The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1870-11-26
temperance.

WG trtutG " 4N"ytu".
Intemperance is the giant vice of the
world. 1t creates and fosters insanity,
pauperism and crime-obstructs legislation,
and violates law-corruptS communities,
and overthrows nationalities-sins against
God, and fills perdition with its victims
Yet it lives and fattens on the fairest fruits
of the world. A cloud of witnesses,
unmoved, look on the swelling columns of
Death, whose profane affairs are yearly
furnished with a hundred thousand Offer
ings of human sacrifice.
This becomes the realization of the tabled
Maelstrom, whose fatal circlings draw alike
the frail canoe and the mighty iron clad
ship to inevitable ruin. Indeed we could
sooner tell what the fearful system does
not than rehearse the familiar story of its
actual doing.
The questions hard to solve in this awful
problem are "What to do ?" and elbow to
do it % in order that the sickening flood of
liquid fire may be stayed. The oppostions
we meet, in the worlds reform, are more
formidable from other sources than from
those Immediately interested in perpetual
ing the traffic in moral ruin. Men, high in
station, of influence and wealth, by simply
Withholding material sympathy in the
great movement, become the mighty obsta-
Gle between US and success. The burthen
of our mission therefore is not so much to
baff'e the encr0achments of the vile insti-
gators of the wicked business, as to break
the moral power of the responsibility with
which its negative friends have clothed it.
Responsibility in this, as in all other
matters, is not an assumed, but an impaired
trust, and therefore with equal weight rests
upon all men as they have the ability and
means to work for God and humanity
Responsibility, like the air we breathe, is
all around us-it is in the food we eat-we
gather harvests of it in the silent hours of
unconscious sleep-it is augmented by the
clothing that covers our minds, as well as
by the Accommodations of our frugal indus
tries. To live is to be responsible ! There
fore tonight we address no particular man,
or class of men, but appeal to all, in the
name of God whom we serve, and the race
we aim to save
1t may be asked why we single out
intemperance from the fearful catalogue of
evils that curse the world? We answer,
because this is the parent vice of all the
others. 1t is the only one that dethrones
reason, and sends the helpless human vic
tim whirling amid-air aimless, and antag=
onizing every Cody effort and impulse
at elevation and redemption. The Scilla
of intemperance is the historic Dead Sea
which leads irreversibly to the Charybdis
of utter ruin.
The subject of temperance is not new
theme-it goes back to the time of Noah
in the written history of the world. The
evils of intemperance have been read and
known of men in all succeeding decades !;
but like the offensive Alianthus tree, it has
sent out scions in unexpected directions,
and we have fruitlessly toiled to keep them
down while the roots were allowed to
remain. Christian people and wise unbe-
levers have striven through the succeeding
ages to turn this tide of Styx. Their sue
cess has been various. Something's it seemed
as if the embankment was sufficiently
high and potential to resist the flood but
it has anon broken through some weak
and neglected point, to sweep with cruelty
and death the dwellers in the plain,
before its merciless currents. The strug-
gle has been boldly renewed at each
reverse by a few brave spirits, who had
confidence in the ultimate triumph Of the
right. We have not the time, nor is it
needed, to give a detailed account of the
rise, progress and downfall of the different
organizations in this reform. Suffice it to
say, we are meeting with victory Oh every
hand at present, and the living present is
what interests u.s.
At this point the speaker gave detailed
statistical and financial exhibit of the
extent and influence of the rum power,
in its array against all the important inter
ests and agencies in Republic government
for the christian civilization and elevation
of the race. He continued.
The Reports of State SuDerintendents
show that there are two million of children
in this country, of proper age who do not
60 to school, chiefly because of the drunk
enness of their parents. They constitute
the motley army of ragged, filthy, profane
and vulgar juveniles who live out in the
streets of our towns and villages, to edu-
cate the offspring of sober citizens, in tho
vicious schooling whose terrible effects
are too frequently never obliterated by all
the care and culture of wcll-rcgulatcd
homes. In the State of Maryland, we have
one school-house to six dram shops. The
former are opened only about one fourth of
the time, lily supplied with comforts, mad
equately furnished, and niggardly sup
ported. merely to lay the foundations of
mental education, scarcely ever influencing
the moral sentiments at all, while the lat
ter are accessible every moment in the
entire year, demoralizing, and educating
downward in the scale of morals not only
regular patrons, but entire communities
Every family in neighborhood where rum
is sold as a common beverage, sensibly and
unavoidably feels the deathly contamina-
ton, in the tolerated system itself, in the
public speota6les Of drunkenness, III tho
insinuating contagion among the YOUTH
and in the general depression of all bust
ness, by the poverty of inebriates, and the
increased taxation necessary to support the
expensive luxury of 4 dram shop. The
value of property is decreased, and the
cost of insurance increased by proximity to
the places where Intoxicating liquor is sold.
Again, nine-tenths of all the young men
sent away from home to be EDUCATED at
remote schools and colleges are returned
after graduation, fearfully dissipated and
drunken, making them worse than useless
in all the practical walks of life. Would it
not be far better for them never to have a
classical education than to become such
fearful human wrecks? Thus we perceive,
our nation is under the cruel heel of the
relentless tyranny of rum, in all our cduca-
tional interests. What is worse than every
other view of the subject is that we, the
people, submit to the unmitigated wrong,
and perpetuate Its unrighteous reign by
our encouragement and support. Never
will it be any better till the masses-the
thoughtless and Indifferent masses, rise in
their strength, and crush the Tyrant
Demon by the simple force of might with
the right"
We are also the victims of rum at the
ballot-box, where, of all other places, free
men ought to be pure and untrammeled.-
1t is almost impossible to elect a man to
any office, however insignificant, who is
not an interruptions rum drinker, who will
buy his success from the ignorant and
vicious by free and full supplies of i,tox-
icating liquors. If there were half as
much consistency amolg protessed temper
ance men in the use of the ballot, as there
has always been with the {. whisky-rngs,'
our final victory-song would have been
sung generations since.
He then traced the terri BILE incursions
made by this mailed Tyrant on the SYM
metry and completeness of physical and
mental manhood, in the improvement of
every faculty and function of human
nature, thus subjccting them to the mere
manipulation of unbridled passion.
There was also presentation of the
ruthless subvcrsion of all moral sentiment
in the immortal soul, by the deadening and
unrighteous overslaughing of the savage
crusade of rum, as well as an utter defeat
of all promise and prospect of eternal sal
walton to the deluded and powcrless vic