The Mighty Destroyer Displayed (1774)

AUTHOR: Benezet, Anthony

KEYWORDS: Abolition, diet, food, labor, morality, religion, slavery, temperance

Alcott, William. "The Causes of Intemperance”
---. Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills and Powders
---. "Half-Century Notes"
---. "Temperance in All Things"
Stevens, Lillian M. N. “Address of the President”

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen)

In this pamphlet, Benezet provides an early example of an argument for veg*nism, based on both religious and health reasons, that was ubiquitous in nineteenth-century social reform literature: the advocacy of Temperance including a simple diet. Benezet is concerned with “fermented distilled spirituous liquors” (4), “their effects on the human frame” and, particularly, the “excessive and indeed mistaken use” of them (3). He advises against a “too plentiful use of wine, beer, strong liquors and flesh meats” (42).

Benezet cites a number of physicians on the deleterious effects of, and diseases caused by, alcohol. He claims that alcohol abuse has become so rampant that “God's severe fatherly correction” is to be feared soon (10): "thousands and tens of thousands perish every year by distilled spirituous liquors” (11). Benezet directly links alcohol abuse to slavery because it is, “in a great measure, through the introduction of those infernal spirits, that the poor negroes have been as it were bewitched, and prevailed upon to captivate their unhappy country people, in order to bring them to the European market” (12). Spirits are detrimental to “humanity, virtue, and the real welfare of mankind, both civil and religious” due to “weakening the faculties, enervating the bodies of men, but also in debasing the species, and shortening the lives of multitudes” (14). Spirits are detrimental to work and labor, but the “most afflictive and dreadful effect” for Benezet is religious, for spirit-drinkers “become prophane and abandoned, and to the last degree regardless of their duty to God and man; the feelings of the mind are gradually benumb'd, and an insensibility to the healing influence of religion ensues” (15). While Benezet allows for moderate use of lesser alcoholic beverages like beer and cider, he promotes water as the best and healthiest kind of drink. He considers coffee and tea to be permissible, even useful to a certain extent.

Benezet calls for individuals to discourage the use of spirits in their communities and for legislators to regulate it, for example by means of high taxes (44-45). He ends the pamphlet by enumerating a series of “GENERAL MAXIMS,” the first of which calls for temperance combined with simplicity in diet: “Nothing conduces more to health and long life, than abstinence and plain food” (47).

 

Last updated on July 25th, 2024

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