The Middlebury register and Addison County journal. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1883-1885, 1884-05-02

great mistake made herel The quiet
but weighty protest, however earnest, of
the wise and good in large numbers, is
often counted as a small thing compared
with the frothy clamor of street rabble,
or the paid deceits of dram-sellers' or.
gans.
Let the law give us the protection for
which it was designed and is so well fitted
to afford is there pulpit from which de
vout thanks would not ascend with heart
felt sanction in every pew Is there
home, save the dram sellers
perhaps his. in the end would
be no exception-into which bright
err Joy and prosperity would not Gomez
Is there drinking man, even, who would
not, silently at least, thank God for a
rescue possible in no other way No!
No! Never delude yourselves with the
thought that public sentiment, by any
proper definition. calls for our present
tide of criminality and suffering, which
cannot be concealed whatever the silence
of the timid, or connivance of the
wicked.
Another theory somewhat current-at
least | have heard it more than once-is
that arr ieadiag business men oIjed to the
enforcement Of u'prohditory Jo,cS. From
this dissent very emphatically for three
reasons among others:
1. Our leading merchants are shrewd
enough to have learned long ago that
tile d,am-sdop is the acorst possible .t0e to
oce,y doceH business in It's riciHHN
Money that goes for liquor does not buy
dry-goods, provisions, groceries, books
or clothes, and all of our merchants have
found that the tippler pays his dram bills
JfrSi But this, bad as it is, is not the worst
of this matter 1t is the merchants inter
est o have his customers thrifty, to retain
them as long as possible. If they have
good incomes, if they accumulate prop
erty, have homes of their own, then their
wants multiply and their purchases,
honoraby paid for. increase accordingly.
But when the dram-shop takes these
customers in hand they steadily lose their
disposition and ability to earn money;
their homes grow squalid some of them
become paupers to be supported by taxes
based upon honest business. Whole
families, one after another, are blotted
from existence; then how about the
honest merchants gains!
am sure, are not youl that our
merchants understand these things too
well to be willing to exchange the
patronage of numerous thrifty customers
in several towns for the purchases,
though liberal, of dram-seler.
But it may be replied that with dram
shops abolished other trade would give
the town wide berth; l. G., go to other
competing places. To this it may be
replied: Better in the end that pre-
MUM should be offered for good and in
dustrious buyers to come where
merchants can afford to sell at small
profits because they have no drunken
customers to fill their ledgers with bad
debts.n Is it not an old story that towns
freeing themselves from dram shops,
from that date increase in all business
thrift! | do not believe desirable trade
frequents any town because dram-shops
abound in it.
.. Another reason for questioning this
theory is that it seriously reflects upon
our merchants as good citizens. As a
class they are men of principle. They
certainly are not nullitiers. They must
see how such continuous contempt of
important statutes, freshly enacted, is
increasingly bringing all law into disrc-
spect They know well how easy it is
for men TO perjure themselves, how all
forms of law are losing respectability be-
cause so much is done in the name of
law which makes deliberate mockery of
Justice. They must see in the blood
washed streets of Cincinnati, fruit. as
plain as day, of the wholesale tramplng
upon law and justice in the interests of
dram-scllcrs and other criminals, which
has gone on for years in that city. Note
Il few facts in this connection. The
| Cincinnati Gdzcte recently made
this statement, whose truth we cannot
question, viz. "The Cincinnati grog-
bill is 80, 036, 900, $50 12-100 for each
man, woman and child in the city," \ law
of that city requiring saloons to be closed
on Sunday under penalties of fine and i'm
prisonment, after one or two convictions
ceasedto be any terror to evil works, because
the dram sellers secured an ordinance en-
towering each councilman, of course
nominated and elected by their dictation,
to select jurors names from the residents
of his ward, and give them to the police
court clerk to draw from. Thcnceforth
convictions were unknown; and theatres
and saloons have continued to do thcil
busiest work on Sundays.
All must see that we are doing on a
small scale the same things that have
there sown to the whirlwind. There is a
fellow feeling, an instructive alliance be
tween all criminals, and if any commu-
nifty allows wholesale perjury for any
cause, permits witnesses to run away
when duly summoned, or screens the
guilty by intentional defects in legal
papers, or in executing the laws plain
demands when one particular class OF of
fences is under trial, it will not be long
before all offences will share the same
license and the community be practically
defcnceless.
3. | further question the theory under
consideration because, were our mer-
chants to array themselves against the en-
forcement of law, hey ,coUid share Tie
sin 81 tie drdm-Seiier.
do not for moment believe that ouI
business talent, public-spirited and en-
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