Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1857-11-05

at night-fall his dreaded return; and marked
the thrill Of horror which the approaching
sound of his footsteps sent across thei
bosoms? Have you never in thought mark
ed his rude enterance, his ferocious look, hi
savage yell, and that demoniac phrenzy, un
der the influence of which, father, husband
as he was, be drove both wife and children
forth, exposed to the wintry blast and the
peltings of the pitiless storm or, denying
them even this refuge, how he has smitten
them both to the earth beneath his murder.
Gus arm?
If you have never heretofore considered
these things, will you not now consider them,
and give up an occupation SO subversive: OF
virtue, so conductive to crime, so produc.
tive of misery? You would not willingly,
even though it were desired, you would not
directly furnish your customers with pauper'
ism, insanity, crime, disease and death ;
why then supply them with what produces
these, and more than these; more of misery
than eye hath seen, or ear heard, or than it
hath entered into the heart of man to con.
ceive? ... g.. ID.
But the sale Of liquors is your employ
ment, and it furnishes you and yours sub
sistance. Be it SO; still, is it desirable
employment? Are you willing to live, and
that your family should live, on the miseries
endured, and the crimes committed by
others, in consequence Of poisons by you
dispensed? Are you willing to receive and
treasure up the profits, which arise from the
widows tears, the orphans cries, the ma
MACS loss of reason, the conviot's loss of
liberty, and the suicides loss of life Are
you willing that death should find you still
corrupting youth, dishonoring age, and send
ing waste and want and battle into the
families of the poor; and disgrace, disease
and death into those of the rich; and sub
verting, in both, the course of nature, SO
thatin the habitations of maternal kindness,
and under the tutelage of paternal virtue, in
place of wise and good and useful men, de-
bauchees and paupers and criminals are
reared up? Are you willing death should
find you still preparing victims for the poor
house and prison-house and graveyard?
And ye, men of fortune, manufacturers,
importers, wholesale dealers, will YOU not
for the sake of the young, the old, the rich,
the poor, the happy, the miserable, in one
word, for the sake of our common humanity,
in all the states and forms in which it is
presented, will you not shut up your distil-
leries, countermand your orders, and an
uouuce the heaven-approved resolution,
mover hereafter to do aught to enell the is
sue of these waters of woe and death, with
which this young republic is already flooded?
Have you never thought, as you rolled
out and delivered to the purchaser his cask,
have you never thought how many mothers
must mourn, how many wives suffer, how
many children must supplicate; how many
men of virtue must be corrupted, men of
honor debased, and of intelligence dement,
ed, by partaking of that fatal poison, dis
pensed from you, seller, and to be paid for
as per invoice
Have you never thought what moral
blight there was to be set abroad over that
hamlet or village, where the vile disease and
crime producing contents of that cask,
drained to its dregs, was to be. palmed, un-
der the guise of healthful beverage, on the
orderly, uninformed and unsuspecting in
habitants thereof? In your own poor-hous-
es and prison-houses and grave-yards in the
beggars that frequent the city, in the loaf
ers that infest the suburbs, and in the shop
lifters and incendiaries so common in both,
you see something, indeed, but not tithe of
the whole evils which the traffic in these ac-
cursed liquors produce, sent forth, in quanti-
ties, as they are, along those extended chan
nels that connect the far-of lakes with the
ocean-along the no less extended seaboard,
and up the great valley Of the west, to every
islet and glen, over every railroad or other
avenue, to every inland village or shanty or
cabin, iuficting everywhere the same mis-
cries inflicted in the city from whence this
element of evil was sent abroad -impairiDg
the health, diminishing the vigor, and SOW
ing the seeds of death in the constitution of
the hardy laborer in the field, the ruddy
housewife in the family, and the pale infant
in the cradle-sharpening the syarice of the
trader, infaming the vengeuce of the natives,
raising the war cry amid the hunting grounds
of the wilderness, and rendering savage
life itself less secure and more comtortless,
to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and
even the regions that lie beyond them.
But it were vain to attempt to portray the
severity or take the dimensions of the evils
produced by a single cask of Intoxicating
liquors, inconsiderately- sent forth from the
warehouse of the sober, moral, and often
religious dealer, to the far-of west. or per
haps to some other continent, or to the is
lands of some distant sea, there to execute
unseen, and on beings unknown, its work Of
death-there to sadden the missionary, tc
"demonize the savage, and cause the
hopeful convert to apostatize from the faith
he had professed. These are evils, however
which God registers in the book Of his re-
membrance, and which the day of judgment
will bring to light; as we'll as those othel
evils nearer home of which we have already
spoken, and, would time permit, might still
farther speak; for at home and abroad, il
the city and country, in the solitude and by
the way side, it is not blessings, but curses