Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1872-12-20
suit him individually before they lay
upon him the obligations of law.

Inls glorious and grand America
Oh, may every blessing in the bosom
of God come down upon her imperial
and more than imperial head and
heart!-this great land, this noble con.
stitution of freedom will not impose q
law upon the least of you, her citizens
unless she first asks that man, by his
vote at the hustings, whether that law
is to be made or not; she will not as
much as nominate civic magistrate
to rule, until she first asks your own
opinion; and it is for you to decide
who shall be your Governor. She
takes into her grand republican council
every citizen of hers and converts him
into a law-giver. Is it not so? Was
ever, since the world was created-wa
there ever more magnificent sight
than so many millions of freedmen
living in harmony and peace together
and no man abusing the freedom thai
this glorious country gives him?
[ said no man abusing his freedom
| must alter that expression. There is
one man who abuses that freedom-one
man who is a living reproach to the
very liberty he abuses and to the State
that owns him, and that one man is
the drunkard. He, above all other
men, insults the genius of liberty by
his own act, by freely and willfully re-
signing his personal liberty and becom-
ing slave to the vilest and most ty-
rannical passion that ever yet asserted
itself in the blood or body of uan.-
There is no man who is so thoroughly
a slave as the unfortunate drunkard
there is no man who cannot resist his
passions sometime or other but the
drunkard. And why? Because there
is no form of sin that excludes the
counselling voice of reason-there is
no form of sin that excludes the whis-
per of conscience, except that one sin
that destroys reason, paralyzes the con-
science, takes away the soul, and leaves
only the brutal body with its base de-
sires behind. Again, my friends, he
not only abuses the liberty he enjoys,
but he makes himself, by this accurs-
ed drunkenness, incapable Of aheyiag,
of approaching, or even of making the
law. The word law-that is to say,
the rule that is to govern the whole
community-means the expression of
Judgment and reason, meditated pro-
foundly, scientifically and practically
for the public good-for the good Of
all men. It is, therefore, an intellec-
tual fact, the existence of law. Why
is there no law among the inferior an
imals? Because there is no intellect
among them. Why is it that in them
the necessary instinct takes the place
of the dictates of intelligence prescrib-
ing freedom? Because they have no
intelligence of freedom. Therefore,
that vice, above all others, is the enc
my of law which destroys the reason
in man-which annihilates his judg-
ment and leaves him incapable of
knowing what the law says to him;
incapable of obeying it, and above all,
leaves him incapable of defending it,
whenever that law which is the palla-
dunn of liberty is attacked. What is
the consequence? You might as we'll
endeavor to set up Republic or free
State among the hogs down in Ohio,
or out in the West. You might as
we'll get these hogs together and say:
''Now, hogs, elect your President for
yourselves; elect your Mayors, elect
your Senators and Congressman; make
your own laws; it will be hog law to
be sure, but it will be good enough for
you've leave you perfectly free, we've
been in the habit of taking you to Gin
cinnati and Louisville and all these
places, killing you in the fall season,
and sailing you in the winter; there is
to be an end of that; no man in the
future must touch even a pigs tail
there must be an end to eating bacon,
ham, and all these things; hog is a
most respectable. citizen, with his own
liberties and his own empire" You
might as we'll say that and expect the
hogs or the cattle to act upon it as to
collect together a nation of drunkards,
and say to them, eve give you your
liberty, to make your own laws" .
They would be as incapable of it as
the brute-b beast that has neither intel
lect, or will, or freedom.
And have we not melancholy in
stances of this? Who have destroyed
nations? The drunkards Who are
the enemies of the State wherever it
exists? The drunkards? Who have
sapped the foundations of freedom and
made it degenerate into tyranny? The
drunkards. When Rome was in the
very climax of republican strength and
and power; when the last great con-
test approached and the question was
to be decided whether the Roman peo-
pie were to retain their precious re-
publican liberty-won for them by the
arm of a Brutus, by the virtue Of a
Cato, by the bravery of a Scipio, by
the heroism of a Fabricius, by the
grand wisdom of a Cincinnatus; wheth-
er it was question to retain that lib
erty or to lose it, and bow down their
republican neeks under yoke most
CALLING, that of Caesar, ancient Rome
Id nL 4. L.