by which more lives are wasted and destroyed in`a single year than in all the great battles of the last century put together! 2. That intoxicating drinks are the chief cause of the pauperism, prostitution, and crime, which fill the workhouses, asylums, prisons, hulks, and penitentiaries of the kingdom;—and which require an enormous expense, in the maintenance of a police, and the machinery of prisons, and prison discipline, to restrain and repress. 3. That the greatest hinderance to the education of youth, to the promotion of morality among adults, and to the propagation and reception of Christian truths, in all ranks, at home and abroad, is the general and unnecessary use of intoxicating drinks. 4. That many millions of quarters of wholesome and nutritious fruits and grain, given by a bountiful Providence for the nutriment and support of man, as wheat, barley, rye, oats, rice, potatoes, grapes, dates, sugar, &c., are destroyed for all purposes of food, and converted by fermentation and distillation into noxious and destroying drinks. 5. That the loss of productive labour, (the chief source of national as it is of individual wealth,) in consequence of the idleness, sickness, debility, and incapacity, occasioned by the drinking usages of all classes, but especially the labouring portion of the community, may be fairly estimated at not less than one-sixth of their whole disposable time, or one day in each week, amounting in value to at least £50,000,000 sterling, taking the lowest usual estimate of the productive power of the country at £300,000,000 annually. 6. That the destruction of property by sea and land, in shipwrecks, fires, incendiary or accidental, in robberies, bankruptcies, plunderings, waste and spoiling of goods, and in the extra amount of insurance necessary to cover such risks, even where such destructions do not occur, can hardly be less than an equal sum of £50,000,000 more. 7. That if to this be added the actual expenditure in intoxicating drinks, amounting to at least £50,000,000, according to the actual returns of the duty paid on such articles as revenue; and the cost of all the prisons, workhouses, lunatic and orphan asylums, hulks, penal colonies, criminal courts, law proceedings, county-rates, armed constabularies and police, and divers other indirect expences occasioned by the necessity of detecting and punishing crime, and supporting the destitute, even when their destitution is chiefly the result of their own intemperance and folly, which can hardly be less than £50,000,000 more; we have a grand total of expence, direct and indirect, arising out of the use of intoxicating drinks, of £200,000,000 sterling, or a sum equal to four times the average revenue of the whole kingdom from every description of duty and tax whatever! In addition to the important conclusions thus arrived at by the examination of the evidence produced; it was also abundantly proved that b stimulating drinks, instead of giving strength, produce weakness-instead of promoting health, destroy it-and instead of quickening the intellectual faculties, ultimately deaden and paralyze them: the excitement produced by their use, however agreeable at the moment, always leading to a relapse and reaction, which produces the very opposite effect to that intended. The publication of this evidence, and these conclusions, in a great variety of forms, and the comments which the Parliamentary proceedings elicited from the conductors of the public journals, whom nothing else could have induced to notice the subject at all, produced the very best effects, by giving more extensive publicity to the facts than would otherwise have been secured for them, and at the same time investing the subject with a dignity and importance with which a Parliamentary sanction could alone have clothed it at this early stage of its history. In consequence of this, other enquiries have been instituted, and investigations made into matters. connected with the causes and effects of the habits of using intoxicating drinks among all ranks and classes of mankind. Numerous Societies have been specially established, to promote, by precept and example, the practice of entire abstinence from all stimulating drinks. And in every locality in which such Societies have been planted, the almost universal testimony of the inhabitants is uniformly to the effect that they have produced the most beneficial results on the health, finances, manners, condition, morals, and religious conduct of the members belonging to them. Never, it is believed, in the history of the world, has there before been an example of so rapid and wide-spread an extension of a simple truth, and the adoption of a uniform rule of action for its practice and propagation, as in the present case, where a doctrine, or a principle, first publicly announced and professed about fifteen years ago, is now so extensively appreciated and embraced, and so faithfully acted upon by millions in every quarter of the globe, that the Sun in his course is never at any hour of the day passing over a space in which his benign rays do not illumine and bless some spot, in which a Temperance Society is reflecting its glorious light, and spreading within its happy circle the benefits of intelligence, morality, and prosperity. Among the more recent triumphs of this holy cause, may be mentioned three most important tributes to its soundness and excellence :-the first, is the Medical Certificate, signed by more than two thousand of the most distinguished members of the Medical Profession in London and the Provinces ; -the second is the Statistical Report read by Mr. G. R. Porter, of the Board of Trade, before the British Association for the promotion of Science at their recent meeting in Edinburgh ;-and the third is the publication of the Volume "On the Use and Abuse of Alcoholic Liquors, in Health and Disease, a Prize Essay," by Dr. W. B. Carpenter, M. D., F. R. S., F. G. S., Examiner in Physiology in the University of London, and Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in University Collegewhich Volume is dedicated by permission to His Royal Highness, Prince Albert ;-besides a number of highly useful, though comparatively less important works, on the chief causes of Juvenile depravity, prostitution, and pauperism, all of which are clearly traced to the fatal influence of intoxicating drinks. Of the three more prominent Publications named, it is difficult to say to which to give pre-eminence, as to their utility, and the influence they are calculated to exercise on the public mind. An enlarged analysis of the whole would have been most satisfactory to the feelings of the writer, were it not incompatible with the limits to which it is thought desirable that this little volume should be confined. The Medical Certificate is in the following terms : "We the undersigned, are of opinion-" 1. That a very large proportion of human misery, including poverty, disease, and crime, is induced by the use of Alcoholic or fermented liquors as beverages. "2. That the most perfect health is compatible with Total Abstinence from all intoxicating beverages, whether in the form of ardent spirits, or as wine, beer, ale, porter, cider, &c. &c. "3. That persons accustomed to such drinks |