The clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1883-1888, 1885-06-24
For THE CLARION
Advanced Temperance Lines.
BY DR.. J. W. HARMON.

The great temperance reform having
been lifted out from the local, district
and State contests, in which it has so
long been engaged, has come at last in
its aggressive development to be a ques-
ton Of national import.
Its secure lodgment in the Congress
of the United States in prohibiting the
sale of intoxicating liquors, by act of
Congress, on lands in the Omaha Indian
Reservation, under penalty of forfeiture
of title thereto, and again in the intro
ductioD of a bill by the Hon Henry w
Blair, proposing an amendment to the
Constitution, and to become valid when
ratified by the legislatures of three
fourths of the several States, as provided
in the Constitution which bill prohibits
the manufacture, sale and importation
of alcoholic and distilled liquors any
where in the United States, except for
medicinal, mechanical, chemical and
scientific purposes, and for use in the
arts, after the year 1900, is now the ad-
yanced and aggressive position, to which
all the energies of temperance men, tenn
peIance organizations, and the religious
element of the whole country should
now direct all their movements and
plant all their blows.
1t is matter of history that the tenn
perance reform has met with the most
violent opposition in all the stages Of its
progress, from the simple pledge to the
principle of prohibition, and now in its
further achievements and progress the
only formidable obstacle to its complete
triumph is the authorized legality of the
traffic by Congress and the States
The legalized traffic on the one hand
and moral suasiOn on the other, with its
outcrop of organizations, pledges, lee
lures and reformatory efforts, have stood
face to face for years, and the traffic not
only holds its own but has actually been
gaining in volume and in its damaging
power.
The real issue before us is not the
regulation or partial limitation of the
traffic; that has been tested and is a fail
ure; hut it is the absolute suppression
of the manufacture aud sale, by placing
it under the strictest government sur
veillance, and then only for mechanical,
medicinal, chemical and scientific pur-
poses.
How vain and foolish it is to waste
time, talent and money to suppress in
temperance by moral suasion, when the
cause that originates all the evil, and
all the damage will continue to originate
il beyond any and all of our efforts?
Just so long as its sale and manufacture
is sanctioned by national and State leg
islation, it must be bombarded and
stormed by law; all the artillery and
magazines of law must be brought to
bear upon it. 1t must be dealt with not
only as moral but civil crime. 1t
must be outlawed, as making war against
the best interests of the commonwealth.
Prohibitory legislation is the only rene
dy, the only power that will affect its
legal status, and clear our way for the
more effeetual work of moral suasion in
the future.
Every man, whether, they be
church members or not who will
not aid in Wrestling the law out
of the hands of those who sup
port the traffic, are positively guilty for
it continuance, and pdrticeps crimints
| in the damage done to society and the
commonwealth Pbilosophise as you
please about this matter, but unless the
traffic is stripped of its legality, and the
manufacture of it by individuals out
lawed, just so long will it continue to
fill the land with intemperanee, poverty,
crimes, suffering and taxation.
How any Christian man can hesitate
or remain neutral, Is one of the strange
paradoxes. 1t IS the main obstacle to
the spread and success of religious prin-
ciples among the masses of our popula-
ton 1t is a blight and libel upon every
Christian community, and a rock of
offence greater than any with which the
Christian world has to contend.