Blue-grass blade., 1892-02-13
THE uPAs TREE OF DRINK.
Why It Flourishes While Other Vices
Yield to Reform.

Why 1t Flourishes While Other Vices
Yield to Reform.
How shall we explain the fact that
the powar Of public opinion has proved
90 much more effective in the struggle
against the spread of the gambling vice
and the social evil than in the crusade
against the curse of the alcohol habit?
The explanation can certainly not be
found in the lack Of persistent effort.
Without the tenth part of the energy
and the moral enthusiasm devoted to
the promotion of temperance, gambling
lotteries and the traffic in obscene liter
ature have been reduced to practical
minimum. Gaming, in its worst forms,
enjoyed for generations the protection
Of civilized governments in Europe and
America, the interests of the gambler
were protected by the inveteracy of the
vice and the lavish expenditure of money
bribes, and yet we see that in less than
q aquarter of century the public gam
bling hells of Christendom have been
reduced to den maintaining precari-
ous existence in a small principality of
the Italian peninsula.
The only logical explanation can be
found in the circumstance that those
vices have been generally recognized as
unqualified evils, while a large proper
ton Of our fellow men still labor under
the fatal delusion of the belief that,
within certain limits, taste for intox-
icating beverages can be indulged
with impu-ity. They persist in calm
ing their own misgivings with the belief
in the harmlessness of moderate drink
ing, and of the ''milder stimulants." and
confess the evils of intemperance only
IN the sense of an admission that all ex-
cess is injurious. "The fact that stimu-
lants can be swallowed in health endan-
gering overdoses," they argue, ''does
not justify the plan to lessen that dan
.geEby antiliquor laws. We might as
well prohibit the sale of meat and sugar.
because surfeit of meat pies and pas
try may result in dyspepsia. Be tenn
perate in all things, and defend the pal
ladium of personal liberty"
And too many of our brethren encour-
age those delusions by still ascribing in
temperance to the temptations of unre-
strained appetite" and the passions of
unregenerate nature" The dread of
chronic alcoholism may deter many
young men from the perilous first steps
on the road to ruin, and the grim logic
Of experience may induce few half con-
frmed drunkards to renounce their vice
in time, but we can never hope to get a
stroke at the root of the upas tree till we
can enforce the general recognition of
the truth, that the alcohol habit in all
its forms is a wholly abnormal passion
as distinct from natural appetite as
poison from wholesome food; that the
indulgence of that passion, even in the
slightest degree, is resisted by the
veto OF a sanitary instinct which can
never be outraged with impunity. and
that the apparent exhilaration following
the qualification of long perverted ap-
petite is invariably followed by that de-
pressing reaction which makes every
poison vice losing game and inexorably
defeats the attempts to attain surplus
of happiness by the influence of unnat-
ural stimulants. In other words, we
must deprive the rumseller of faoti-
60us moral support by opening the eyes
Of his victims to the fact that the alcohol
vice is an unqualified evil. We must
convince the dupes of the stimulant
habit that our protest is not directed
against an enjoyment injurious only in
case of excess, but against an unnatural