True American. [volume] (Steubenville [Ohio]) 1855-1861, 1855-09-05
HIGH-LIFE DRUNKARDs.

"Shut up the Io,o groggerics," says
many: "prevent the sale of bad rum
preserve the poor and ignorant from in
temperance, and We are with you; but the
educated class need no law; regard for
their own character is a sufficient protec-
tion to them" Strange delusion !-Inex-
plicable blindness to the facts of history,
and the occurrences of every day! With
out referring to books, memory illustrated,
supplies us with a catalogue Of well-known
names, the bare mention of which, refutes
the plea we have quoted.
Alexander the Great, one of the bright
est spirits of antiquity, one of the three
greatest generals of the world, whose tu-
tor was Aristotle, who slept with the poems
of Homer under his pillow, conquered the
world, and died of drunken debauchee,
in the thirty. third year of his age.
The fall of the Roman Empire was pre-
cipitated by the drunkenness of its en-
perors; as human nature was eternally
dishonored by the enormities committed
by shem in their drunken fury
Of the ten sovereigns who have rel On
ed in Russia since the accession of Peter
the Great, all but four were beastly drunk
ards, Of the Empress Elizabeth, it is
written: "She was completely brutalized
by strong liquors--from day to day she
was almost always in state of bacchie
ecstacy--she could not bear to be dressed
in the morning her women loosely at
tached to her some robes, which few cuts
of the scissors disengaged in the evening"
And the passage gives an idea of the gen.
eral condition of the Russian court for
more than twenty years.
The present King of Prussia, whom
Neibular instructed and praised, thanking
God on his knees for giving Prussia so
wise and noble a prince, is a notorious
drunkard, the contempt of his subjects,
the scoff of Europe.
The late king of the Sandwich Islands,
upon whom corps of missionaries ex-
hausted their eloquence and skill, was a
drinking caricature of the kingly Office to
the last.
The city of Washington, where the elite
of the nation are supposed to cougregate,
is the most drunken town in the Union.
Champagne is one of the great powers of
the country, thing relied on to corrupt
the very men who are sent to Washington,
under the impression that they are our
wisest and our best.
Daniel Webster has been known to pre-
sent himself before the people in state
of intoxication so advanced, that he could
talk little else than gibberish. We have
seen him do it.
Some of the most important enactments
ever passed by Congress-enactment in
volving the welfare of future empires
have been passed while the floor of the
House was strewn with honorable and
drunken members.
1t was when maddened by drinking that
DR.. Graham committed murder.
Hartley Coleridge, man abounding in
amiable qualities, who inherited much Of
his fathers genius, with all his fathers
infrmity of purpose, could never master
his propensity to drink. He was schol-
ar, gentleman, poet and-a drunkard
Edgar A. Poe-but why speak of him!
The story of his miserable end, is more
familiar to the people even than the mel
ancholy refrain of the Craven"
Charles Lamb, the gentle Charles, the
kind, the tender, the beloved, could sac.
rifce so much for his sister, but could moi
help being carried home and put to bed
in insensible drunkenness.
Douglas Jerrold is a devotee of gin. Fol
many years, it is said, he has been impair.
ing his fine powers by habitual excess in
drink.
Byron, Burns, Steele, Hone and host
of other names, eminent or illustrious
might be added to the list of distinguish
ed drunkards.
Burns, we are confident, had not died in
the prime of life, defeated, broken-heart.
ed man, his destiny all unaccomplished, il
he had not beed addicted to convival drink,
ing. And who knows for how much oi
Byron's reckless verse the world should
curse the gin bottle?
In our colleges, is not the secret demi,
john one Of the perpetual anxieties of the