The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1882-10-10
Moderate Drinking of Alcoholics a Prompter
of Virtue. not of Crime.
From the Evening Review.

| From the Evening Review
The best and wisest of all times and ma
| tions praise moderate drinking of wine,
| etc, for the sake of the beneficial effect it
| has on us. and because it elevates mans
mind and soul and fills him with kinder
| feeling toward his neighbor. and actually
subdues MS coarser nature. They also
condemn TOPPING drunkenness as emphati-
cally, as all respectable, decent people do,
whether they 60 by the name of temper
ancers or are prudent drinkers of alcoholic
beverages, which latter in reality are the
true temperancers, for, as we often before
have said 1.-THE man who abstains from the
moderate and, as such, beneficial use of a
thing because he Is afraid that might lead
him to excess and abuse of the same is no
man at all, and is the first one found to
fall into the extreme.
Twenty-seven years ago, the honest
temperance apostle and tetotaller, Horace
Greeley, advised congressa in his celebrated
special memorial to further the cultivating
of beer breweries even by offering special
inducements TO the vine growers that would
settle in the territories.
In doing this, Greeley openly confessed
his past errors that had misled him to hurl
for years the worst imprecations upon the
heads of the wine and beer drinking Ger
man population that came here to corrupt
the native American people, and led them
to drunkenness. He said by close study
ing of the statistics he had convinced him
self that the wine and beer-consuming
Germans had exercised Just the contrary in
fluence over the natives to the one he had
feared; that with the steady increase of the
beer and wine consuming. that of strager
alcoholics had steadily decreased; hence,
his recommendation to congress.
Schiller, one of the greatest and noblest
and purest spirits that ever lived, a lover
of mankind whom, as such, no other
mortal excelled says in his Hymn to
Joy
"Joy sparkles to us from the bowl
Behold the Juice whose golden color
To meekuess melts the savage soul,
And gives Despair "A Hero's valor
Up, brothersl brothers all, arise,
And fill the goblet to the brim-
Now while the wine foams TO the skies.
To THE GOOD SPIRIT this glass-To HIM,
Chorus :
Praised by the ever whirling ring
OF stars, and tunefu serephims-
To TIE Coon SrIRIT-the Father King
In Heaven This glass to him.
Benjamin Franklin, one of the greatest
of founders of our republic. whose shoe
string to unite the most of our modern so
called christian American statesmen are
surely hardly worthy enough, advocated
in all of his writings frugality and temper
ance, but was, at the same time, a warm
friend and advocate of social merry max
ings that were accompanied by a good
glass of wine or other alcoholic beverage.
His letter to Able Morellet in Paris, of
1772, speaks for itself, and gives our tenn
perance simpletons a very bitter but
wholesome dose. He says in substance
the following:
Dearest friend! You have cheered
me up SO often with your excellent
drinking songs, that | wish to edify
you with some Christian, moral phil
osophic thoughts about the same
object (the wine). s1n vino veritas" Tin
wine there is truth, says the sage. That's
the way that, before Noah's time, when the !
people had nothing TO drink but water,
they could not find the truth; hence they
followed wrong paths, walked the paths
of sin, and became so bad that they were
Justly drowned in the very water they so
well liked to drink. After Noah had seen
that all his contemporaries had persisted
through and in this element, he became
greatly aversed to the same-and in order
to still his thirst, the Lord created the vine
and revealed to Noah the secret how to |
make wine out of it.
BY the aid of this noble stuff" Noah |
discovered many. many truths, and from |
that "deviner' has come into use, which, |
originally, signifies nothing but to discov- |
er truths with the assistance of the wine |
thence the words ito divine, the divine" |
etc.
! The patriarch Joseph asserted that the /
of goblet of wine brought to