Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1858-01-28
Cemplrm1e 1Natter.
THE ENGLISH CLERGY---PROHI
BTTION

Some of the abicst clergymcn OF the Old
World have committed themselves strongly
in favor of prohibitory laws. The Rev.
C. T. Fox, of Durham, recently delivered
powerful discourse on the subject. We
make the following extract:
"There never was social evil of such
stupendous magnitude as the liquor traffic.
In every village, in every town, in every
street there exists class of men, the pests
of society, the source of nearly all our suf-
fcrings, who are busted, day by day, in man.
ufacturing drunkards, in destroying the
morals of the people, in seducing husbands
from their homes, in dealing out poison to
women and helpless children; class to
whose nefarious practices we trace up more
than three -fourths of all the crime, the pow
erty and misery of our land; a class except
for which we might all but close our jalls,
our penitcntaries, our lunatic asyiums, our
poor houses. And yet we extend the sacred
pgis of law over this class of society, which
has done more to corrupt the morals and
destroy the happiness of mankind; to reduce
the affluent to poverty, the poor to rags and
misery; which has done more to create dis
case and shorten life, than all the wars of
mankind that have ever devastated this fair
world; than all the murdcrcrs and thieves that
ever perpetrated crime.
"Gather together in one great mass, all
the misery Of the human family, and cast it
into the scale, against the accumulated sor-
rows of our own nation caused by the ira
ders in liquor, and it will kick the beam.
And yet We sit still and do nothing
Do nothing did | say? Ia the name of COM
mon sense, would it were so! But VIC pur-
sue our infatuated course, hold brewster
sessions, granting new licenses, lending the
sanction of law to the spreading evil and
then We have up before us the unhappy vic,
tins of our guilty laws, and punish those
whom we have first lent our sanction to de-
prave. Such is the virtue, and such the
wisdom of our laws, as they now exist, in
reference to the liquor traffic High time
they were swept away.
"Can greater absurdity be conceived
than this, as perpetrated by an intelligent
people The very men who know and ac-
knowledge the public c-house to be the source
of we'll nigh all the misery and crime Of our
land, our magistrates body of educated
men-meet together one day to license the
drunkard maker in the pursuit of his uefa-
rious practices, and those same men come
together the next day to punish the crimes
of their unhappy victims And then we hear
them complain of our crowded gaols, and the
increase of crime throughout the land. But
there is one thing We never hear Of, their
protest against the public house as the nur-
sery of crime, nor yet thcil petitions to sup
press the liquor traffic. Cannot our great
Unpaid Magistrates of the land connect
these two things together-cause and effect
And instead of wasting their time and the
national resources in Furnishing crime, in the
vain attempts to cure the ecH effects, direct
their attention to the causc, aud sweep a.
way with the besom of sound legislation ? This
is what we ask for, this is what the United
Kingdom Alliance aims at, and this it what |
conceive every earnest Christian should use
his utmost efforts to accomplish"
When the ministers of the Gospel gener-
ally will speak out fcarlessly in this way, the
day of triumph will soon come. Until they
will lead the way, but little progress may be
expected.