We are in this country, at this time, trying to regulate this evil by a tax on whiskey.  You might as well try to regulate the Asiatic cholera, or the small-pox, by taxation.  The men who distil liquors are, for the most part, unscrupulous; and the higher the tax, the more inducement to illicit distillation.  New York produces forty thousand gallons of whiskey every twenty-four hours; and the most of it escapes the tax.  The most vigilant officials fail to discover the cellars, and vaults, and sheds where this work is done.

Oh, the folly of trying to restrain an evil by government tariffs!  If every gallon of whiskey made, if every flask of wine produced, should be taxed a thousand dollars, it would not be enough to pay for the tears it has wrung out of the eyes of widows and orphans, nor for the blood it has dashed on the altars of the Christian Church, nor for the catastrophe of the millions it has destroyed forever.

Oh! we are a Christian people!  From Boston a ship sailed for Africa, with three missionaries, and twenty-two thousand gallons of New-England rum on board.  Which will have the most effect:  the missionaries, or the rum?

Rum is victor.  Some time when you have leisure, just go down any of our streets, and count the number of drinking places.  Here they are—­first-class hotels.  Marble floors.  Counter polished.  Fine picture hanging over the decanters.  Cut glass.  Silver water-coolers.  Pictured punch-bowls.  High-priced liquors.  Customers pull off their gloves, and take up the glasses, and click them, and with immaculate pocket handkerchief wipe their mouth, and go up-stairs, or into the reading-room, and complete extensive bargains.

Here it is—­the restaurant.  All sorts of viands, but chiefly all styles of beverage.  They who frequent this place have fairly started on the down grade.  Having drunk once, they lounge at the corner of the bar until a friend comes up, and then the beverage is repeated.  After a while they sit at the little table by the wall and order a rarer wine; for they feel richer now, and able to get almost anything.  Towards bed-time they take out their watch and say they must go home.  They start, but cannot stand straight.  With a gentleman at each arm, they start up the street.  More and more overcome, the man begins to whoop, and shout, and swear, and refuse to go any farther.  Hat falls off.  Hair gets over his eyes.  Door-bell of fine house rings.  Wife comes down the stairs.  Daughters look over the banisters.  Sobbing in the dark hall.  Quick—­shut the front door, for I do not want to look in.  God help them!

Here it is—­a wine-cellar.  Going into the door are depraved men and lost women.  Some stagger.  All blaspheme.  Men with rings in their ears instead of their nose; and blotches of breast-pin.  Pictures on the wall cut out of the Police Gazette.  A slush of beer on floor and counter.  A pistol falls out of a ruffian’s pocket.  By the gas-light a knife flashes.  Low songs.  They banter, and jeer, and howl, and vomit.  An awful goal, to which hundreds of people better than you have come.