Litchfield enquirer., 1880-02-26
Temperance Progress.

| losses. Nowhere do estimates differ nor, widely from realities than in the vast variety of opinion regarding Temperance progress One season brings an apparently wonderful advance; others are full of relapse. At ont time everything seems gained; at another lost. To many of us the times now seen worse than the times before the Crusade anG the Blue Ribbon movement. Yet, in all prob ability, an advance-though perhaps not 6 great advance--has been made.
 Our chief source of discouragementis is the re- lapse of the reformed" Yet what else ought we, who preach the gospel of Total Abstinence, tc have expected? That has happened which the experience of all time, which our own the ory of Temperance, even, had taught us to ex- pect If this fearful vice were not so insidi- ous in it's approaches that it's victim seldom appreciates his danger till too late; if reform were not the exception, relapse the rule; there would be no need of Total Abstinence. The necessity of so extreme measure of reform is based upon the two fundamental facts: 1st, that of all moderate drinkers certain pro- portion-and that large one-will surely be- come drunkards; 2d, that, of all drunkards, but a small proportion can ever be reclaimed. 1 In the heat of a Temperance revival even the coolest of US lose sight of these facts. As renounces his sin. we forget that the inexora- ble law of our physical being cannot be set | aside in any such nasty way. Sympathy, prayers and entreaties, his own best efforts, can but seldom avert the drunkard's doom. The revival reprieves, it cannot pardon him. 1 We all knew the general law, yet we somehow expect that it will not be enforced against our own friends, our own neighbors; and as they | fall under it's memorable decree, and Temper ance scores no more gains, but only loss on loss, we grow first Respondent, then hopeless.
 Yet, after all, the failure of the Revival l considered as measure of reform-preaches Total Abstinence more effectually than it's success. It is because Reform proves 90 hope less that we turn to Prevention as our only sure reliance. Out of these repeated, stinging defeats grows up that abhorrence of any pal
 
 basis of Total Abstinence. When community sees all it's women and most of it's best men shun drink, they shun it, too, involuntarily as it were. The young-so shrewd to follow the practice, not the preaching of their elders imbbe wholesome dread of indulgence. Gradually habits of conviviality give place to habits of infrequent indulgence. Those who would otherwise tread the dangerous path of the moderate drinker are warned off by pub- lie opinion they obey, even when they do not fully understand it.
 Amidst the discouragements of single year let us reassure ourselves by look at the pro- gress of fifty years. It is in just estimate of this great, if not steady, improvement that we shall find OUT best encouragement. No na- tion ever became suddenly temperate; yet no nation has ever come nearer accomplishing that impossibility than ours. The last quar- ter of the Nineteenth Century has discovered no secret of safe indulgence unknown to the first It has simply suspicion-as yet no cSnviction-that there is no safe indulgence. Fully as large proportion of moderate drink CTS go down to druukards' graves, as ever !; but now there are millions who fear moderate indulgence, where, half a century since, no one was afraid. The sum of progress may be inferred from the single fact that, in 1895 Temperance meant moderate drinking; ia 1875, Total Abstinence. Yet we Temperance folk | fill the air of these better times with our ia. mentations! Herbert Spencer chooses the Tee. totaler as special instance of the propensity of reform to exagserate the evil with which it | deals:
 Tn generations not long passed away, so- briety was the exception rather than the rule | d man who had never been drunk was rari- | ty. Condiments were used to create thirst l glasses were so shaped that they would not stand, but must be held till emptied; and 8 mans worth was in part measured by the num- Der of bottles he could take in. After a re- action had already diminished the evil among the upper and middle ranks, there came an open recognition of the evil; resulting in l Temperance societies. which did their share towards further diminishing it. Then came the Teetotal Societies, more thorough going iu their views, and more energetic in their acts | WHICH ndRt Uctu Guc cFlI Stlll lcoS Such has been the effect of these causes, thai for long time past among the upper classes the drinking which was once creditable has been thought a disgrace while among the lower classes it has greatly decreased, anG come to be generally reprobated. Those, how ever, who carry on the agitations against it have had their eyes more and more widely opened to the vice, and assert or imply in thei speeches and actions that the vice is not only great but growing Having in the course of { generation much mitigated it by their volun tary efforts, they now make themselves believe and make others believe that it is too gigantic to be dealt with otherwise than by oppressive enactments Maine Laws, and Permissivt Prohibitory bills. "-TAe Study cf Sociology page T.
 Such an estimate from a calm, not over friendly looker-on, and referring chiefly to country where Total Abstinence has made ia less headway than in the United States, can not but encourage us to hope that another hal century may carry us as a nation far along to wards the goal of prevalent total abstinenc practice.
 One of the finest houses we have lately seer is the new residence the Hon. Frederick E | I'll, hoe h,,;l ;x,n