The Yazoo City weekly Whig. (Yazoo City, Miss.) 18??-1855, 1853-03-25
THE WHIG.
FRIDAY, MARCH 25,
TO the Friends Of Temperance i'm
Mississippi.

AAaSSHSSARRAs
i Respected Sirs: The cause Of morals, vir-
tue, health and religion, with all the collat-
eral interests they involve. demand at your
hands, at this time, new, vigorous and
powerful effort for the Punishment of the
traffic in spirituous liquors within the bounds
of this State.
The legionary evils Of intemperance have
of late years, been rising up and spreading
abroad in our midst to such an extent as to
appalI the stoutest hearts Of philanthropists
and reformers. Every day adds some tragi-
cal and sanguinary evidence to the popular
Irumor that there is within our bosom an
envenomed and devouring monster, more
dangerous and more deadly than the fanci-
ed Cannibal Minotaur of Crete, whose daily
banquet is the fairest, bravest, best, and
whose appetite grows with the rich dainties
of human blood, health, peace, respectable
ity of eternal life The sale, and especially
the retail, in the ordinary Hells and Dens,
and "Holes in the WALL" of alcohol as a
beverge, has proved a more aggravated
curse and the fruitful source of more shame,
and sin, and sorrow, and ignominious death
than war, cholera, or famine. 1t is the
root, the fountain, the parent of every other
evil, vice, crime or disease. The words of
an ancient observer of these things speak
thus: '.Who hath wo? who hath sorrow?
who hath contentious? who hath babbling?
who hath wounds without cause? who hath
redness of eyes? They that tarry long at
the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine
Look not thou upon the wine when II is red.
when it givelh bis color in the cup, when
it moveth itself Alright at the last it biteth
like serpent. and stingeth like an adder;
thine eyes shall behold strange women, and
thine heart shall utter perverse things. Yea,
thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the
midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon
the top of mast. They have stricken me,
shalt thou say, and was not sick; they
have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall
I awake? will seek it yet again" Give
man strong drink, and he is set off in the
road to poverty, shame and perdition; and,
as he goes, he bequeaths melancholy in
heritance to all he leaves behind him.
1t is common remark OF the Judges of
our criminal courts in the Union at large,
that three-fourths of the persons brought
before them charged with crimes, owe their
guilt and consequent arraignment to the use
of alcoholic drinks. Drink obtained at the
common tippleries where temptation pro-
yokes participation, is generally admitted to
be the prolific cause of these evils. Proba-
bly, ffteen-twentieths of the prevailing in
temperance with which our State, as well as
others, is cursed, springs from the facility
with which it can be INDUCED in, and the
popularity of the custom of constant indul-
oence which scorns all restraint and tram
pies down the laws of God and man. 'Wo
to him whe putteth the bottle to his neigh
boris lips" But who cares for Heavens
law, in this age of prQgresss
Not only do crimes of every shade and
hue, and name, and enormity, trace their
pedigree to '.strong drink, but one of the
most eminent physicians of the Christian
era with whom thousands of others in Eu-
rope and America concur) has said, that
s'alcoholic drink is the legitimate though
often unsupported parent of jaundice, dys-
pepsia, dropsy, apoplexy, consumption. cpl
lepsy, melancholy, idiotcy, mania and mad
ness, and, as an evil. immeasurably trans
cends all the horrors and ruin of war through
out the whole earth" Besides, nine-tenths
of the pauperism generally prevalent has
been proved to be the direct result of ineb-
rity. and six out of ten persons in Insane
Hospitals and Asylums are indebted direct
" or indirectly, for their sad and deplora-
BILE condition. to the blighdng or beWilder-
ing power Of wine and its cognate forces.
Fifteen thousand scientific physicians. in
Europe and America, have united in the
testimony that alcohol is rank and deadly
poison. Nor is this all. But the makers
and vendors Of these intoxicating beverages
add poison to paison, and have SO long and
successfully aduIterated brandy. whiskey.
wines, beer, ale. and probably all sorts Of
vinous and alcoholic drinks with deleterious
ingredients. that NOT one in hundred, in
all probability. dreams OF suspects that bis
boasted drink is al bogus Counterfeit