Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1883-08-30
Common Sense in Temperance
Reform.

An editorial in the September Cen
tury discusses "The Temperance Out
look" with the following conclusions
THAT the temperance question should
be made political question is most de-
sirable. No question more vitality con-
Germs the whole country with respect to
its highest welfare. We should have
temperance men in office and temper
ance laws enacted. But temperance
must be temperance. 1t must he a SEN
sible and practical scheme that sensible
shall bring about the desired refOrma
tioB. 1t must be scheme which the
great majority of moral men will recog-
niZe to be sound in its logic and even liz
its justice. Anything else than this
may, under pressure of an excitement,
achieve temporary success, but only
this will be a permanent cure of the
rampant abomination. The liquor men
are now more defiant and more numer-
Gus, in proportion to the population,
than in any former period. They work
their criminal mills openly in the face
of all and we see the streams of vice and
crime pouring forth from these sources
to lay waste the commudity and over
whelm the dikes which philanthropy
has erected. The courts, the police, and
the public officers generally, seeing the
bold mien of the disturbers of the peace,
find it easier for their weak natures to
humor them and to connive at their
wicked works than to oppose them. The
great majority of the community are
thus oppressed and tyrarnized over by
this minority, who laugh at law and
hound the defenders of law. The only
end of this enermity will be in the
union of the majority, and this can new
er be effected by extreme measures or
financial pronunciamentos. Dscrimina-
tion between liquors that are burtful
and those that are (in moderate use)
healthful; discrimination between
modes of drinking, as treating and
drinking at meals; discrimination be-
tween places for drinking only and
places for lunch or dinner; discrimina-
tion between drinking on the premises
where the liquor is sold and drinking it
at home; discrimination between day
and night in the sale,-these and other
like determinations are to be made in
place of the sweeping demands of the
ultra men if a union of temperance
forces is TO be cOnsummated. Without
this union the evil must go on propa-
eating itself daily, and on the so-called
temperance leaders must rest the blame.
They have constituted an unreasonable
shibboleth. When they abandon that
the enemy will be conquered, unless
meanwhile the enemy shall have con-
quered all the ground and made our
land moral desert. Admirable laws,
exactly suited to diminish the curse and
destroy the political power of the rum
interest, have been introduced into the
New York Legislature, and would have
been enacted but for the solid vote
against them of the so-caIled members,
directed by their Temperance constitu-
ency at home. This lass of reformers
will have their zeal intensified 10y the ac-
| tiun of Kansas and Iowa aud tboy ,,,,
carry few mOIe of the States. Would
10 God their success were really success
that the rum interest were stricken to
the heart by it! But not until the reac.
tion takes place. and these men are con.
vlnced ol their error and are ready t.
build on truth and not on impulse, car
we expect that union of ali good ele
ments which will finally dig the grave
OF Rum and bury him beyond all resur
rectioR." -