Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1872-12-20

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rivaled. The only man that could lifi
his intellectual brow and his mighty
arm against the schemes Of an Angus.
tus Caesar. And that man was Mark
Antony. He went with his army into
Egypt, he gave himself up to drunk
enness and debauchery of all kinds in
Grand Cairo and Alexandria. While
he was sleeping his soul in the lees Of
wine night and day until it lost all the
SAVIOR of it's natural bravery and its re.
publican freedom, Augustus advanced
upon him, and at the battle of Actium
at one fell swoop of Cesar's sword, the
record tells us, he drove the poor be.
sotted, degraded, unnamed Roman
soldier before his face as coward
What was the beginning of the reign
of that very republic. so celebrated in
story as the rival of Rome? Imperial
Carthage? AS long as her people were
sober, SO long the Roman soldier, the
unconquered legions that mastered all
the rest of the world, were only able to
stand before the terrible legion of Han
nibal.
With his army he marched down
right through Italy; he crossed the
Alps, no power could resist the great
ness of his genius and the bravery of
his men. At length their proud re-
publican soldiers went into winter
quarters in city in the south of Italy
called Capua. There they remained
for the four months of winter, drink
ing the rich wine from the grapes that
grew upon the plains of Naples by the
seashore around the base of Mount We
suvius. There they remained, these
men of iron. No sooner did they be-
gin to drink than their music, heart
and courage began to fail. Soul and
body were so shattered that when they
again came out to fight the Romans,
the first army they encountered swept
them from the feld-swept them as
the whirlwind sweeps the chaff from
the threshing floor. What was easier
then for the Roman legions to conquer
and destroy an army Of reeling, besot-
ted, unmanly drunkards? Go back
further into history. Read the histn=
ry of all the great nations that arose
and fiourished in the world and you
will find the same story over and over
again. The Medes, the Persians, the
the Armenians, the Assy-
rians. 1t was always the same story.
The State fell; society was ruined the
curse and the ruin of nations has been,
as history attests, invariably brought
down upon them by this sin, the most
bestial Of all the sins-drunkenness.
How is it in this land? How shall
it be? Before America lies future
the most glorious that God ever gave
to a people on this earth. A mighty
vast in it's dominions, and
that continent teeming with every form
of riches. A soil the most fertile, min
erals the most rare and precious, yet
Fruits and flowers ofevery
form, and beauty, and sweetness. No
thing, nothing can hinder America
from becoming a nation so great that
her mere shadow will cast the rest of
the world utterly into the shade
Nothing! except that sin, if America
have the misfortune to become the
slave to it. The sin that will rob her
statesmen of their brains, and of their
the sin that will rob her
Senators of their virtue, and of their
manly, honest independence; the sin
that will rob the people of their indus
5rious habits; the sin, in a word, that
will bring down, if America indulge in
it, which God forbid she should, the
greatest division, the curse Of rival fac
tions, the curse of clashing interests,
until thismagnifcent continent breaks
up into twenty or thirty small States,
and wastes itself in the blood Of its
best citizens, in the broils which must
Of necessity come, when the councils
are divided and weakened by the sin
Of drunkenness. [ believe that if the
guardian of America could
make his voice heard over this mighty
land intrusted to him, he would cry
out in these times as when he will call
upon the dead to rise, "People Of Amer
ica, be temperate, and God will do the
rest for you"
The master passion of my heart, af-
ter the love I have for my God, is my
love for Ireland. Therefore, I speak
as a friend, as lover, as an Irishman,
to my fellow-countrymen. This learn
ed and, no doubt, honorable English
gentleman, who has come over here to
lecture on Ireland, has said: "The
Irish have been badly treated, and they
have got what they deserved. They
did not know how to govern them
selves, and it was the mercy Of God
that some one took them in hand"
No matter what arguments Mr.. Froude
can bring forth, the strongest and the
most bitter argument he could bring
against us would be to point to the
Irish drunkards, and say: '"There they
are! there they are!-the men that are
always protesting about their griev-
ances, look at them! It is true that
we handle them without gloves, the
dirty, debauched, impoverished Irish.
Were they ever deserving of anything
better ?" All! if he is able to say this
we will have to hang down our heads