The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1885-01-23

(Rey. Al. Gordon. in Law and Order)
"Mental suasion for the MAJ who thinks
Moral suasion for the man who drinks,
Legal sunsion for the drunkard maker,
Prison suasion for The statute-breaker."
These lines | clipped from the last issue
of Lam and Ordtr. | know not who their
author may be, but he has put the temper.
ance agitators undo great obligation to
him. For they contain Il perfect epitome
of anti-liquor principles; and if those who
are accustomed to complain Of the imprac-
ticability of temperance methods would
carry this stanza in their pockets and oc-
casionally take it out and read it over, it
would clear their heads of much mental
bewilderment ON this whole subject.
"You cannot make men sober By ar is
the stock argument against restriction and
Prohibition. And who supposes we can?
jurisdiction over appetite, and that fines
and imprisonments cannot arrest the raven
Gus thirst for liquor which is preying ON
its victim. But you can make the drunk
dFu-llldkeT SoucI ny @N YOU Seh slhSiioS
his internal laughter as he revels with un-
plying heart in the ruin he has wrought.
No doubt the forty rumseIlers who at last
account were in Jail in Maine for defying
the %prohibitory law are considerably so
bered, and have opportunity for prison re-
Elections of the most s~alutary character if
they will improve it Legal suasion for
the drunkard-maker,' that surely is the
right prescription. There has been too
much moral suasion for the drunkard-ma-
ker. We lave ourselves heard it in legis-
lative halls. Moral men and respectable
citizens making arguments to defend the
drunkard- maker, and to persuade society
that his business is legitimate and should
be protected. So much of this has been
heard that the public conscience has been
drugged and b~ewildered; and when the
question has come up in municipal cleo
tions, "shall liquor-selling be licensed, and
that evil be perpetuated which, according
to Mr.. Gladstone, has slain more victims
than 'the three great scourges-war, pesti-
lence and famine good men and decent
citizens have walked deliberately to the
ballot-box and said, Yes Ga, that pull
pit and platform and pew could all be
united in one concerted plea to those who
think, that they will give orr legislatures
no rest till this overspreading curse is ar
rested.
What ~ wa ,ri,1, IAN, va rfati,lc m fhiS
stanza, adapted to the divers schools of
temperance opinion?
a gentleman of high social standing was
recently contending with the writer ON the
folly of legal enactments against the liquor
traffic, and more than limiting the impro-
priety Of clerical voices being heard in
favor of such enactments, when | rehearsed
to him a story of cruel outrage rum
seller selling to a weak man, against the
most im%portunate ~pleadings of his wife
and children, till the tempted father met
his death one day while intoxicated: Good
radiance to a man with no more self-con-
troll he exclaimed. "No doubt society
and his family were better off for his death"
This gentleman's code seemed to be
summed up in a single couplet:
"Moral suasion for the drunkard-makcr,
The tempted wretch to the undertaken"
Alas, there are not a few who, because
they know nothing better to say and mus
say something on this great wrong, give
expression to just such cool inhumanities.
''fhe wages of sin is DEATH And soon
enough the legal suasion of pain and an
guish will lay it's grim arrest upon the
drunkard. We need not push him.
We will mention another misplaced sua-
sion: A gentleman writes to the New York
Witness the details of an Oberlin mobbing.
A peaceable, Christian man given. as it
would seem, to independent thinking;
thought and thought on the temperance
problem, till in his mental bewilderment he
ovcr-estimated his right as q citizen and