The Daily bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Hawaii]) 1882-1895, 1885-08-14

sion, of which no majority be it ever
so great can properly or lawfully
deprive him. The creed he should
profess might just as righteously be
dictated to him. But certain per-
sons calling themselves temperance
men have banded together pro-
fessedly for the purpose of enforcing
universal abstinence from all fer
mented liquors. They are in oppo-
sition to customs of the remotcst
antiquity. They have no regard for
the rights of individuals. They set
themselves up as judges and dicta-
tors, and would, if they could,
cocrce every one who plesumes to
think for himself into their way of
thinking and acting. They would
reduce all to thorough mental sub
mission, making men nothing more
than automatons. They would choke
down that feeling of individuality
which should actuate every member
of the commonwealth, and make
men and legislatures mere material
to spread their mistaken view of re-
generating the world by riding
roughshod over it with their hobby,
careless of the evils certain to grow
out of their ill-advised and despotc
measures. One of the greatest evils
would be the decentralization certain
to arise from the success of the at
tempt to enforce their views. The
corruption that would ensue would
be appalling. The setting at naught
of the law would find constant en-
ployment for the police, more per-
haps than the searching for opium.
Many of those gentlemen who are
so enthusiastic on the subject of to-
tai abstinence are themselves most
incorporate when they give reins to
their flights of imagination. They
virtually say we are virtuous and
good who practise total abstinence
YOU are evil and poor lost crea-
lures who will none of it. Many
of the stories of crime and destitu
ton one reads in the papers devoted
to this kind of literature are so pal
pably exaggerated that they destroy
their own evidence. They carry the
antidote to their own poison. No
body believes them. Every one
knows that in them the exception
is presented as the rule, the indi-
vidual as the universal.
1t is certain that drunkenness is
both sinful against our Creator and
criminal as regards ones self and
family, and frequently as regards
our neighbor. The unfortunate adj
dicted to drunkenness of course neg
lccts his business, and is on the high
road to ruin. His character and
credit suffer: and eventually, unless
he abandon his foolish course Of
profligacy sottishness, failure and
destitulon must be the lot of him
self and all dependent on him, with
scarcely any hope of recovery, for
drunkenness long INDUCED in, be-
comes at last terrible disease
tyrannizing with almost absolute and
invisible malevolcncc and force over
its unfortunate victim.
1t is further true that in many
cases as q man finds himself falling
from excessive self-indulgence in
Intoxicating drink, he will resort to
arts to sustain himself or to find
means for further indulgence which
at last plunge him deeper still into
irremediable ruin. This is all very
sad, but undcnably very true. But
how does the trouble arise From
the lawful use of fermented liquors,
or from their unlawful use! For
that they can be and have been law
fully used from time immemorial we
have already seen. We have
also seen that they have been
unlawfully used with evil con-
sequences. But this circumstance
by no means authorizes one man or
any number Of men to forbid the
lawful use of these liquors to every
one or any one else. The injury
comes, GODS laws are broken, not
by the lawful use of these drinks,
but by their abuse. They are
abused by mans depraved tastes,
his weakness of character, and some
times by his determined plunge into
dissoluteness. But the abuse OF
which we are speaking is rare
matter compared with the lawful
use; and to put a stop to this in
order to prevent that is not only I'M
necessary but absurd-so, at least,
it appears to the writer-altogether
beyond the bounds of reason.
The sure way to stop drunken
ness is to refine mans tastes, to
strengthen his character, move him
10y the force of good examples, turn
him from a life of carclessness, in
dolence or proaigacy to the practice
of Christian virtue. When you have