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 you I call on the public press to provoke discussion and elicit truth on this most important subject—a subject intimately connected with health and morals, and with all that gives bliss or entails misery in the world to come.

The fundamental principles of Temperance Societies are however completely independent of mere human opinion. Their foundations are laid broadly and deeply in Christian charity and self preservation. If Temperance Societies do not furnish a practical comment on the 14th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, I profess myself completely ignorant of its meaning, and shall feel myself much indebted to any one who shall furnish a just explanation of the passage,—“ It is good neither to drink wine nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth or is made weak,” The most cursory observation is sufficient to convince any man that the argument drawn from Christian charity for abstaining now from the drink of Englishmen, is incalculably stronger than that for abstaining from the. drink of the Jews in the time of the Apostle Paul. But I grant too much to the opponents of Temperance Societies by allowing wine to hare been the common drink of the Jews. Every one acquainted with their history knows ta.it water was their customary beveridge ; and that though there were drunkards of Ephraim and of Manasseh, too, yet the Jews as a nation were temperate ; that wine may he used as a common beverage, as in France and Italy, and