St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1885-03-26
A Plain Talk on Temperance.
BY THEODORE L. CUYLER, D. d.


BY THEODORE L. CUYLER, d. d.
The temperance reform is to-day il
serious peril, from the absorption o
its energies in "A single direction. Per
sOnally, | have been an earnest advo
cate for legal restriction, and (wher,
. pOssible) the entire suppression of the
dramshOp, ever since | first heard the
word "prOhibitioD." At the ballot boz
last year, cheerfully gave my vote
for the candidate who represented hos
tility to the whisky oligarchy, and
have never shed any tears of repent
ance for that righteous act. The logi-
cal meaning of the one hundred and
forty thousand ballots cast for ex-GOv-
ernOr st. John, was that the liquor
traffic is monster curse, the prolific
source of untold mischief, misery and
death, and, therefore, hit to be sup
pressed.
But as a prOhibitienist | feel entire
ly confident that temperance reformers
are committing a most serious error in
giving such excessive prominence to
the civil and political aspect of the re-
form. The temptation to do this is
peculiarly strong. The drinking sa-
!
visible embodiment of the drink curse !;
it flaunts it's bloody flag in our faces,
and 1T seems to be IA very short aud sum-
mary way of disposing of it, to pass
stringent laws for its suppression. This
temptation is made stronger by the
specious assertion that negro slavery
was removed by political party. The
simple truth is that the free soil party,
10y the election of Lincoln, drove the
slave Oligarchy up to the point of com
hitting suicide by armed secession. If
the rum Oligarchy were now confined
to single section of the land, and if it
should, in sheer desperation, fire Oh
the flag, and attempt to destroy the
nations life, then it would speedily be
laid in the same tomb with the defunct
institution of slavery. But there is
really Il very slight analogy between
the political conflict with thu drink
traffic, and the political conflict which
was waged under the banner of Free
soil, free speech, and free labor" Ne
gro slavery was essentially Il tempo
rary civil institutions, the creature of
unjust civil law. The dramshop is
not Il temporary institution created by
statute; it is the creature of the drink
ing usages of society. No fool would
ever open liquor saloon and get out
Il license for it in any community in
which there was no demand for strong
drink.
Set it down as an inCOntrOvertible
truth that liquor saloons are not the
creations of license laws, or of any
other civil enactments. The only way
to reach an evil is to go to its fount
head. The fount-head of liquor selling
is liquor drinking. Deeper down than
any civil whether high
license, low license, or no license-lie
the drinking usages, and every remedy
is transient and superficial that does
not reach them. | do not dispute that
the saloon tempts thousands to drink
intOXicants who might not be tempted
otherwise but it is also true that even
the worst dram seller does not open Il
saloon from sheer malice to kill off his
neighbOrs. He opens it simply to make
money by miniStering to appetite, and
by supplying his WHISTLES and wines
to his customers, and commonly he
has no scruples as to increasing the
number of his customers. These Gus
toners, he it understood, are sharers
and partners in his crime. If he opens
Il hell they feed its fires. 1t is time
that temperance advocates ceased to
denounce saloon keepers as fends and
to speak of their customers as poor, in
nocent people who never go VOlunta-
rily to Il bar-rOOm counter. If dram
selling is sin, so is drunkenness, and
so is any patronage of the dram shops.
The most effectual way to break up
the liquor traffic is to get away its GUS
tomOrs and starve it out. Here lies
the wisdom of creating counter attrac-
tons to the saloon, whether it be the
attraction of home, or of ''cOffee tav-
ern," or anything else that tends to
keep men and boys from the slaughter
houses. But it is certain as gravita-
ton that if any large number of per
sons in any community are determined
to have intoXicants they will somehow
manage to get them, even if we pile
our prOhibitory laws as high as the
Brooklyn bridge towers. BY this time
my readers will understand, why
even as Il prohibitiOnist-I insist that
it is fatal folly for us temperance re-
formers to direct our efforts entirely,
or even chiefly, in the line of civil
enactment or political action. Votes
and laws are the product of human
convictions of duty; neither votes nor
laws are efficient without conscientious
convictions behind them. To awaken,
to solidify, and to maintain these con
victiOns, is the sure key and the only
key to permanent success in the great
conflict against the bottle, whether
that bottle stand on II private table or
on the counter of gin shop. We must
address ourselves, therefore, to the in
dividual cOnsciences of people, ole and
young, and ply them with arguments
and persuasiOns to let the bottle alone
The best days the temperance move
ment ever saw We're the days i'll which
its chief effort was to make people con-
scientiOus abstainers from every kind
of intOXicants, to make them unwilling
TO enter drink-shOp, or to let the
drink from the shop enter them. Fun
damentally, the temperance reform is
not political movement; it is a grand
m Jral and social reform, which only
invokes the aid of civil law to accom-
plish its beneticent results.
Right here comes in the prodigious
power and responsibility of the Chris
tian church. Drunkenness and grog-
selling are sins; it is the province of
Gods church to lay the AK to the root
of all sins. The bottle damns immor-
tai souls! Let the pulpit, therefore,
make no truce with it; let cOnscien-
tiOus parents Danish it from their tables
and social gatherings; let every boy
and girl in our Sunday schools be in
structed TO practice total abstinence.
Prevention of drinking is vastly safer,
stronger, surer than prohibition of sell
ing. 1t goes to the root, because it
cuts up the drinking usages | rejoice
also that temperance school books are
heiug introduced into DuhJ;o a,6 49,;