Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1845-12-25
Il G IN u e T. a N c.
Address to the People Of Vermont.

To the freemen Of Vermont, who, for their
Country saLs CIR ihnir osiaas danestic thrift and.
the peace Of their fresides, desire the prevalence
Of moral worth and ola frugal industry, the
Central Committee of the Vermont Temperance
Society offer a few considerations. Their
apology, if any is required, will be found in their
instructions from the respectable body they rep
resent and in the fact that on the first day of
January next one of the most important questions
is to be settled that can be submitted to the bal
lots of Freeman.
You are willing to pay taxes to a reasonable
extent and for proper objects,-for government,
for common schools and for unavoidable pauper-
ism. But if any man should propose that you
continue, one year longer, an absolutely needless
tax tor paupers and criminals of Fifty Thousand
Dollars, or any considerable fraction ofthat sum.
would you favor his proposition by your vote?
Suppose that even men of a professedly pure re-
pubIlcanism and regard for the public good
should add to this a proposal to levy an useless
subsidy, by means either open or conceaIed-by
impost or by extravagant luxury-upon the in
dustry Of the State, to the amount of tho millions
tvo hundred and fifty thousand dollars, or even
a tenth or a hundredth part of that sum, would
you be influenced by their professions, to the
costly extent of such a sacrifice? All, fellow
citizens, this, as we thoroughly believe, on proofs
that lie before both ourselves and yop, is no i'm
aginary case. Listen to one only from among
the many combinations ofthis to which we might,
but for want Of space, make ~alllsion.
Observe that like causes must be attended
with like effects when the circumstances are SUBJ
s%tantlally the same. Now the Central Com
lnittee of the Temperance Society ofNew York,
of whose high standing among that three millions
of people for truth and information no man need
be ignorant, have, of late, put forth solemnly,
and scattered all over that state the following
facts. BY an actual examination of the iails,
the poor houses and the official reports, ii is
found that there have been committed, during
the year, for crime, as follows:
GAL criminals reputed temperate,
1908 do doubtful,
1888 do Incorporate.
The whole expense $35s,O3 Sc paid by
County tax for crime The numbers above
show (even calling the ''doubtful" all 'temper-
ate" that seven tenths of the whole was for in
temperate criminals.
There were in the poor houses,
1914 paupers made so by intemperance,
1902 do doubtful,
1853 do not from intemperance.
And the County taxes for pauperism were
S272, $685. 5 of which, again, seven tenths, al
most exactly, was for the pauperims of intern
perance. And now, fellow citizens, has rum
and the rum traffic an effect one way in New
York and another way in Vermont? Or is that
which creates paupers and criminals to an extent
as the tables show, beyond all other causes uni
ted, to be esteemed productive of prosperity! In
Vermont, our poor being supported by town tax
alton, and not by county tax, it is an impracti-
cable thing to obtain those statistics directly
nor is it in fact necessary. Just such we'll au-
thenticated statements as those from New York
have been poured out by the press not from one
state alone but from many, if not half the states
of the Union, Do the men who counsel you to
cast your votes for licenses to afford convenience
to dram drinkers and to make temptations pub
lie, think we cannot read'-that we cannot ap-
ply arithmetic, or compare the relative population
ofNew York and Vermont,-or cannot Judge, in
the light of sound and accessible information, as
to the relative habits of the two masses in those
states
Again it has been estimated, as large numbers
of you already know, by men of high standing,
tvhoea charaofor cor ,,nJ.o, oaI s.G,m,ot,u,, nj
least, ifnot for truth, was involved in their state
ments, that the Union would gain, every thing
considered, one hundred and forty millions, an
nualIy, by the abolition of that traffic which our
opponents desire to be pronounced legal at your
ballot boxes. The Hon. Benjamin F. Butler,
late Attorney General of the u. s., after a care
ful estimate of the waste of bread stufs, of time
and labor &c. g., states the injury to the State
of New York alone, to be, in round numbers,
eighteen millions Of dollars.
Now employ your own judgments as to the
soundness of these data-remeinber that the
present population Of the Union is, say twenty
millions, and of Vermont, say three hundred
thousand-make your own allowances for differ
ences of habits and of morals, and say whether
Vermont does not suffer in her industrial pros
perity, to the amount of from one million to one
million and a half of dollars annually.
What say our opponents to these things,- the
men, especially, whose agency, direct or indirect,
fastens visible letters on the limbs of those who
Cannot walk steadily in consequence of %intoxica-
ton, and is felt in anguish, at the homes of the
children aud wives whose natural protectors are
ruined by alcohol 4! Why they guess these are
exaggerations They think (and with you it
rests to annul or confirm their thought) that you
will receive their guess as good paper money, at
least, in remuneration for superiuous poor taxes
and the burden on productive labor.
The entire wool crop of Vermont was, at the
last census, 100000 lbs. of which the present