The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-05-01

drink at or after dinner than before it. Ii is
equally certain, however, that those who do
only one of the two are better off than those
who do both. Thus, the city man of Lon
don, who not only takes ''nips" and "pegs"
throughout the morning. but swallows great
quantity of wine with his dinner, is at dis
advantage compared with his New York
brother, who confines himself to the former
set of stimulants. With both classes, the
growing habit of concentrating the entire
business of the day into a small fraction of 1T
is, no doubt, pre- judicial. Farly-closing move
ments ale salutary in respect of saving the
physical rather than the mental powers, just
as are the organizations for shortening the
hours of labor in still humber social strata.
But with men who do their entire days
work with their heads, the more deliberately
it is done the better. Generally speaking, a
given set of brains can only healthily secrete
a given amount of thought in q stated time
If you habitually overwork the mind, or, so
to speak, over-focalize its energies, you in
duce disease. 1t is plain that many men who
do not care a straw for the exaltation of drink,
or for its good fellowship, or for its flavor,
resort to it to ''sustain" themselves while
habitually subjecting their powers to excess
sive strain. The competitions of business
are in this way sapping and running many
noble lives. And men of the world we'll know
how numerous are the cases of sudden death
in our business community-cases imputed
to "heart disease" paralysis, and the like,
that are really the result of drinking, secret
or other, which has been resorted to for the
sake of keeping up strength in the unremit-
ting and arduous battle of life.
Equally well do men of the world know
how much easier it is to point out these evils
than to correct them, to suggest remedies
than to enforce their application. The dan
gerous theory that alcoholic stimulus can be
better borne by brains that are actively and
perpetually at work-if, indeed, such stimu-
lus is not positively beneficial to such brains
has been much disseminated of late, and is
undoubtedly very mischievous. Perhaps the
temperance movement went too far, and, like
all excess, is now followed by reaction; but
whatever the influence or importance of this,
it is certain that drinking in business circles,
if less alarming among US than it was three
years ago, is still practised upon a scale
of deplorable magnitude, and that the evil
calls for serious efforts to restrain
and extirpate it. 1t is favorite theory with
many that pallatives are of doubtful service,
and ought not to be recommended. With
such thinkers, total abstinence is the only
proper cure. We, however, venture to think
that the application of more moderate treat
ment may sometimes be not unproductve of
good. If, for example, business men were to
cultivate and encourage the habit of refusing
to take anything whatever of an Intoxicating
character before dinner--supposing the dinner
hour to be o'clock or later-it cannot be
doubted an important reform might be
effected. The adoption of this suggestion,
we are persuaded, would bring benefits which
more sweeping and less practicable remedies
might altogether fail to assure.
THE GREAT DEMOCRATIC DIFFICULTY.
F~om the N. y. Herald.
The great difficulty which faces the Demo-
cracy of the nation is that of harmonizing
the Northern and Southern wings of the
party on the fourteenth and fifteenth amend
uents Leading Southern Democratic jour-
nails keep up the cry that upon these Issues
their Northern brethren must face the music.
The Mobile Register, for example, says that
while the thirteenth amendment (which
abolished and prohibited slavery is all
right, the reconstruction amendments-the
fourteenth, declaring all persons born or
naturalized in the United States citizens
thereof, and entitled to equal civil rights,
and repudiatipg the Rebel war debt, and
declaring sacred the Union war debt, and the
fifteenth amendment, establishing negro suf-
frAge, stand upon another footing. The
Southern Democracy will not recognize them;
but what do the Southern Democracy
demand? ''Nothing more," says our Mobile
Democratic contemporary, "than the national
Democracy has already conceded in the New
York Convention of 1868, when, in its plat
form, it declared these reconstruction mea.
sures unconstitutional, revolutionary, null
and void.'' This is all; but this they dc
and will demand.
Here, then, is the great Democratic diff
Guilty; and from General Grants course on the
Ku-klux question it is evident that he intends
to force the fight upon these two amend
ments, so obnoxious to the Democracy of the
South and never recognized by the Democracy
of the North. late interviewer says tha
Mr.. Stephens, of Georgia, Yiee-President o
the ''so-called Confederate States" pro
nounces the fourteenth and fifteenth amend
ments ''gross usurpations of power, passed by
force and fraud" But Northern Democratic
organ, the New York World, proposes Demo
cratic compromise upon this difficulty, wiz
That the Democracy of the nation consent t.
the recognition of these amendments unit
we have Judgment upon them from the Su
preme Court. Now if these amendments car
be carried into the Supreme Court we Cal
| understand how they can be there upse
when the opportunity offers by the simpl
process of reconstructing the court itself
| How is this?
In the Constitution the methods of adopt
ing amendments thereto are laid down, bu
| the method of the proclamation of the ratiti
fication is left to Congress. So by the laV
of s181S on the subject the Secretary o
State is empowered to make the proclamation
and under this law the thirteenth, fourteenth
and fifteenth amendments have been declares
ratified and ''valid, to all intents and pur
poses," as parts of the Constitution. Tn
thing is fixed by the voucher of the Secretar
of State; and to the Supreme Court, as to tn
rest of us, it is the supreme law of tn