Democratic messenger. [volume] (Snow Hill, Md.) 1869-1973, 1881-12-03
The Liquor Traffic.
GENERAL SAMUEL CARY OF OHIO DELIVERS
AN INTERESTING DISCOURSE.

In lecture on the liquor traffic Gen.
Sam Cary, of Ohio, entered into state.
ment of the evils springing from the
great fountainhead, liquor, and contin.
ned: This business cannot be regulated
by any law, humane or divine, because
it's all an irregularity. They license il
but they'll sell, license or no license.
The liquor traffic is cancer which eats
into the very vitals of the body polite,
and all your Excise laws and like meas
ures are like applying mustard plasters
to a cancer.
God himself could not license man
to sell liquor in New York, unless He
first trampled under foot all His moral
attributes. To license an evil is to be
guilty of q mons.rosity. The liquor
stores are simply finishing shops, grad
uating institutions. There are more
young men started on the road to ruin
and taken through to the devils domin-
ions in the fashionable parlors of New
York than liquor stores ever started.
Many young man dates his ruin from
the glass of wine taken from fair lady s
hand on New Years Day.
The license has been the back bone of
the whole Internal system. What do
you license men to do? To murder, to
rob, to starve his family, to prey ON So
ciety, to become an outcast, to bring
ruin upon himself and all belonging to
him. The theory is that you cannot
prevent it entirely, and therefore the
best thing to do is to license it. You
cannot prevent counterfeiting, there
fore why not license few men in each
Congressional district to issue all the
counterfeits ? There is not lawyer,
doctor or minister in New York who
can present an argument in favor of
liquor drinking that will not be used in
favor of counterfeiting.
Men say in opposition to interfering
with the tracffi Government must not
interfere with mems private business. :"
/ say as q lawyer of fifty years standing,
that that was one of the reasons why
Government was founded-to interfere
with private business that operates un-
favorably to the general interests of
the public. All we ask is that the
Government shall treat the liquor dealer
as they would the man who carries on
q business that interferes with the
public Notwithstanding, for instance
and compel him to go where he can
not so interfere. And then he'll have to
leave the country altogether. The way
to prevent mischief is by anticipating
it and removing the cause absolutely.
I believe that the good time foretold by
the Bible is to come, but it never can
come while there Is q distillery or
dramshop on the earth. Go to ireland,
to the County Tyrone, where there is q
place in which liquor has not been allowed
to be sold. and there has not been q man
in Jail there in seven years. Prayer is
very good, but God never does anything
for man that can be done in any other
way. This is O self-infiicted curse, and
we must remove it ourselves, satisfied
that God blesses our work and will
complete it when human effort fails.
It is wonderful what progress we
have made in this reform. Fifty years
ago everybody drank. When the minister
came to our house for dinner we'd have
to give him two snorts before eating.
The ladies could not have o quilting,
and the men could not raise log
building twelve feet high in Ohio
without a jugful of whisky. My
father used to kneel down and
pray: "Lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil" and then
get up and make whisky toddy, and
give it to me, boy, to drink, saying
''Takeit, Samuel, its goodfor the worms, -
] knew Presbyterian minister who at
one time had three distilleries under
his care.
The General prophesied the final
triumph of the movement as the result
of agitation. On being recalled by the
tumultuous applause of the audience, he
referred to the qualification it afforded
to him to gain applause by such efforts,
and said 81 would rather have Peter
Cooper's posthumous reputation than
all the riches of Vanderbilt or Gould!'