In a sermon entitled, " On Dissipation," by John Wesley, published in 1788, he opens his discourse with this statement: " Almost in every part of our nation, more especially in the large and populous towns, we hear a general complaint among sensible persons of the still increasing dissipation. It is observed to diffuse itself more and more in the court, the city and the country." During the close of the same period this country was given over body and soul to the alluring power of inebriation. Intemperance

Il8 NEW YORK STATE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.

was the rule rather than the exception, as it has bcome in our day. Occasions of birth, marriage and death were alike considered appropriate to the free indulgence in liquor, and all classes participated in the drinking, even clergymen joining in the conviviaiities with little or no forfeiture of dignity. Social distempers, like those of the body, are accompanied by the agency of restoration. The sick man, debilitated and suffering from the violence of his symptoms, seeks bis bed and calls his physician, thus placing himself in the most favorable attitude for recovery. Were it not for the realization of his distress, he might, in default of rest and medicine, hurry himself into the grave. So, within some of the more morally sensitive souls of the country, commenced to be experienced an unhappy sense of our degradation and depth of misery. Cries of warning and expostulation began to be heard in the land. One of these rose higher than the others, even echoing down through the years to our own time. It was that of Dr. Benjamin Rush, of Philadelphia. Standing in relation to Dr. Clark as of a voice crying in the wilderness, his work in the field of temperance merits more than a casual remark.