The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1886-11-13
THE FATHER OF WOE,


What Punishment Is Too Great for the
Saloon Keeper When His Patrons Are
Treated Criminals?
1t isnot the temperate and occasional
drinkers who sustain the groggeries
and support the rum-sellers, but the
habitual drinkers and the Grunkards.
Their wicked squandering of their
earnings; their reckless qualification
of morbid appetite; their sacrifice of
every thing for drink this is what the
saloon keeper counts on for success in
his business. The more drunkards the
faster he gets rich. These drunkards
are not obliged to drink any more than
the thief is obliged to steal, or the
murderer to kill. They do so at first
of their own free will. They patronize
the bar as responsible moral agents,
after seeing hundreds who began by
drinking little 90 on until they went
down to the drunkard's gutter and the
drunkard's grave. They know how
fearfully vicious habits grows by in
| diligence. They start with their eyes
wide open in this age of Temperance
meetings and Temperance literature.
They start on stream that is strewn all
along with wrecks. They start because
they are wicked, and the farther they
go the more wicked they become.
They sin against their own natures and
against society. They know it all the
time They know, too, that they can
stop if they will, and that hundreds
are anxious to help them. And yet
they go on in spite Of warning and en-
treaty, scorching their bodies with
liquid fire, beggaring their families
and soaking their brains to idiocy or
llindling them to frenzy and periling
the interests of their souls. Are such
men to be pitiedP Yes. as all sinners
are to be pitied. But they are to be
punished, too. And we say again, our
Government ought to make habitual
drunkenness a crime of so high grade
that he who is guilty of it would be i'm
prisoned for years, and if need be for
life.
But if drunkenness is so great q
crime, how shall we estimate the guilt
of the Observation-Disclosures. He is what
the law calls an accessory before the
fact. He sells men that which he
knows will not only make them
paupers, and thus a burden upon So
ciety, but in many cases make them
criminals. An eminent English Judge.
Mr.. Justice Hawkins, said at recent
assize in Durham:
When | come to look through the calendar,
and when | see the number of cases which
have been committed under the influence Of
drink, can not help saying a word or two on
that subject Every day 1 live the more |
think of the matter, ana the more firmly do
! come to the CONCLUSION that the root of al
most all crime is drink, that revolving tyrant
which affects the people Of all ages. and of
| both sexes: young, middle-aged and old;
father and son, husband and fe all in turn
become its victims. 1t is drink which. for
the most part, Is the Immediate and direct
cause of those fearful quarrcls in the public
streets at night which terminate in serious
misch eff, or some other outrage. 1t is drink
which for the most part is the incentive to
crimes of dishonesty. 1t IS drink which
causes home to be impoverished, and traces
of the misery which il causes are to be found
in many cottage denuded of the cOmmonest
articles OF com ort and necessity, which have
gone to the pawnshUp simply to provide for
that hldeOuS tYrant, drink. i believe, Know
ing what do and having by experience had
my attention drawn to it that nine-tenths of
the crime in this country is engendered inside
the doors of public houses
What is true. in this respect in En-
gland is equally true in this country.
Is it any wonder then that true patriots
and true Christians cry. with united
voice: 1.-The saloon must go"-In-
terror.