The Press., 1892-10-13
w. C. T. U. DEPARTMENT.
The old, old Story.
BY HON. A. B. RICHMOND.


 BY HON. A. B. RICHMOND. Ten thousand casks,
 Forever dribbling out their base contents, Touch'd by the Midas finger of the state, ! Bleed gold for ministers to sport with. | Drink, then, and be mad. 'IIs y0ar cOIaa- t'.y bids! CoDper, Yes, to the shame of our christian 4 country, be it said, it bids the citizenss drink and become mad, paupers and criY | inals. It is true the command is not f. rect-only by implication-and thereii is the hypocrisy and sin. When great and enlightened government, Ia government of the people, by the people, and for the people" sanctions a law or judicial act, I with full knowledge of the consequences incident thereto, and inseparable there l from, it tacitly approves of all that is 1 likely to occur by the operation thereof. l To say that a law does not sanction all of 1 the well-known consequences of it's enact ment, is logic run mad, and falsehood in l masquerade.
 When chemist places the ingredients 1 of & well-known compound in his alembic or retort, it is evident that he contem- | plates the result. When our lawmakers | combine in an enactment certain privi- leges and franchises, whose well-known results are pauperism, disease and crime, they cannot but contemplate those re- suits, and impliedly sanction them. The iogic of this proposition is automatic. The supercilious smiles of politicians, and the dangerous sophistry and theories of men prominent in church and state, are rebuked and confounded by facts and statistics that publish to the world the in- evitable consequences of licensed rum. Our lawmakers cannot plead ignorance
 of these results; neither can they truth fully say that they do not know that the ripened ear comes from the planted seed.
 To enact a law that licenses places for temperate drinking, is to legalize the sowing of the seed with full knowledge of what the harvest will be. Neither l statesmanship nor exalted position in l churches or institutions of learning, can shield men from the just odium that should attach to those who would legalze
 temptations in the daily path of their fel- low-men.
 Men are not born drunkards, they are made so by surrounding circumstances.
 First comes the wine cup and beer mug,
 sanctioned by the approval of men in ex-
 alted positions. Next an appetite, ill-be- l gotten by these germs of future dissipa-
 tion, demands stronger support to the
 diseased organism and additional fuel to
 keep alive the raging fires kindled by
 temperate indulgence. Then, from an inflamed stomach, comes a demand for
 alcohol in any and every form that it can be obtained. Then, the sequel: Dis
 ease, pauperism, death and Q drunkard's
 grave. Verify, nowhere in nature's broad
 domain are the laws of cause and effect more fully verified than in licensed rum
 and it's certain consequences. Of the hun dreds of thousands of drunkards of our
 land, all have commenced their careers from the respectable eminence of temper ate indulgence, and ended them in pauper-
 ism, in prison, or on the gallows. Hun-
 dreds of them "built up the wasted tis- sues of their bodies" with alcohol until an
 insulted and diseased organism, unable
 any longer to withstand the logic of ef-
 fects, laid down and died a miserable
 death a positive demonstration of the falsity of theory that has worked incal-
 culable mischief to mankind. Let us re-
 member that a sophism is not made log ] ical by D. D. affixed to the name of the
 logician who utters it.
 It is time to bring this matter to the test everywhere, let the cost be what it
 may God knows there has been enough
 sin and shame already rolled up to the l account of the church by this legalized
 "traffic in human blood"-legalized and protected by four million voters who are
 church members. Listen to these words
 from Bishop R. S. Foster,
 , "The church of to-day, much more the
 church of the future, must take to it's l heart the duty of combining and massing
 it's forces against that gigantic atrocity, , that diabolical conspiracy of christian civ
 itization, that mothers nine-tenths of the 5 woes and sorrows which blight and curse
 our modern age-the traffic in intoxicants, I which hides it's deformity under forms of
 law. How long shall the face of our g christian age blister with this worse than
 pagan shame? Has the virtue of our l. time degenerated so low that we do not
 even blush at the legislated traffic in the n souls of our own children? That by the
 very doors of our own homes and our s temples an army of miscreants should by
 authorization of laws, made by christian
 law-givers, prosecute work of murder
 and death? Are we reduced to the shame
 of admitting that civilization which has
 grown up about our altars is impotent to Il cure the evil How can we go to the
 heather with this cancer of worse than - heather infamy fostering in our bosom ?" What an indictment It is true that
 the church has protested and "resoluted; ;" but that is not enough; ''It must take to its heart the duty of combining and mass '- ing it's forces against" the saloon. If the saloon is not wrong nothing is wrong. If '- the liquor traffic is not sin against God | and crime against humanity, then there
 are no such things as sin and crime out o side the dictionaries and the creeds. a We must see and get acquainted with our sins if we Expect to correct them. a Those who conceal them from others + generally conceal them from themselves. -Montdigae.
 -
 Il Beecham's Pills for a bad Liver.
 MT. Egan, who has returned from Chilli, | 4oI1o Nou, vorl> rayortorc that tha yyhOla