Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1886-04-24
The Authorities.
To the Editor of the Dispatch :

The New York Tribune Says:
Sooner or later it will be necessary
Tor the intelligent and progressive ele-
ments of society to drop all lesser en-
terprises and combine in one determined
assault upon that vice which is to-day
the heaviest clog upon progress and the
deepest disgrace of the nineteenth cen
fury. What are sectarian differences
by Tie side of this national curse? Can
the Churches fold their hands and fiat
ter themselves that their duties are all
fulfilled while the masses prefer the
saloon to the pulpit, and while run
rules in politics and society,""
Joseph Cook says: " A Church silent
on the question Of temperance discreiits
itselfas much as a Church silent on the
question Of dishonesty"
Hon. Ro. c. Pitman, Ii. d., says:
"StroDgas this traffic is, there are some
things stronger. The Christian Churchis
stronger. And when the best and
strongest men cease to scorn the field
of politics as something common and
unclean, and teach that voting is as
sacred as praying; and when all OF its
members, believing with Sir Charles
Buxton that the struggle against the
beer.house and gin-palace is but one
development of the war between
heaven and hell, press into that war
with an energy that will not suffer men
or parties to stand in their way. the
traffic is doomed. But weak goodness
never did and never will overcome reso-
lutte evil"
Lord Brougham says, "If
these beer-shops are to be continue u
SOW seeds ofimmorality broadcast over
the land, terminating the most fright
ful produce that has ever been allo wed
to grow up in a civilized country. and,
am ashamed to add, under the foster
ing care Of government"
Chief-Justice fancy, Of the United
States Supreme Court, says " If any
State deems the retail and internal
traffic in ardent spirits injurious TO its
citizens, and calculated to produce
idleness, vice, and debauchery, | see
nothing in the Constitution Of the
United States to prevent it from regn-
latiDg or restraining the traffic, or pro-
hibi,iDg it altogether, If i. thinks
proper"
John G. Holland (lS72) says: Men
dread the cholera, the yellow-feyer, an
the smallpox, and take extensive pre-
caution against it, while the rayageS Of
all of them in year do not produce
the mischief that intemperance does in
a month. 1t is worse than a plague,
worse than fire, or inundation, or war.
Nothing but sickness, death. immorall-
ty, crime, pauperism, and frightful
waste Of resource comes Of it. Nothing
noble is born Of it,"
The London Times says: Under
the accumulating influence Of alcohol
the honest man turns knaye, the re-
spectacle man suddenly loses principle
and self-Tespect, the wise man is utterly
foolish, and the rigidly moral man takes
a plunge into hbertinism. Let US do
something toward staying the huge
mischief which, one way or another,
confounds us all, and may, for we cannot
be sure, crush and ruin us ALL"
Oliver Goldsmith (l774): d" In all the
towns and countries have seen never
saw city or a village yet whose mis-
cries were not in proportion to the num-
Der Of its public houses. Ale-houses
are ever an occasion Of debauchery and
excess, and either in apolitical or rel
gious light it would be our highest in
terest to have them suppressed"
John Wesley (l760); "All who sell
liquors in the common way, to any that
will buy, are prisoners in general,
They murder his Majesty's subjects by
wholesale neither does their eye pity
or spare. They drive them to hell like
sheep. And what is their gain? Is it
not the blood of these men? Who,
then, would envy their large estates and
sumptuous palaces? A curse is in the
midst of them. The curse Of God is in
their gardens, their groyes-a fire that
burns to the nethermost hell. Blood
blood is there. The foundation, the
floors, the walls, tLs roof, are stained
with blood.
John Adams (176D: Dram-shops
are hourly scattering plaques Of every
kind-natural, moral, and political. The
Legislature should confine the number
and retrieve the character of licensed
houses, lest that impiety and profane-
ness. that abandoned intemperance and
prodigality, that impudence and brawl-
ing temper which these abominable
nurses daily propagate, should arrive at
last to . degree Of strength that even
the Legislature will not be able to con-
troll"
Chalmers (1S47): "Before God aud
man, before the Church and the world,