The Portland daily press., 1881-02-08
[Ckristian Union.]
"a Calm View of the Temperance
Question Z,

6EoOoV1Ohs
DR.. Howard Crosby has made no little ex-
citement in Boston by his Monday lecture, "a
Calm View of the Temperance Question" The
total abstinence apostles have SO long enjoyed
the monopoly of matchmaking all temperance
men who have declined to join their church
and swear allegiance to their standards, that
they were at first dazed by an address which
indicted them as obstructing temperance re-
form, and giving practical aid and comfort to
the liquor interest. A week sufficed to rally
their forces, however, and on the following
Monday, an hour and half before the regular
Monday.lecture they crowded fremont Temple
to hear from a Rev. Mallalien prayer for
"that Rip Van Wrinkle in the temperance
ause"-certainly the most extraordinary
prayer ever offered to Boston audience-and
from Wendell Phillips philippe against
Chancellor Crosby, conceived and executed in
the best vein of an orator who is as distin-
guished for his singular inaccuracy of state.
ment and looseness OF logic as for his brilliant
diction and elegant elocution. He admirably
exemplifed the popular method of demolish-
ing an antagonist. This consists in making a
dummy of straw, hanging loosely about him
garment made up of shreds and patches of
sentences from the opponents address, put in
quotation marks, and then beating him to
pieces before an admiring audience, who are
always sure to applaud such bloodless gladi-
torial show. That Wendell Phillips, retained
to demolish the Chancellor, should begin by
travestying him was to have been expected;
that religious newspapers should represent him
ir,r ,nfta 1r;,, n;
duty is objectionable.
DIR. Crosby's position can be easily stated in
paragraph. He distinctly declared that he
did not oppose for the individual total absti-
nence from all that intoxica.es; but he con-
demned the total abstinence crusade-"the
forcing total abstinence upon the community
as the duty OF all; the putting under the ban
every one who does not follow that standard;
the insisting upon total abstinence as the only
safety against drunkenness" This total alb
stinence crusade he condemned in vigorous
Indictment as both inexpedient and immoral.
He declared it to be inexpedient be-
cause it will not and cannot secure the appro-
baton of thinking men; it refuses the cooper
alton OF all in temperance movement who
decline to acopt the total abstinence shibboleth;
1t violently wrests the meaning of the word
temperance, and perverts and belittles it from
its true meaning of self-control to the manned
and mutilated function of total abstinence from
one particular kind of beverage; it twists and
OlStOTtS scripture, anu IOrC6S 1ntO III a meaning
repugnant both to the best scholarship and to
the common sense of the unlettered reader; it
substitutes for the development of q manhood
able to judge for itself and to govern itself,
system OF external checks and artificial
rules; it proceeds by policy of bull doing and
Intimidation, endeavoring TO make unanimity
by shutting up the mouths of the other side
But it is more than inexpedient, it is immoral
1t has obstructed true, healthy, permanent re-
form; has promoted the growth of drunken-
ness; has demoralized the community by its
fanaticism and its lack OF discrimination 1t
regulates the diet of the well by the needs of
the sick, and forges for the virtuous and tenn
perate the bonds which are needed only for
the vicious and the self-indulgent; it falsely
assumes that moderate drinking leads to
drunkenness, a dogma contradicted by the ex-
perience of millions upon mil ions of the race
who have been accustomed to drink wine and
yet never knew drunkenness; it ignores all
determinations as between fermented and dis
titled liquors, liquors pure and liquors adulter-
ated; it represents all alcohol as poison, where
as science shows that there is an essential
difference between the effects of large and
small quantities of alcohol, a difference of Kind
and not of degree; it depends for moral re-
form on pledges, not on permanent change of
character; on contract, not on the moral
sense; on resolutions signed in momentary
excitement, not on principle; it debauches the
conscience by leading to wholesale making
and breaking of promises; and, finally, it in
cludes in its condemnation of wine drinkers,
as sinners, Jesus Christ and the apostles, who
customarily and habitually used fermented
wines in an age when drinking was universal
and drunkenness not uncommon, and attempts
to evade so doing by wrestling the Scriptures
with learned ignorance which is fairly splen-
did with boldness Over against the total alb
stinence system thus indicated DIR. Howard
Crosby sets the system he would have temper
ance men adopt: a discriminating system
which would practically recognize the differ
tween injurious and harmless drinks; an hon.
est system, which would deal fairly with his
tory, science and Scripture; manly system,
which would have no can't and no foolery of
orders or ribbons, degrading matter of high
principle to the hocus pocus of child's play:
system which would exclude distilled LIQUORS
from common use as a beverage, both by pub
lie opinion and by law, and would regulate the