a well known disorder in the brain, occasioned by drinking too freely of spirituous liquors. Drunkenness appears in different shapes in different constitutions: some it makes gay, some sultry, and some furious. The mischief of drunkenness consists in the following bad effects: 1. It betrays most constitutions either into extravagancies of anger, or sins of lewdness. 2. It disqualifies men for the duties of their station, both by the temporary disorder of their faculties, and at length by a constant incapacity and slovenliness. 3. It is attended with expenses, which can often be ill spared. 4. It is sure to occasion uneasiness to the family of the drunkard. 5. It shortens life. To these consequences of drunkenness must be added the peculiar danger and mischief of the example. "Drunkenness (Mr Paley observes) is a social festive vice. The drinker collects his circle; the circle naturally spreads; of those who are drawn within it, many become the corrupters and centres of sets and circles of their own; every one countenancing, and perhaps emulating the rest, till a whole neighbourhood be infected from the contagion of a single example. With this observation upon the spreading quality of drunkenness, may be connected a remark which belongs to the several evil effects above recited. The consequences of a vice, like the symptoms of a disease, though they be all enumerated in the description, seldom all meet in the same subject. In the instance under consideration, the age and temperature of one drunkard may have little to fear from inflammations of lust or anger; the fortune of a second may not be injured by the expense; a third may have no family to be disquieted by his irregularities; and a fourth may possess a constitution fortified against the poison of strong liquors. But if, as we always ought to do, we comprehend within the consequences of our conduct the mischief and tendency of the example, the above circumstances, however fortunate for the individual, will be found to vary the guilt of his intemperance less, probably, than he supposes. Although the waste of time and money may be of small importance to you, it may be of the utmost to some one or other whom your society corrupts. Repeated, or long continued excesses, which hurt not your health, may be fatal to your companion. Although you have neither wife nor child, nor parent, to lament your absence from home, or expect your return to it with terror; other families, whose husbands and fathers have been invited to share in your ebriety, or encouraged to imitate it, may justly lay their misery or ruin at your door. This will hold good, whether the person seduced be seduced immediately by you, or the vice be propagated from you to him, through several intermediate examples."

The ancient Lacedemonians used to make their slaves frequently drunk, to give their children an aversion and horror for the same. The Indians hold drunkenness a species of madness; and in their language, the same term (ramgam), that signifies "drunkard," signifies also a "phenetick."

Drunkenness is repeatedly forbidden by St Paul: "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excelsis." "Let us walk honestly as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness." "Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God." Eph. v. 18. Rom. xiii. 13. 1. Cor. vi. 9, 10. The same apostle likewise condemns drunkenness, as peculiarly inconsistent with the Christian profession: "They that be drunken, are drunken in the night; but let us, who are of the day, be sober." 1. Thef. v. 7, 8.

Drunkenness, by our laws, is looked upon as an aggravation rather than an excuse for any criminal behaviour. A drunkard, says Sir Edward Coke, who is voluntarius demon, hath no privilege thereby; but what hurt or illsoever he doth, his drunkenness doth aggravate it: nam omne crimen ebrietatis, et incendit, et detegit. It hath been observed that the real use of strong liquors, and the abuse of them by drinking to excess, depend much upon the temperature of the climate in which we live. The same indulgence which may be necessary to make the blood move in Norway, would make an Italian mad. A German therefore, says the prescient Montesquieu, drinks through custom founded upon constitutional necessity; a Spaniard drinks through choice, or out of the mere wantonness of luxury; and drunkenness, he adds, ought to be more severely punished where it makes men mischievous and mad, as in Spain and Italy, than where it only renders them stupid and heavy, as in Germany and more northern countries. Accordingly, in the warmer climate of Greece, a law of Pittacus enacted, "that he who committed a crime when drunk, should receive a double punishment;" one for the crime itself, and the other for the ebriety which prompted him to commit it. The Roman law indeed made great allowances for this vice: per vinum delagatis capitatis pana remittitur. But the law of England, considering how easy it is to counterfeit this excuse, and how weak an excuse it is (though real), will not suffer any man thus to privilege one crime by another.

For the offence of drunkenness a man may be punished in the ecclesiastical court, as well as by justices of peace by statute. And by 4 Jac. I. c. 5, and 21 Jac. I. c. 7, if any person shall be convicted of drunkenness by the view of a justice, oath of one wit- ness, &c. he shall forfeit 5s. for the first offence, to be levied by distress and sale of his goods; and for want of a distress, shall sit in the stocks six hours: and, for the second offence, he is to be bound with two sure- ties in 10l. each, to be of good behaviour, or to be committed. And he who is guilty of any crime thro' his own voluntary drunkenness, shall be punished for it as if he had been sober. It has been held that drun- kenness is a sufficient cause to remove a magistrate: and the prosecution for this offence by the statute of 4 Jac. I. c. 5. was to be, and still may be, before ju- dges of peace in their sessions by way of indictment, &c. Equity will not relieve against a bond, &c. given by a man when drunk, unless the drunkenness is oc- caioned through the management, or contrivance of him to whom the bond is given.

The appetite for intoxicating liquors appears to be almost always acquired. One proof of which is, that it is apt to return only at particular times and places; as after dinner, in the evening, on the market day, at the market town, in such a company, at such a tavern. And this may be the reason, that if a habit of drunk- enness be ever overcome, it is upon some change of place, situation, company, or profession. A man sunk deep in a habit of drunkenness, will upon such occa- sions as these, when he finds himself loosed from the associations which held him fast, sometimes make a plunge, and get out. In a matter of such great im- portance, it is well worth while, where it is tolerably convenient, to change our habitation and society, for the sake of the experiment.

Habits of drunkenness commonly take their rise either from a fondness for and connection with some company, or some companion, already addicted to this practice; which affords an almost irresistible invitation to take a share in the indulgences which those about us are enjoying with so much apparent relish and delight; or from want of regular employ- ment, which is sure to let in many superfluous crav- ings and customs, and often this amongst the rest; or, lastly, from grief or fatigue, both which strongly solicit that relief which inebriating liquors administer for the present, and furnish a specious excuse for com- plying with the inclination. But the habit, when once set in, is continued by different motives from those to which it owes its origin. Persons addicted to ex- cessive drinking suffer, in the intervals of sobriety, and near the return of their accustomed indulgence, a faint- ness and oppression about the præcordia which it exceeds the ordinary patience of human nature to endure. This is usually relieved for a short time by a repetition of the same excess; and to this relief, as to the removal of every long continued pain, they who have once expe- rienced it are urged almost beyond the power of resis- tance. This is not all: as the liquor loses its stimulus, the dose must be increased, to reach the same pitch of eleva- tion or ease; which increase proportionably accelerates the progress of all the maladies that drunkenness brings on. Whoever reflects, therefore, upon the violence of the craving in advanced stages of the habit, and the fatal termination to which the gratification of it leads, will, the moment he perceives the least tendency in himself of a growing inclination to intemperance, col- lect his resolution to this point; or (what perhaps he will find his best security,) arm himself with some per- emptory rule, as to the times and quantity of his in- dulgencies.