Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1889-08-15
New Series, Vol. 80, No 80.
A FEW PLAIN WORDS.
From the New York Tribune.

FROM the New YORK Tribune.
General Fisk and the Prohibitionists
of New Jersey have taken a position
which will cost them the sympathy and
cOuntenance of many who wasted votes
on Prohibition candidates last fall
They are making it more and more diff
ficult for honest voters to credit them
with sincerity or sense. After the de-
feat of the temperance cause in New
Jersey, and the election of Legislature
pledged to serve the rum-shops by the
aid of the ProhibitiOnists last fall, Gen.
eral Fisk now processes to desire a re-
enactment of the license law only for the
purpose of proving by experience that it
increases drunkenness. Yet this same
General Fisk, when Democrats, aided to
their victory by Prohibitionists, had re-
pealed the Option License law, declared
with appearance of honest Indignation
that PrOhibitiOnists must now insist up
on the restoration of the law and vote
with those who would reenact it.
1t is always melancholy spectacle
when men either intend or profess to be
the servents of right are found doing
the work of the enemy. Doubts as to
their integrity of purpose are natural,
but putting motives aside, the obliga-
ton of every man to put the practical
weight of his effort and influence on the
right and not on the wrong side must be
recognized. Men are not in this world
to cherish theories, but to do good.
They are not here to dream impossible
dreams, or to chase impracticable ideals,
but to get things done that shall make
the world better. If there are any to
whom much has been given-much of
influence, of sympathy with right, of
power to comprehend the need of any
reform from them much will be re-
quired. Upon such men, more than up
on others, rests the obligation by no
error Of Judgment or method to hurt or
hinder the cause which they profess to
hold dear and sacred.
1t is nothing less than crime for
temperance men of New Jersey to defeat
the only practical measure which there
was chance that the people would sus-
tain, and to throw the State into the
hands of the iquor-sellers. Infinitely
more than anybody else they are respon-
sible for any and all harm that may re-
suit. If unrestrained traffic demoral-
ICES and impoverishes they are guilty.
If drink kills body and soul they do the
killing. The mere instruments of the
liquor traffic may not have the moral
sense to know what harm and wrong
they are doing, but the temperance men
have. When PrOhibitionists in their
recent State Convention resolved upon a
course which can have no other effect
than to prolOng the power of the liquor
traffic, defeat any measure for its re-
striction, and keep the State in the
hands of its friends and tools, there can
be no dispute about it-they are not
true friends of temperance.
This object lesson will have a deep
influence upon the minds of sincere
temperance men, not in that State only,
but throughout the Union. Such men
cannot help seeing that Prohibition
leaders of that sort, whatever they may
profess, whatever may be their motives,
are unworthy of confidence. Progress
toward better things in any State if at
tanned at all, must be attained in spite
of all that such leaders can do to hinder.
The good cause, if it moves one step
forward, must march over their pros
trate bodies. The Prohibition party,
led as it is, now, and under existing cir
cumstanceS, is the bulwark of the liquor
traffic. Those who aid or countenanee
that party, led as it is now and under
existing circumstances, set themselves
on the side of the iquOr-sellers and
against every practical effort toward re-
form