occasion just mentioned. At the close of his impassioned address, after having depicted the labors, hardships, and sacrifices endured by our ancestors, in the cause of liberty, he broke forth in the thrilling words, the voice of our fathers' blood cries to us from the ground!' Three years only passed away; the solemn struggle came on; foremost in council, he also was foremost in the battlefield, and offered himself a voluntary victim, the first great martyr in the cause. Upon the heights of Charlestown, the last that was struck down, he fell, with a numerous band of kindred spirits, the gray-haired veteran, the stripling in the flower of youth, who had stood side by side through that dreadful day, and fell together, like the beauty of Israel, on their high places!

And now, sir, from the summit of Bunker-Hill THE VOICE OF OUR FATHERS' BLOOD CRIES TO US FROM THE GROUND. It rings in my ears. It pleads with us, by the sharp agonies of their dying hour; it adjures us to discharge the last debt to their memory. Let us hear that awful voice; and resolve, before we quit these walls, that the long-delayed duty shall be performed; that the work SHALL BE DONE, SHALL BE DONE!

SPEECH

DELIVERED AT A TEMPERANCE MEETING IN SALEM, ON THE 14TH OF JUNE, 1833.

MR EVERETT moved the following resolution :

Resolved, That, while we behold, with the highest satisfaction, the success of the efforts which have been made for the suppression of intemperance, we consider its continued prevalence as affording the strongest motives for persevering and increased exertion.

Mr Everett then spoke substantially as follows:

MR PRESIDENT,

WHEN I look around me, and see how many persons there are in the assembly, better entitled than myself to the privilege of addressing the audience, it is not without great diffidence that I present myself before you. But if there are occasions on which it is our duty to exert ourselves, in season and out of season, there are also objects we should endeavor to promote, in place and out of place, if, indeed, a man can ever be out of place, who rises, in a civilized and Christian community, to speak in behalf of Temperance. Emboldened by this reflection, and in compliance with your request, I have ventured to submit the resolution which I have just read, and of which, with your permission, I will briefly enforce the purport; and most sincerely can I say, that I never raised my voice with a clearer conviction of duty, nor a more cheerful hope of the ultimate success of the cause.

I am not insensible to the force of the objection which meets us on the threshold:-I mean the objection taken to the multiplication of what are called self-created societies, and, in general, to the free development and application of the social influence which have been witnessed in our day. But, though these objections have been urged in the most respectable quarter, I have never been able to feel their force. I think it will be found, on full examination of the matter, that societies are liable to precisely the same objections as the action of individual men, that is, they are liable to misapplication and abuse. But I believe it would be quite as easy, for a powerful and ingenious mind to point out the abuses to which individual effort is liable, as those to which societies are exposed; quite as easy to show the good that might have been and has not been done; the reforms which might have been and have not been accomplished; the happiness which might have been and has not been enjoyed; had the social principle been brought out in a still earlier, ampler, and more cordial development. In a word, sir, though I am not over-fond of abstract generalities on questions of this nature, I cannot but think that the individual principle tends to selfishness, to weakness, to barbarism, to ignorance, and to vice; and that the social principle is the principle of benevolence, civilization, knowledge, genial power, and expansive goodness. On this point, however, it would be safer to leave theoretical axioms aside. It is, perhaps, enough, to insist on good faith, good temper, and sound principle, on the part of societies and individuals. Where these prevail, there is little danger of abuse. Where they are absent, it little matters whether the public peace is disturbed, the cause of reform obstructed, and bad passion nourished, by associations or individuals. In fact, in the complicated structure of modern society, it is impossible to draw a line between them. It is powerful individuals that move societies; it is listening multitudes, which give power to individuals.

If there is any cause, in which it is right and proper to employ the social principle, the promotion of temperance is that cause; for intemperance, in its origin, is peculiarly a social vice. Although, in its progress, men may creep away, out of shame, to indulge the depraved appetite in secret, yet no man, in a state of civilization, is born, I imagine, with a taste so unnatural, that he would seek an

intoxicating liquor, in the outset, for his ordinary or frequent drink. It is usually tasted, for the first time, as the pledge of hospitality, and the bond of good fellowship. Idle men, who meet casually together, with kind feelings toward each other, ask each other to step into the dram-shop, and take something to drink,' for want of any thing else to say or do ;-and there they swallow the liquid poison to each other's health.' The social circle, the stated club, the long protracted sitting at the board, on public occasions, the midnight festivities of private assemblies ;-these, nine cases out of ten, teach men the fatal alphabet of intemperance; surprise them into their first excesses; break down the sense of shame; establish a sympathy of conscious frailty; and thus lead them on, by degrees, to habitual, and, at length, craving, solitary, and fatal indulgence. The vice of intemperance, then, is social in its origin, progress, and aggravation; and most assuredly authorizes us, by every rule of reason and justice, in exerting the whole strength of the social principle, in the way of remedy.

ence.

If it were possible to entertain a doubt on this point, as a matter of theory, that doubt would be removed by the safe test of experiThe maxims of temperance are not new; they are as old as Christianity; as old as any of the inculcations of personal and social duty. Every other instrument of moral censure had been tried, in the case of intemperance, as in that of other prevailing errors, vices, and crimes. The law had done something; the press had done something; the stated ministrations of religion had done something; but altogether had done but little; and intemperance had reached a most alarming degree of prevalence. At length, the principle of association was applied; societies were formed, meetings were held, public addresses made, information collected and communicated, pledges mutually given, the minds of men excited, and their hearts warmed, by comparison of opinions, by concert and sympathy; and within the space of twenty years, of which not more than ten have been devoted to strenuous effort, a most signal and unexampled reform has been achieved. The bubbling, and, as it seemed, perennial fountains of this vice have, in many cases, been dried up. The example alluded to by the gentleman. who has already addressed us, (Dr Pierson), of villages absolutely regenerated, is by no means a solitary one. The aspect of many

entire communities has been changed; and an incalculable amount of vice and woe has been prevented. The statistical facts publicly brought out at the National Temperance Convention, recently held in Philadelphia, abundantly sustain this proposition.

But, if we are encouraged to continued and persevering efforts, by the success which has thus far crowned the cause, we ought to be still more so, by reflecting upon the extent to which the evil still rages. If we are to obey the injunction of the Roman moralist, and think nothing done, while aught remains to do,' what new motives to zealous exertion ought we not to find in the fact, that, though much has been done, much, very much, remains to be effected? I have recently seen it stated, on the authority of the highly respectable warden of the state's prison in Maine, that three fourths of all the convicts in that establishment were led to the commission of the crimes, for which they are now suffering imprisonment, by intemperance,' in most cases directly, in others more remotely. There are many gentlemen present, no doubt, able to form an opinion, entitled to full confidence, whether this would be an over-estimate for the other States in the Union. I am inclined, myself, to think that it is not. If we carry the inquiry a little farther, from our state prisons to our county gaols and houses of correction, I am disposed to believe that the same proportion, also, of their inmates is brought within their walls by intemperance. It is well known, that a considerable portion of the small debts collected or attempted to be collected by the law, are for spirituous liquors; and that the least evil this liquor has done its consumers, has been to bring them within the poor debtors' ward of a gaol.

If we pass from vice to pauperism, we shall find a similar result. Pauperism is another of the greatest public burdens; and is, at this moment, tasking the ingenuity of the statesman and philanthropist in Europe and America, as a great and growing public evil, which seems to derive a principle of increase from the measures necessary to its alleviation. I believe we may, in like manner, set down three fourths of the pauperism which prevails, to the direct or remote influence of intemperance. In fact, intemperance is peculiarly a principle of pauperism; more directly so than of crime, though it tends strongly enough to crime. But every man who depends upon his industry for his support and that of his family, by becom