THE CONNEXION BETWEEN INTEMPERANCE AND CRIME, AS VISIBLE IN PRISON.

Intemperance is not the cause of every crime that is committed, though it is of very many of them. It is itself one of the greatest of crimes. It is a violation of not one law only, but of many. The drunkard outrages the law of his nature, tramples on the laws of morality, and flings contempt on the law of the Almighty; and it is not at all wonderful that so manifold a sin should meet with a various and adequate retribution. Intemperance unfits its votaries for every thing good, and qualifies them for, and spurs them onward to the commission of every base and sinful work; and it is impossible to estimate the crimes it has committed, or the miseries it has produced. I saw, in the Windsor Prison, many of the criminal votaries of this Moloch of modern idolatry, and my soul was often severely pained in contemplating the certain and lasting misery with which he rewarded his most faithful worshippers. I have not time, in this place, to enter into a full discussion of the connexion of intemperance with the crimes and misery of state prisons; but I will present a few striking illustrations of the subject, which may answer in the place of a volume.

L. N. was a very intemperate drinker. Rum had marked him for her own. He had worshipped his idol in gaols and prisons for a thousand miles round; and he was always punctual and regular in his devotions. The consequence was—the loss of public confidence—a straw pillow for his head, and a grated dungeon for his home—the pollution of his soul, and the ruin of his body—a death in shrieks of agony, and a prison-yard for his grave.

C. C. learned while a youth to drink the poisoned glass. He was well educated, and of a respectable family. His habit of intemperate drinking unfitted him for business, and he became the scoff and scorn of the giddy rabble. He fled his country for a crime, and remained at a distance for years, adding sin to sin. At length he returned home and repeated his former crime, for which he was sent to Windsor.

No one can describe the pain he endured when taken away from the bottle. "Horrors!—Blue horrors!—Ruffled horrors!" were the words in which he expressed the agony of his body and soul, under the cravings of an intemperate thirst for rum. After several years he was pardoned, but he returned to his former habit; and in one of his paroxysms of intoxication he inflicted a mortal wound on a fellow-being, and was sent back to prison, where he now is.

B. F. H. was a victim of drunkenness. Few men ever received from the hand of their Creator a richer store of intellectual capacity than this man, and on none were such gems more wastefully lavished. He abandoned a most amiable wife; and after spending many years in different prisons, the last I heard of him he was fitting for another. Over this victim, intemperance might boast, for he was like a star of superior brightness; he was learned, ingenious, and eloquent, qualified for a high station, but self-damned to the lowest.

P. D. illustrated very affectingly the legitimate consequences of intemperance. After he became its victim, it made him the author of a crime for which he was sent to prison for eighteen months. When this term had expired, he enjoyed liberty about three months, during which time he added another crime to the effects of rum, for which he was sent back to prison for three years. When these had expired, he was let out into the fields of liberty again; but in less than seven hours he was in gaol for a crime which he had had but just time enough to get drunk and commit, and in less than seven days he was back again in prison for six years.

This was entirely the effect of rum. He was not a criminal of choice, but when filled with rum, he would always steal. I never knew a man of better or purer moral feelings, when he was sober; and what is by no means common, he had such a sense of the crimes he committed, that he justified his punishment, and always considered it merciful. What a pity that such a man should have been ruined by intemperance.

I need not dwell on particular cases.—How great a proportion of the crimes which sent so many prisoners to Windsor, were directly or indirectly caused by the sin of intemperate drinking, I have not sufficient data to ascertain; but I have no hesitation in saying, that one half of the entire number would never have been in that gloomy mansion, if there never had been any intoxicating liquors. The victims of this prevailing sin, which I saw in that dreary house, are passing through the field of memory, and they appear like the armies of Gog and Magog. It would be well for the dealers in this ruinous article to dwell a few minutes every night on the moral character of their employment. They are earning their daily bread, and growing rich, on the profits of a poison which sends the body of the purchaser through flames of torment to an untimely grave, and prepares his soul for the miseries of the second death.—Let rum, and all the family of intoxicating drinks, be banished from the land, and half the rooms in our prisons will be soon found without an inhabitant.

I have known many prisoners who had gone to such excess in drinking, that for a year after they came into prison they endured a trembling of their hands, and a burning thirst for rum, which rendered their existence a real curse. Very many have I heard lamenting their crimes as having been occasioned by rum. Their language was—"If it had not been for liquor, I should not have done so;" and this was no doubt the fact. But though the prisoners so deeply lament their past folly and sin in drinking, it is not easy to cure them of it. After spending years in prison, and after many a "dolorous lament" over the effects of intoxication—after writing and publishing against intemperance, it is no strange thing to hear that they are drunk the day they are released. With one instance of this kind I will close this article. B. F. H. while in prison, wrote several essays on the sin of intemperance, to which he had been given, and delivered an oration on the subject in the prison chapel; and he professed to have been thoroughly reformed. Through the influence of his friends he was pardoned, and the journal of the prison contains the following entry in respect to him;—"Benj. F. Harwood pardoned—returned at night—DRUNK."