Delaware tribune. [volume] (Wilmington, Del.) 1867-1877, 1870-09-29
NUMBER 1876.
Address to the Friends of Temperance n
Delaware.



According to the report to Congress- of the
United States commissioner, there is more money
spent, or rather wasted, annually, in Delaware
for spirituous liquors, than the aggregated
amount received for all the fruits. corn, wheat,
and other staple products, exported from the
State In the county which has the least numsr-
ical strength there are seventy-fye licensed
places where alcoholic liquors ars sold. Tho
quantity of liquor sold in the Capital Of the State
which has population of 2000-amounted to
$4,000. The money wasted for Intoxicating
beverages in Delaware would more than educate
every child in the State and defray all the ex-
penses of all our Churches, Colleges, and other
literary institutions.
great outlay Of her wealth? The answer to this
question will fill volume She gets grog-shops
substituted for school houses gambling hes for
holy sanctuares. She gets prisons crowded with
criminals, aims houses with paupers and grave
yards with premature mortality. She sustains
and encourages in her midst q demon under
whose Transforming influence the kind, ,indulgent
father becomes tyrant, murderer, and the
loving mother very iend Of brutal incarnation:
a fend which takes the impress of ennobng
manhood from the face and leaves the mark OF
sensuality and brutishness which robs the
cheek of its glow OF health the eye of its lustre
the arm OF its strength, the step of its elasticity;
which enters the brain, the temple of thought,
OF the heart and takes away faith, hope and
charity, and all that is lovely and of good report
"-oh Thou invisible spirit Of wine,
II thou hast no name to be known by, let
Us call thee devil I"
We appeal to every christian minister to every
christian man and woman in Delaware to rise up
against the monster. Let christian ministers do
their duty, and the demon will cow and tremble
before the pulpit of Delaware, as did Philip OF
Macedon before the Athenian rostrum.
What are the christian people Of Delaware
doing to stem the fiery tide of intemperance
that is desolating so many homes and crushing
so many hearts j? Temperance, however unin-
teresting to some is a subject which interests
has escaped the blight and curse of the hend p
The most noble intellects of the Commonwealth
he has clouded; and the most gentle and manly
natures he has degraded; and to-day, protected
by law and sustained and encouraged by custom,
and the almost universal suffrage of society,
stands forth the grim demon, pouring out from
his poisoned chalice fiery streams Of misery
throughout the numerous communities of our
rum-cursed State.
No true Christian can be silent and Indifferent
upon subject so important to the well being OF
society reticence is reprehensible Indifference
is criminal. Here them can be no neutral
ground. Our influence is either auxiliary or OBJ
structive. We may severely animadvert upon
the traffic in alcoholic liquors, and look down
with contempt upon grog shops and grog venders
and yet do more to depress the moral sentiment
of the community in which we live and to dis
courage the great temperance reform than all the
overt enemies of temperance. There are other
places besides low groggeries where dr,inkaris
are made. 1t is solemn thought that 80 many
drunkards are homemade. The taste for alco-
holic beverages in the large majority of cases is
acquired at the family table, at social gatherings.
The low grog shop only completes what was be-
gun elsewhere. Let the wine cup be driven
from the family table, from the social circle
Let the christian people of Delaware-the infiu-
ential members of community who create public
opinion and public custom-let them by precept
and example discourage all intoxicating bever-
ages; let the principle of total abstinence from
everything that inebriates, be adopted by all the
churches and families, and respectable citizens
of the State, and soon every grog shop will be
closed, and Delaware will be redeemed from the
curse and degradation of intemperance.