The times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1897-1901, 1901-02-10

ance which is appalling, as well as 10 q
good deal of more or less serious hypoc-
risy. There are some people-and they
are the leaders of considerable part of
the COMMUNICATIVE seem to think that
no sin is very bad so long as it can be
kept covered up. When crime is openly
acknowledged by either the participators
or the observers these people are horri-
fed but 1t can go on to an almost unlim-
tied extent without their making any fuss
so long as no one says anything about it.
1t is this sentiment which supplies some
of the backbone to the Prohibition party.
Many who are bitterly opposed to the idea
of high license, strictly enforced. feel that
they have done their duty when they have
voted for prohibition. whether it is en-
forced or not. II the members of the
Legislature who are really in favor OF
absolute liquor famine in Kansas happen
to be in the majority they ought to be
able to enforce the law without the aid
of women carrying hatchets and brick
bats; If they are not in the majority they
have no right to expect to control legis-
lation. In either case the law as ii
changed To enforce an unwise law is al
most invariably the surest way to prove
its folly: to let it stand on the statute
books as a dead letter is simply hypocrit
ical and cowardly.
There is still another phase of this
question which is important. and that not
in a remote, but very practical way.
1t has to do with the intemperance of the
professed advocates OF temperance. The
name itself. it may be noted, Is a mis-
homer. since the party as 1t stands advo-
Gates, not temperance, but total absti-
nence. In the early days of protest
against the immoderate use Of strong
drinks, reformers took this name and used
it justifably, since their aim was not to
prevent the use of stimulants for any
purpose whatever. but merely to prevent
their use in excess. Their ideal was that
true temperance which forbids the use of
no good thing unless from its abuse it
becomes bad thing. The perfectly tenn
perate man does not allow himself to be-
come the slave of any habit When he
finds himself becoming dependent upon the
use of a stimulant, he lets 1t alone, or
uses it only occasionally, till he has re-
covered his natural poise. That is free
dom. OF this temperate freedom many of
the so-callcd temperance people are sin.
gularly destitute. Some of them are as
much slaves to tea and coffee as any man
ever was to whisky: others are equally
the slaves Of total abstinence from both.
They will not take their favorite drink
at all. because they have not self-con-
troll enough to limit themselves in its use.
of ten the cause of the Incorporate use
of alcohol, opium. and other things which
make slaves OF mankind; and II is this.
and not any particular article of food or
drink, which is mischievous To try to
bolster UP a mans weak will by legisla-
tion is about as hopeful task as to try
to make him walk If he has no strength
in his muscles. When. therefore. the in
temperate see those who wish to reform
them evincing inability to do without 1t
tie Injuries, habits, pleasure. without pa
rading the fact before the world they rat
they might otherwise do.
But that is not the worst form OF IN
temperance among the advocates of tenn
perance. They are not careful. moderate
or accurate in their use OF language. or in
their action. They fail to see that enc
may be strong without being violent. brave
without being rash, wise without being
%, L.
paper called the Evangelist" the organ
of considerable number of earnest l.eo-
pie in This city, in which we find things
like this:
God has no case against AIRS. Nation. because
he commended Gideon for similar sorts Of vic
lence when that old hero demolished the affairs OF
Baal-"
That may be. but we are also told that
God commended several other things
which were done in Old Testament times,
which would not only be against the law
now but against the conscienees of the
combined Sunday schools of the land. If
Gideon in Kansas, it may. for all that
anybody knows. be right for people in New
York to take a malefactors wife and chill
dren, dumb brutes and servants out and
stone them to death for being connected
with him. Twenty years ago the half-in-
sane Freeman declared that if il was right
for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac IL was right
for him to offer up his little four-year- old
girl TO the Lord. God may have had no
case against Freeman, but it is not de-
sirable that fathers nowadays should show
their faith in just that particular way.
Again, the same paper says:
Gideon and David and Cromwell and Wash.
ington and old Hickory and host Of others
VIII applaud her"
Intemperance in speech may seem
small thing, but IL generally leads to in
temperance in action. II 1t does not, IL
means nothing and the habit of talking
for talks sake is not a very good one to
encourage. especially when the talk is
mostly vltuperation and misstatement 1t
does nobody any good to represent the
saloonkeeper as hend incarnate in the
first place. because he is generally moth
ing OF the kind and in the second place
because such a course prevents an accu-
rate estimate of his powers for evil as an
individual, whatever those may be. No
body questions that there are good many
thousand saloons in this country which
are a curse to the communities in which
they exist; but calling them names and
including in condemnation all those
which merely supply a natural and in the
present age of the world a necessary de-
mand, will not help the matter at all.
But all these small intemperances lose
imnnrIanca beside such a glnrinp instance