Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1892-02-08
w. G. T. u. COLUMN.
MORO: sGod and Home and Native Land''
A NEW DECLARATION OF INDE-
PENDENCE.

at the independence Day celebration,
Woodstock, Connecticut, July 4, 1888.
No less than eighty thousand vic
tins go annually to the drunkard's
grave from the homes of this land.
Pestilence and war combined do not,
in this country, equal its destructive
energy.
The waste of human life wrought
every five years by our two hundred
thousand saloons is equal to the de-
struction of life by both armies, num-
bering millions of armed men, during
the entire War of the Rebellion. In
their hands strong drink is a weapon
so fatal that the five hundred thous
and drunkard- makers are able to ac-
complish more in the same period than
four times their number could with
shot and shell, fire and sword, and all
! the appliances of modern warfare.
| The cruelty of war is not measured by
the number of those who fall in battle,
but by the unutterable woe and bitter
anguish of broken hearts and desolat-
ed homes. Most emphatically is it
| true that the mere destruction of
eighty thousand lives every year af-
! fOrds no measure Of the relentless
cruelty of the liquor power in it's war
against society. To realize this you
must go to the dishonored homes,
question the broken hearts, read the
voiceless misery in wan and haggard
faces, hear helpless children cry for
food, see them stricken down by
drunken and Infatuated fathers, and
sometimes even by besotted mothers,
witness the debauchery and ruin of
youth, and the utter degradation, ig-
norance, poverty and misery which
everywhere and always accompany
the victims of:the saloon. aTa
Alas! how true and terrible is this
Indictment of the saloon. Oh, that
from every hilltop and valley, from
mountain and prairie, from city and
hamlet, from lakes to gulf and from
sea to sea, there might this day arise
the united voice of our sixty millions
of people in a most solemn Declara-
ton of independence of this cruel
king whose injuries and usurpations
threaten the destruction of our free
government. AS did our fathers when
they resolved to throw off the abso-
lutte tyranny of bad king, so let us
give certain facts to a candid world.
This monster, sitting supreme in the
politics of this country, has enacted
laws authorizing him to open in all
our towns and cities slaughter houses
of men, women and children, and of |
all virtue.
He has enacted laws permitting him
to transform men into beasts.
He is the direct cause of nine tenths
of the woes and sorrows which blight |
and curse our people.
He, hiding his monstrous deformi
ty under the forms Of law enacted by
his own vassals, over whose heads he
cracks the slave drivers lash in halls
of legislation, maintains at our ex-
pense an army of miscreants who, at
the very door of our homes and in
the shadows of our sanctuaries, pros
ecute the work of murder and death.
He has despoiled labor, burdened
property with excessive taxation, i'm
poverished whole communities, him
dered education, corrupted morals, |
fostered crimes, aided all classes Of |
vice and wrong, and plunged his un-
happy victims into shame and degra
dation
He would have us transmit to our |
children a heritage of distilleries, brew
cries and saloons, and chain to the |
weary backs of society increasing bur-
dens of paupers, criminals, idiots and |
insane.
He seizes and debauches innocent |
children, tears some from the arms of |
sorrowing mothers, and bears them |
away to dishonored graves.
He wrings hot tears from the eyes
Of widows whose husbands he has sac
rificed at the shrine of the drunkard's |
Moloch.
He sits supreme in the national con-
gress and makes laws in the country's |
capital.
He governs courts of Justice, and |
makes ministers of the law and legis-
latures his lackeys.
He silences the preacher in his pull
pit and muzzles the editor at his desk.
He wastes, directly and indirectly,
in mis- revels annually more than
thousand millions of our dollars, and
marshals in his staggering procession
to death and hell half million of our
people.
He is cold, heartless, cruel muir