The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1873-06-07

often ignorant or brutal husband. Ole
laws are like many other old things, age is
about all that is honorable about them, and
while we have the laws of the age of Rich.
ard II. We have an entirely different set OF
ideas.
To-day woman through the press is do
ing more to change the ideas and laws OF
the English speaking world than its legis-
lators are doing. Woman's influence to-
day is not a theoretical abstraction but a
fact too plain to dispute. Such being the
fact, that as her position has improved
nations have improved we have no need to
fear her influence in the future. We know
that England is not TO day what she was
when the savage idea of female submission
secured permanent place in her laws, nor
what she is destined to become in future
years.
| Womans power for good or ill being so
plain, the social reformer must be short
sighted, who is not willing, not only to
use, but as far as possible to increase that
influence. Ours is an age of activity when
age makes nothing sacred, but the thought
of the times is busy demanding reason
for the faiths that have controlled the
world in the past; an age when reverence
is about extinct. The faiths and ideas of
the past are being called to account and a
reason demanded why they so long control
ed the world. While the contest goes on
between the conservatism of the past and
radicalism Of the present, while iconoclas-
tic science is busy breaking old idols it is
of more than passing interest to inquire
what sort of ideas the coming years are to
hold.
Our century has written Il record the
strangest of any since history first took
But we deal with the present and future;
not with the past, although from the past
we may gain ideas for the future. Any
one conversant with the literature of the
the fermentation of parties, social and po-
litical, the growing discomfort, the steady
grasping after something beyond them
that thinkers of all ages, classes and sexes
exhibited. Utility is the test of merit,
nothing that is not beneficial can secure
any steady appreciation, nothing that can
be turned to account is allowed to go to
waste, no one that can toll is long allowed
to remain idle; in the process of improve
ment all have mission, all can help. One
great triumph is scarcely won until prepa-
ration is made to attack some other sys-
tenn of wrong. We have grown up with the
anti-slavery contest going on around US,
but before that is finally settled other ques-
tions equally radical are coming up for set
Element. Woman's position and the tenn
perance reform are now the active ques-
tions before the thinking world.
The public now care little who first ate
the forbidden fruit; what Paul said of the
Greek women (made ignorant and debased
by law whether Christ turned water into
champagne to be real pain to the guests at
Cana next morning, whether the " strong
drink p" that Moses directed Israel to buy
and drink that their hearts might be mer-
ry, was benzine or stryehnne whisky,
warranted to kill any one who was not
iron clad and fire proof, or whether the
little wine that Timothy was directed to
take for his stOmach's sake y was of the
choicest Italian vintage-made out of CT
der, logwood, vitriol and burned sugar
A more important problem is to find some
way to check the spread of Drunkenness
We are losing faith in the old fashioned
idea and cast iron creeds of the past and
substituting materialism instead-the god
of the nineteenth century is utilitaranism.
One of the inevitable results of our ac-
lants. We do not mean to say intemper-
ance is becoming worse than formerly, al
cohol has had reign of a thousand years,
and during the whole of that time has
alike paved his path with skulls. 1t is no
doubt true that there is less honesty in
the alcoholic traffic than ever before, but
this only makes the poisons sold all the
more dangerous. Drunkenness is bad
enough still, but drinking is less common
than it once was. A few years ago public |
opinion expected nothing but that all
should drink; now it to some extent repro |
bates drinking habits. Some appreciate
progress has been made, but it is only with |
sadness that we note the countless young
men whose days and nights are spent in
drinking; in spending their patrimony or
earnings in a fiery liquid to steal away the
little brains that they may possess; wher-
ever we may turn drinking dens abound
and all have their customers. The hus-
the price of his children bread, and trying
to crush the hopes and peace of the wife
who once loved him, and who now watches
through the weary night for the step that
once gave gladness, but now can only bring
sorrow and dread Of brutality inseparable
from the wife of the drunkard.
Nothing seems to thinking mind strang-
er than some of the facts of every day life:
how in this restless, nervous life of ours,
men may be found to drown every hope in
drink, but how they can take from their
children, for whom before God of Justice
they are bound to care, the price of bread
is stranger still. At times some fact occurs
that seems to intimate that Darwin is not
FOOL but facing some of the facts of daily
life we must write him down as a traitor,
not alone to humanity but vile lbeller of
the animal world. No gorilla ever yet
stole the cocoa nut from its young and
sold it for the means to make itself crazy
enough to beat its mother, no chimpanzee
ever yet drank up reputation, honor, hope
and faith in order to fill dishonored grave
Darwinsm must be false, we should be
ashamed to believe it and ever face a mon
key again. The stories of Genesis have
their confirmation in the history of the
race ever since. Adam yielded to his APP
petite in Eden, and Noah went on a spree
as soon as he got out of the Ark; while
the only good man in Sodom has the cur.
tain fall upon him drunk and guilty of
crimes that would disgrace at present the
oc