PHI LOS 0 P H Y . - Classic Works of Apologetics Online

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solute certainty. By virtue of this rule, those vices,
which are the knfY..L'n effect of drunkenness, either
in general, or upon panicular constitutions, are, in
all, or in men of such constitutions, nearly as criminal,
as if committed with all their faculties and
senses about them.
If the pri\'Cltion of reason be only partial, the guilt
will be of a mixt nature.
For so much of his selfgovernment
as the drunkard retains, he is as responsible
then, as at any other time. He is entitled to no
abatement, beyond the strict proportion in which
his moral faculties are impaired. Now I call the
guilt of the crime, if a sober man had committed it,
the whole guilt. A person in the condition we describe,
inclL--s part of this at the instant of perpetration;
and by bringing himself into such a condition~
incurred that fraction Qf the re~aining part, which
the danger of this consequence was of an integral
certainty. For the sue of illustration, we are at liberty
to suppose, that a man loses half his moral faculties
by drunkenness: this leaving him but balf hi!
responsibility, he incurs, when he commits the action,
half of the whole guilt. We will also suppo~e that
it was known beforehand, that it was an even chance,
or half a certainty, lh:i&t this crime would follow his
getting drunk. 'f!Jis makes him charge3ble with
half of the remainder; so that altog~tl)er, he is re ..
sponsible in three fourths of the guilt, which a sober
man would have incurred by the same action.
I do not mean that any real case can be reduced til
numbers, or the calCl11ation be ever made with arith ..
Inetical precision: but these are the principles, and
this the rule, by which our general admeasurement
of the guilt of such offences should be regulated.
The appetite for intoxicating liquors appears to me
to be almost always acquired. One proof of which is,
that it is apt to return only at particular times and
places ; as after dinner, in the "evening, on the mari,et
day, at tJte market town, in such a company, at