The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1874-06-25
From the Hancock Jeffersonian.]
A Temperance Sermon.

If anything was wanting to prove the
corrupting influences of the whisky traf-
fc, it was supplied in the action of the
Grand Jury, which recently held its ses-
sion in this place. Never was such an
array of evidence presented before a
Grand Jury in this county. Nearly one
hundred witnesses were examined, whose
testimony bore directly upon the sale of
liquor in violation of the law. Minors
testified to buying whisky and beer, Civ
ing place and date; men who were in the
habit of getting intoxicated testified to
buying whisky, in short, there was over
whelming evidence presented that the
laws of the State were daily violated in
the saloons and whisky shops of Findlay.
In the face of all this, and regardless of
their oath, the law, or common decency,
a controlling number of that jury refused
to bring to just account every one of
those men who are tramplIng the laws of
the State under their feet. We say a
controlling number. We need not be
more specific, nor need we so much as
intimate who of the Is would be most
likely to strive to defeat the ends of the
law by allowing the dram seller to go un-
whipped of justice.
Those who visit the drinking saloons
ten or dozen times a day, while sitting
as grand jurors, and who have been seen
reeling and staggering through streets,
are not just the kind of material to make
conscientious grand jurors, and one dram
of whisky with them will drown a great
many qualms of conscience.
We may also remark that the Sheriff
might have shown himself trihe more
particular in his choice of men to fill va
cancies on the grand jury. The men
chosen by him to sit on that grand jury
are notoriously opposed to the enforce
ment of the law of the State against
dram selling.
There is a law of the State of Ohio
against drunkenness. Some of the men
who sat on that grand jury have been
known to openly and repeatedly violate
that law. Now, we ask the law abiding
citizens of Hancock county how they
like the spectacle of a drunkard being
set to deal out justice to the man who
sold him the liquor. 1t is time that the
people were awaking to the fact that the
power of whisky, intrenched in society,
in business in our grand juries-aye,
even on the bench itself, is setting at de-
fiance and trampling under foot the
laws of the State. If such instances of
the power and corruption of the liquor
traffic be allowed to pass by unheeded,
we shall soon be in the power of the law.
breakers, anu res peCIdolS peOPlS VIII AS1fO
no rights that dram sellers and beer jerk
ers are bound to respect.
We have said this much in no ill-feel-
ing to any member of that jury. There
were nine or ten men therein who strove
earnestly to do their duty, and who went
to their homes with bowed heads because
of the record forced upon the jury by
five or six, whose love of whisky out
weighed their love of justice, and whose
appetites, associations and preudlces
blinded them alike to honor, ,decency and
Justice We. do not envy any of this i'm
mortal six their conciences, and our ear
nest prayer is that God, in mercy, viii
spare our county the affiiction of another
such grand jury.