Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1858-10-14

We hope our people will heed the article Civ
en- below from the Worcester, Mass, Palladium
and apply it to Vermont DIS well as Massachu-
sets
We are killing our Irish population with
rum not as a body, for there are very many
worthy men among them, who are temperate,
industrious and thrifty but yet in numbers
sufficiently large to prompt the inquiry whether
any means can be adopted to stay this tide of
evil. 1t is scarcely beyond the truth to say that
ut this time, four-ffths Of all the prosecutions
in our criminal courts, and four-ffths of all the
inmates OF our prisons, are Irish. Yankees, it
is believed, furnish the great proportion of the
intoxicating liquors, and pocket the profits of
the manufacture and sale while the Irish are
very largely the victims Of its use, and suffer
the hard penalty of indulgence.
Looking at this matter aside from its bearing
as u question of morals, the rejecting portion
of our community can not fail to discover that
rum is making fearful ravages among our Irish
population. The Irish are here, and have the
right under our laws to be here. The great
body of them have com here within the last
quarter OF a century and their labor has made
Its impress upon every side of us. 1t is seen in
the deep cuttings and heavy embankments Of
our railroads, and wherever hard manual labor
had to be performed. If the Irish had not been
here, this great amount of hard work would
have been the lot of those born upon the soil
and would have prevented that diversion, which
has taken place, Of native labor to mechanical
employments, and industry Of other character.
The class of labor to which the Irish energy has
been devoted, will make its demands hereafter
as heretofore. Ii must be performed by some
body and what Patrick does not do, Jonathan
must. 1t is therefore II great question of econ
omy, regarding it in its lower aspects, whether
the Irish population shall be kept in good work
ing condition, or be suffered to waste their time
and their energies, and cut short their lives, in
the pernicious habit of dram-drinking.
But it is not alone the waste Of the Irish en-
orgies that makes a part in the consideration of
this question, Every taxpayer is affected by
it, and has an Immediate interest in it for the
road to ruin" which rum-drinking opens to
all who are cursed with the habit, ends at the
poor-house gate and whoever travels to that
point, becomes the guest of the public, and lives
at the expense of the sober and industrious por-
ton Of the community. 1t matters not in what
form that charity is dispensed at the parish
poor-house, the state alms-house, or to the beg
gar ut the door.
In this city, and not here alone, the desola-
ting effects Of rum-drinking are seen on every
side. Its victims almost march in columns to
the prison while they who produce the evil,
hide themselves in their secret places, and es-
cape the punishment which the law provides for
the wretchednoss they produce. We have no
indiscriminate censurcs to bestow upon police
officers, for we know something of the multiGl-
rious difficulties there are in the way Of cutting
up the liquor traffic, and of bringing to justice
those whose pathway through the world, is
blackened with the misery they have produced.
Whatever the community can do to stay this
great evil, and eradicate it from our midst, that
it should do not alone by talking by decla-
nation, or by printing, but by high resolve for
manly work for the suppression of the evil. 1t
is due to that large class of our Irish popula-
ton, (womcn as well as men, whose daily life
is scorched with the flame Of intemperanca to
the youth, born upon the soil, whose opening
life is besot with these whitening temptations
upon every side and not less to that good name
which it is the glory and the interest of every
community to maintain.