The same Subject pursued.

My dear Son,

By my former you will see, that hard Drinking is a Vice, that breaks a Man's Rest, impairs the Understanding, extinguishes the Memory, inflames the Passions, debauches the Will, lays the Foundation of the worst and most dangerous Distempers, incapacitates a Person from pursuing his Studies, and from applying to the Duties of his Calling, be it what it will; begets Contempt from the World; and even if a Man's Circumstances were above feeling the Expence, which can hardly be, alters and changes the Practiser of it from himself; and if he is not above feeling it, often reduces him to Want and Beggary: And if he has a Family, his Children, who by their Father's Industry and Sobriety might have made a creditable Figure in Life, are left to the Mercy of the World, become the Outcasts of the Earth; possibly Foot-soldiers, Livery-servants, Shoe-cleaners, Link-boys, and, perhaps, Pickpockets, Highwaymen, or Footpads; and instead of a comfortable Livelihood, and a Station above Contempt, are intitled only to Shame, Misery, and the Gallows.

And do you judge, my Son, how a Man can answer this Conduct to God, to his Parents and other Relations, to his Wife, to his Children, to himself, and persist in a barbarous and an unnatural Vice, which makes himself not only miserable and contemptible, but transmits the Mischief to his unhappy and innocent Children, if he has any.

Add to all this, That it is a Vice a Man cannot easily master and subdue; or which, like some others, may be cured by Age; but it is a Vice that feeds and nourishes itself by Practice, and grows upon a Man as he lives longer in the World, till at last, if it cuts him not off in the Flower of his Days, his Body expects and requires Liquor: And so, tho’ a Man, when he enters upon it, may be single, yet if he ever should marry, it may be attended with all the frightful and deplorable Consequences I have mentioned, and ruin besides an innocent and perhaps prudent Woman, rendering her, without her own Fault, the joint unhappy Cause of adding to the Number of the miserable and profligate Children, with which the World too much abounds, and which is owing to nothing so much as this detestable Sin in the Parents.