The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1883-09-05
Common Sense In Temperance Reform.

An editorial in the September Century
discusses The Temperance Outlook
with the following conclusions That
the temperance question should be made
political question is most desirable. No
question more vitality concerns the whole
country with respect to its highest vel
fare. We should have temperance men
in Office and temperance laws enacted.
But temperance must be temperance. 1t
must be sensible and practical scheme
that sensible and practical men will sup.
port which shall bring about the desired
reformation. 1t must be scheme which
the great majority of moral men will rec
ognize to be sound in its logic and even in
its justice. Anything else than this may,
under pressure of an excitement, achieve
a temporary success, but only this will be
permanent cure of the rampant abom-
ination. The liquor men are now more,
defiant and more numerous, in proportion
to the population, than in any former pc.
riod. 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 COM
munity and overwhelm the dikes which
philanthropy has erected. The courts,
the police, and the public officers gener-
ally, seeing the bold mien of these disturb
ers of the peace, find it easier for their
weak natures to humor them and to con-
nive at their wicked works than to oppose
them. The great majority of the CON-
munity are thus oppressed and tyranized
over by this minority, who laugh at law
and hound the defenders of law. The
only end of this enormity will be in the
union of the majority, and this can never
be effected by extreme measures or fanat-
ical pronunciamentos. Discrimination
between liquors that are hurtful and
those that are Gin moderate use) health
| full discrimination between modes of
| drinking, as treating and drinking at
meals; discrimination between places
for drinking only and places for lunch or
dinner; discrimination between drinking
on the premises where the liquor is sold
and drinking it at home; discrimination
between day aud 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 60 on propagating
itself daily, and ON the socalled temper
ance leaders must rest the blame. They
have constituted an unreasonable shib-
boleth. When they abandon that the
enemy will be conquered, unless mean
while the enemy shall have conquered all
the ground and made our land a moral
desert. Admirable laws, exactly suited to
diminish the curse and destroy the politi.
cal 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-called
temperance members, directed by their
temperance constituency at home. This
class of reformers will have their zeal in
tensified by the action of Kansas and
Iowa, and they may carry few more OF
the states. Would to God their success
were really success, that the rum interest
were stricken to the heart by it But moi
until the reaction takes place, and these
men are convinced of their error and are
ready to build on truth and not on i'm
pulse, can we expect that union of al
good elements which will finally dig the
grave of rum and bury him beyond al
resurrection"