The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-12-06
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR
INTEMPERANCE.


INTEMPERANCE.
Murphy is gone; he has done good
| work for those who sincerely desire to
substitute life of conscientious sobriety
for one of chronic intemperance. Whether
| those who have been helped to dry land
by Murphy continue to keep out of the
| swim of the saloon or that more danger
| Gus habit, secret, solitary tipping, de-
| ponds upon themselves, for in the last
analysis every man who seeks to De saved
must work out his own salvation; there
| is no such thing as vicariou. salvation for
| the inebriate in this world. He can be
| sobered, put on his moral feet of restored
health Of will, nerves and stomach, and
| then whether he stays put lies with his
| own volition. On him alone rests the re-
sponsibility for his fate, not on the saloon.
If a drunkard sincerely elects to reform
there are two courses open to him. He
may quietly go to work, mind his own
business; prove by the sobriety of his life
and his upright industry that he is deter
| mined to bring forth fruits meet for re-
pentance, or he may decline to take back
seat at temperance meetings and take to
the platform for the purpose of persuade
ing others not only by his example, but
by his eloquence to initiate his change Of
life. If he takes the first course he will be
sure to do good; if he takes the other
course he may do good or he may not, ac-
cording to the power and above all the
discretion of his speech. The Incorporate
weak brother should always be made to
clearly understand that he is no more q
proper su oject for sentimental sympathy
and weak moral excuse than any other
weak brother or erring sister.
The desire for money causes more crime
than the drink habit; so does the sexual
passion when it takes form and expression
in RIGHTEOUSNESS. but we do not put up
sentimental pleas for the pickpocket. the
swindler, the burglar, the highwayman,
the seducer or the harlot. The great mass
of incorporate people need the stern lash
of social public rebuke and the with
drawal of business confidence. This is
the best treatment in the long run for
the vast majority of those who are capable
of reform. If you cannot thorn a mans
moral pride and sense of self-respect into
mood of self-accusation, self-reproach
and sincere spiritual shame because of his
seIf-abuse, if you find in him nothing but
self-pity and self-extenuation, you need
not expect any permanent reformation;
for such man is incapable of aggressive
determination to reform himself; he must
be turned over to the doctor and the
hospital; he is dangerous subject for
the sentimental treatment of sympathetic
tears, which are poor tonic for
man who stands in deep need of reform.
Ii is common practice to tell young
men that the saloon is their worst enemy,
when the reproach and the responsibility
should be squarely placed where it primar-
lily belongs, upon the young men whose
thirst and self-induigence are the seed of
the saloon: the sunshine and the rain
under which its plant buds and blooms
luxuriantly. The creator is responsible
for the creature, not the creature for the
creator, and on rum drinkers ought to
rest the primary responsibility for intem-
perance. The worst enemy Of the intern.
perate young man is not the saloon; his
worst enemy is himself. There is no more
moral justice in holding the liquor-dealer
responsible for the drunkard than in hold
ing love responsible for the man who
murders the woman who rejects or jilts
him; in holding the sight of gold and the
pinch of poverty responsible for the man
who commits a theft; in holding some
seductive daughter of Eve responsible for
every son of Adam who falls into lewd and
riotous living.
This false philosophy of responsibility
is foster brother to the pernicious doc
trine that the road to reformation lies,
not through the conquest of self-indulg-
ence into self-restraint; not through the
stern insistance of individual responsibility
for evil habits, but through the prohibit
ton and adjustment of the temptations
to which, the man disingenuously ascribes
his fall. The true tonic treatment for
men who go wrong is to teach them that
they themselves, not whisky, are RESPONSE
bic for their fall. Every man in law is
held and justly held to responsibility for
his own personal acts; If he steals or muir
NAN'S - 80 AS@AS" ~ PACho lHtOAlSd-
ton in extenuation of his offense: and
this legal doctrine rests on sound moral
justice. 1t is law that ought to be part of
the temperance reformers' gospel. Not
to hold men sternly to this doctrine of in
dividlal responsibility and the certainty
of social retribution and ruin for failure
to work out their own salvation would be
to create a civilization that would not
stand for men but for whimpering
world of pouting, pleading children.
Society knows that from those upon
whom the education of moral ideas. the
education Of observation and the appeal of
selt-luterest has not been lavished in vain.
it has nothing TO fear. But for those who
from willfulness, witlessness, weakness
or wickedness are constantly swelling the
ranks of the dangerous or perishing
classes, society can do nothing more in the
way If education except so far as legal
punishment, correction and restraint adds
strength to the educating force of the ap-
peal Of self-interest. Society cannot bv
statute expect TO make men sober anv
more than it can expect TO make men
economical by statute; society cannot ex-
tirpats temptation from the world. only