The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1874-07-18

As the result of the chemical change which
sugar undergoes in passing downwards towards a
dead, inorganic condition, a substance is produc-
ed which has been the cause of more sorrow,
crime, and suffering, than all other evil agencies
that have afflicted the world. 1t has caused tens
ofthOusands of murders, and uncounted instances
of robbery, theft, arson, incest, and suicide it
has brought misery and want into millions of
households it has filled almshouses and asylums
with wretched victims it sends a never-ending
procession of crime-stained men and women to
prison and the gallows. What an awful indict-
ment this is to bring against a substance which
stands so closely allied in chemical relationships
to innocent sugar
Alcohol is not q natural product; it can only
result from n spontaneous change which is excited
in saccharine liquids, under the influence of q
ferment. If in the order of things this chemical
change had been impossible. the human race
would have been saved from shedding tears, the
aggregated volume of which reaches to that of q
mighty river. But alas atoms of carbon, by
drOgen, and oxygen are permitted to group them
selves in a way to form the maddening LIQUID
and the great enemy to human happiness con-
fronts us in all our domestic, Industrial, and COM
mercial relations. If, through disarrangement of
natures laws, the vinous Preventative process
should suddenly cease, and not another drop of
any kind of splrituous liquors be produced, no
sensible harm would come to any industrial or
art process, and no absolute want in medicine
would be encountered. Carefully viewing the
matter from the stand-points of the chemist,
physician, and artisan, we unhesitatingly declare
that the world, in its present advanced stage, has
no need of alcohol it Is simply convenient. but
not necessary.
Why not, then, make a determined effort to
rid the country and the world of the monster ?
Although alcohol results, as We have said, from
spontaneous changes, yet the aid of man is neces-
sary to form the various liquids containing it into
attractive and permanent beverages. The fer
mentation Of the juices of grapes and other fruits
produces alcohol, but if let alone, nature will
not allow the spirit to remain except for a brief
space of time. Nature 81 abhors not only
:" a vacuum but manifestly one of her products,
for alcohol is so unstable in its attenuated COM
binations, that if left to itself it speedily runs
down into the harmless form of acetic acid.
If man ceases to interfere in the series of nat
ural changes which saccharine liquids spontane-
ously undergo, alcohol will not survive long
enough to do mischief. Why not. then, compel
the great army of men engaged in isolating and
compounding the agent, to let it alone? Alcohol
is a poison it acts inharmoniously with vital
processes in the animal organism. In its purest
and best form, it slowly undermines the c~onstitu-
ton, and binders or arrests metamorphosis of It's
sues in its vile associations, as presented in
these modern times, it kills with the certainty,
and almost with the r%apidity, of strychnine and
arsenic. We ask again, why not attempt to ar
rest its production, and thus strike a blow at the
root of the evil? There is virtue and moral force
SAiOuSu III Ihlo SOuuIIJ u SOnpSl SOnRiCoS "
pass laws prohibiting its importation in any
form and there is virtue and moral force enough
in most, if not in all, the states to compel legis-
latures to enact laws prohibiting its manufacture.
This is the point to which we must come,
sooner or later. All the laws ever made, or that
ever will be made, conjoined with all the prayers
of all well-intentioned women Of the country,
will never stop the cravings of human appetite
or prevent its qualification, SO long as rum, whis-
key, wine, malt liquors, etc., are imported and
manufactured under the sanction of law. Alec
holic beverages must cease to exist, before the
world will be released from the terrible thraldom
which they exercise over human appetite. In
naming a remedy for the enormous evils caused
by alcohol, nothing absurd or impracticable is as
ISOLATED with the suggestion, and the time is not
far distant when the poison will be placed under
a ban, as regards its importation and manulac-
ture, which will give a forced emancipation to
the tens of thousands of slaves now in subjuga-
ton to the monster.-BoSt0n Journal Of Chem
iSfrU.