of perdition." Under thy baleful influences, how many famishing and wretched children have lain shivering down on their beds of straw; how many, alas! have arisen to starve and curse the light; how many sighs have been wafted up to Heaven; how many bitter, unavailing tears have been shed; how many pure and gentle hearts have been crushed and broken; how many have been steeped in depravity and crime!

"How many pine in want and dungeon's gloom,
Shut from the common air and common use
Of their own limbs. How many drink the cup

Of baleful grief, or eat the bitter bread
Of misery. Sore pierced by wintry winds,
How many shrink into the sordid hut
Of cheerless poverty. How many shake
With all the fiercer tortures of the mind,
Unbounded passion, madness, guilt, remorse,

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That one incessant struggle render life
One scene of toil, of suffering, and of fate,
Vice in his high career would stand appalled,
And heedless, rambling impulse learn to think;
The conscious heart of charity would warm,
And her wide wish, benevolence, dilate;
The social tear would rise, the social sigh;
And into clear perfection, gradual bliss,
Refining still, the social passions work."

LECTURE

UPON COMMERCIAL LAW AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

DELIVERED BEFORE THE BINGHAMTON COMMERCIAL COLLEGE, February 15, 1861.

GENTLEMEN OF THE COMMERCIAL COLLEGE-Having been invited, by the kind partiality of your principals, to lecture before their institution upon Commercial Law and Political Economy, I appear for that purpose; premising that because of numerous, pressing, and varied engagements, my address must partake of hasty preparation, and I can expect to do little more than to present a general outline of subjects which, to be thoroughly understood, require the most patient study and elaborate examination. I shall, however, present you some familiar considerations, which will place the diligent student upon the track of investigation and aid him in that research, without which all knowledge must be superficial and imperfect. Political Economy and Commercial Law, though usually treated as separate branches of the science of government, in many of their characteristics are so intimately interwoven, that no line of demarcation can be successfully traced between them. Much that is Political Economy is Commercial Law, and much that belongs to Commercial Law is true Political Economy. In treating of them, therefore, separately, it should be remembered that the classifications are in some respects arbitrary, and might with equal propriety be arranged under different heads. Nor can an address upon these subjects, at this day, boast of much originality of thought. Both have been exhausted by the commentator, the historian, the statesman and the theorist; but it remains for the practical sense of the times to separate truth from falsehood, fact from fancy, and the experience of mankind from the dreamy speculations of the visionary. This will require the examination and compilation of history, sacred and

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