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Front Page  Titles (by Subject) TO WILLIAM WILLIS. - The Works of John Adams, vol. 10 (Letters 1811-1825, Indexes)
TO WILLIAM WILLIS. - John Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 10 (Letters 1811-1825, Indexes) [1854]Edition used:The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856). 10 volumes. Vol. 10.
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TO WILLIAM WILLIS.
Quincy, 21 February, 1819.
I thank you for your address to the New Bedford Auxiliary Society for the suppression of Intemperance, which I have read with pleasure and edification. It abounds in ingenuity and information; it is eloquent and pathetic, it is pious and virtuous; it addresses itself to the understanding and the heart. A drunkard is the most selfish being in the universe; he has no sense of modesty, shame, or disgrace; he has no sense of duty, or sympathy of affection with his father or mother, his brother or sister, his friend or neighbor, his wife or children, no reverence for his God, no sense of futurity in this world or the other. All is swallowed up in the mad, selfish joy of the moment. Is it not humiliating that Mahometans and Hindoos should put to shame the whole Christian world by their superior examples of temperance? Is it not degrading to Englishmen and Americans that they are so infinitely exceeded by the French in this cardinal virtue? And is it not mortifying beyond all expression that we, Americans, should exceed all other and millions of people in the world in this degrading, beastly vice of intemperance?
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