Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]) 1852-1859, 1853-04-29
ABOLITION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC..
M Luc1AN MINOR.
{ TO THE PEOPLE. OF yIRG mia.

FELLOW CITIZENS I'll claim your attention, up
on subject the most vital to your interests, of
oil mere earthly subjects:-Ihe suppression of the
manufacture aud sale of Intoxicating liquors for use
as beverages. For brevity,s sake, such manufac-
ture and sale may be called THE UOR-TRAF-5
FIG. 1 invoke your love of country, and your
love of yourselves-a that is patriotic, all that is
kindly and all that is wise in your natures-throueh
your agent the legislature to abolish that traffic.
ask your heedful and thorough examination of
my averment,-thatt The enormous evils of drunken
ness can be ended byno eafthlyr means, but by
SURPRISING the Liquor Traffic. ~ *
Compare the mtschiefs produced by that traffic,
with any others which have excited the passions,
the tears, or the horrors of mankind even with
wrongs that have reused nations 10 revolt, and
made them dett rome kings, change rulers, or wage
civil wars: anil all these other miSchiefs will dwin
die into insignifcance in the comparison.
Accurate statistics leave hardly doubt, that in
Virginia, the Liquor Traffic, through it,; offspring
and agent, Strong Drink, OCCASIONS
l. Fifteen hundred deaths III every year:
2 The direct, annual expenditure of five million
dollars:
B. The loss of as much more, by bad bargains,
mismanagemen:, Time wasted, and unnumbered
nameleSs forms of ill-thrift:
A. More than two thousand declared .upers
g. The cost of above 100000 in taxes annu-
ally, to support these paupers:
6. A countless multitude of Impoverished men,
women and children, who are not avowed pauperS:
l. AT least four iiths of all the murders, theits,
roooereS, breaches OF the peace, and other crimes
and misdemeanors, that engage your courts:
8. heavy addition to your taxes by the ac-
know LEGGED legal costs of criminal prosecutions,
besides far heavier expenses Ito parties witnesses
and Jurors,) of attending courts, and of time lost
from their proper empoymests:
g. And twenty thousand habtual or occasional
drunkards.
Around every of these crimes and miste-
meanors,-arcund each Of these deaths,-around
each instance of paupersm and impoverishment,
may, around each single act of drunhenness,-
there cluster such throng of SORROWS, not only TO
the wretched inebrate but to relatives and friends,
that for ever draught of his from the so-caled
coup of Kindness it may be truly said some
human heart has felt pang. Anu far the most
numerous and most torturing of these pangs have
wrung female hearts: the hearts of sisters, moth
ers, daughters, wives; pangs of shame and grief,
or OF terror, for brothers, sons, fathers, or
husbands disgrace, or danger, outrage, ruin or
death. Search your memorieS-all who are ut all
obSeryant of human life and say, if vast ma
jority Of all the vices, and crimes OF every dye,
that have occurred within your view, are not di-
ecty or indirectly traceable TO the Liquor Traffic!
Ii the doe, The provoker, or the sufferer not at
the time under the spell of intoxicatloa--caught
in the snare of him who, for gain. 'sputteth The
bottle to his neighbers mouth to make him drunk
emf! Or, if the previous arts of those ensnarers,
inducing long previous career OF intemperance,
had not led to the criminal act? Especially, re-
cur to the instances you may have known, of un-
kindness or brutality in hush ,ndS towards their
wives and say, if nine tenths of them did not
originate in strong drink? have been concerned
as a lawyer, in more than twelve cases of appeals
made by wives to public justice, for protection
against the personal violence of their husbands:
in all of which, save one, the violence was proved
to have occurred only when the husbands were
drunk!
The wounds inflicted by that Traffic upon do.
nestle pcace-the scenes of woe it produces in
that proper home of the highest earthly blss-the
sorrow pc out upon children, brothers, sisters
and parentS-and the angui 'above all names
OF wretchedneSs' that wings the wile's heart,
when he, to whom her warm-St Young affections
were given, and round whom have constantly
chung her fondeSt hopes, Is transformed by that
Traffic TO brule, cruSheS those affections, and
bhghts those hopes; are things that in any good
mans view, far transcribed the moneyed waste
and ruin, the diseases, and even the deaths, of
which the Traffic is SO fruitful.
The characters of the men whom Strong Drink
oienest selects for its victims, greatly heghen It's
claims 10 your enmity. The warm, generous heart.
the pulses that throb with the kindliest socisl
feelingS,-the hgh-toned ami finely strung imagi-
nation,-and frequertly The powerful intellect
are far more easily seduced by the specious charms
of "good- fellowshp,''-the classical associations
that poetry has twined around the bowl, and the
meteor gores it seems 10 inspire, than is the narrow
and sordid, or the plodding and prosaic mnd-even
under equal temptations. But temptations in
thousand fold greater Swarms, and each with thou
sand-told power, beset the former class of charac-
tiers. Among brothers, therefore, the most kind
hearted and highly gifted arr commonly the most
apt TO become drunkards. And many-oh, how
many !--ot Virgna's nobleSt sons. in the Senate,
at the Bar, in Medicine, i'll various walks of schol-
arShp, in mercantile life, in Agriculture, aud in
The Mechanic Arts, have been caught in that in
visible net: have unknowingly become the bound
slaves of that nSidious Habit hose chains are al
ways "tuo fine 10 be seen and too light 10 be fet,''
until too strong to he broken and after Keeling
along the drunkard's path have staggered into The
drunkard'S grave
Now glance at the records of The Past; and see
a few of the instances in which ills immensurea bly,
smaller than these You endure from the LIQUOR
Traffic, have caused rulers to be detested, put 10
death or banshed,--or have convulsed n. tons
with civil war.
1. History has branded the "Bloody Nary of
England with everlasting infamy for her butcheries
of those who could not agree with her IN RELIGIOUS
belief. Yet the martyrs whom she butchered, in
her reign of four years, were but $50. Not one
fifth SO many die in Virginia every year, by the
Liquor Traffic And each one of these DEATHS ii
is safe to say, was preceded and attended by more
than ten times the misery that Queen Mary's exult
ing martyrs and their frenus endured.
2. A century afterwards, King Charles the First
was warred against, dethroned, and beheaded by
his people, for expressions which produced but q
single unlawful death, before the sword was OPEN
ly drawn in civil war; and which involved pecu-
mary exactions TO the amount, probably, of not
half a million Of dollars not tenth of the tax
which the makers and vendors of strong drink levy
upon you, every year!
3. The English Revolution of 1858 was OCCASION
ed by tyrannical acts of Charles son, James the
Second; which tended, indeed, towards deSpotism,
and involved many judicial murders, as well asin-
tolerabe letters upon religious freedom. But the
murders exceeded not four five hundred; and the
restraintsupon Religion had not practically carried
wretchedness into any great number of English
families.
4. Oar own Revolution had for its cause not
one drop of blood spilled; nor any large amount OF
moneyed exaction. Till the fight at Lexington,
which began the war, not one American had per
ished illegally by the hands of George the Third,
or his myrnidons And the unconstitutional taxa
ton which his Parliament practiced, or attempted,
was in itself Very trivial: merting, and meeting
resistance, only because of the principle it involved
the precedent it would have sci, of taxing us
without right. But because 1t did involve that
germ oftyranny, our ancestors rose and shook of