The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-10-04

10 70 become wine-drinker5 themselves
10 may be- therefore, that II is the duty, as
social beings, even OF those VINO are themselves
secure against the commission OF excess,
to give il up altogether. But this is moral
duty for the performance of which men are
accountable to God and not TO society. Society
cannot, without opening up an immense held
for the most Odious and mischievOus tyranny,
take legal precautions against my retraining
from acts in themselves harmless, simply be-
cause there is possibility that the influence
of my example on others whom do not know
and have never seen may be injurious. The
real reason why ther is this strong tendency
towards moral legislation seems to US, we con
tess, to be the great ease with which it
enables social retOrmers to perform what
they feel to be then duty towards their
telow.men. There are few persons of intelli-
gence and education who are not troubled
every day they rise by the feeling that they
do too little for the promotion of human hap
plness and virtue, tia, IN the great war against
vice and misery, on which the elevation of the
species depends, their arms are seldom or
never raised to strike. Even the most be-
sOtted votary Of fashion feels now and then
little twinges Of Temorse when he sees how
much drunkenness and poverty and ignorance
and vice there is about him, and thinks how
little he does to lessen il. OF course, the more
highly cultivated PERSONS moral nature, the
acuter will these pangs be. The Republican
party, like every other party the great aim of
which is the embodiment of a great moral idea
in the national pOlity, contains great numbers
of people to whom the evils of society are a con-
slant source OF seltreprOach, and who feel that
they cannot wait for what is called progress
to remove them, that something must be done
at once. Now, the sims slest thing to do is To
get an act passed forbiCding this and That, and
send the policemen to execute it. more
convenient mode Of making society what it
ought to be can hardly be imagined. The re-
former in this way stays at home or attends to
his business, and does his share in the work
by drawing his check when the tax-gatherer
comes round.
We make bold to say, however, that this is
not the way in which God intended the work
to be done, and that it is not the best way
either for the enemies of vice or for its victims
OF nothing are we more firmly persuaded than
that those vices which do not involve direct
injury to person or proper or public decency,
such as can be proved in court of Justice, are
to be put down by the voluntary efforts of
those who hate them working through pure
living, pure literature, pure teaching, through
the constant practice of humanity, through
care in the education of children - the
abundant supply for the poor and
weak of refining and civilizng influences.
We believe that those rich men
who have invested their money in the lodging
house for working-women which was opened
the other day in New York, have done more
for the suppression OF vice in this city than
the most stringent and effectively executed act
they could get passed against houses of pros
titution; and the Christian philanthropists
who will provide the married poor with decent
abodes will strike a heavier blow against
than all the liquor laws in exist
ence. 1t is through agencies of this sort that
the race has been raised from barbarism into
and it is through these that it
must be raised from material civilization into
light. The mills of God grind slowly, no
doubt, but they grind better, we may rely
upon it, than any of the patent machines
which are prepared by State Legislatures.