acquired, and was necessary to promote their own happiness and the
happiness of their families. It has become mine by a traffic which has
not only taken it away from them, but which has ruined their peace,
corrupted their morals, sent woe and discord into their families, and
consigned them perhaps to an early and most loathsome grave. This
property has come from the hard earnings of other men; has passed into
my hands without any valuable compensation rendered; but has been
obtained only while I have been diffusing want, and woe, and death,
through their abodes."
Let the men engaged in this traffic look on their property thus gained;
let them survey the woe which has attended it; and then ask, as honest
men, whether it is a moral employment.
3. A man is bound to pursue such a business as shall tend to _promote
the welfare of the whole community_. This traffic does not. We have seen
that an honorable and lawful employment conduces to the welfare of the
whole social organization. But the welfare of the whole cannot be
promoted by this traffic. _Somewhere_ it must produce poverty, and
idleness, and crime. Even granting, what cannot be established, that it
may promote the happiness of a particular portion of the community, yet
it must be at the expense of some other portion. You may export poison
to Georgia, and the immediate effect may be to introduce money into
Philadelphia, but the only important inquiry is, what will be the effect
on the _whole body politic_? Will it do more good than evil on the
whole? Will the money which you may receive here, be a compensation for
all the evil which will be done there? Money a compensation for
intemperance, and idleness, and crime, and the loss of the health, the
happiness, and the souls of men?
Now we may easily determine this matter. The article thus exported will
do as much evil _there_ as it would if consumed _here_. It will spread
just as much devastation somewhere, as it would if consumed in your own
family, and among your own friends and neighbors. We have only to ask,
what would be the effect if it were consumed in your own habitation, in
your neighborhood, in your own city? Let all this poison, which is thus
exported to spread woes and death somewhere, be concentrated and
consumed where you might see it, and is there any man who will pretend
that the paltry sum which he receives is a compensation for what he
knows would be the effect of the consumption? You keep your own
atmosphere pure, it may be, but you export the pestilence, and curses,
and lamentation elsewhere, and receive a compensation for it. You sell
disease, and death, and poverty, and nakedness, and tears to other
families, to clothe and feed your own. And as the result of this current
of moral poison and pollution which you may cause to flow into hundreds
of other families, you may point to a splendid palace, or to gay apparel
of your sons and daughters, and proclaim that the evil is hidden from
your eyes. Families, and neighborhoods, and states, may groan and bleed
somewhere, and thousands may die, but _your_ gain is to be a
compensation for it all. Is this an honorable traffic?
Suppose a man were to advertise consumptions, and fevers, and
pleurisies, and leprosy, for gold, and could and would sell them; what
would the community say to such a traffic? Suppose, for gain, he could
transport them to distant places, and now strike down by a secret power
a family in Maine, and now at St. Mary's, and now at Texas, and now at
St. Louis; what would the community think of wealth gained in such a
traffic? Suppose he could, with the same ease, diffuse profaneness, and
insanity, and robberies, and murders, and suicides, and should advertise
all these to be propagated through the land, and could prevail on men to
buy the talismanic nostrum for gold--what would the community think of
such a traffic as this? True, he might plead that it brought a vast
influx of money--that it enriched the city, or the country--that the
effects were not seen there; but what would be the public estimate of a
man who would be willing to engage in such a traffic, and who would set
up such a plea? Or suppose it were understood that a farmer from the
interior had arrived in Philadelphia with a load of flour, nine-tenths
of whose barrels contained a mixture, more or less, of arsenic, and
should offer them for sale; what would be the feelings of this community
at such a traffic? True, the man might plead that it would produce gain
to his country; that they had taken care to remove it to another
population; that his own family was secure. Can any words express the
indignation which would be felt? Can any thing express the horror which
all men would feel at such a transaction as this, and at the
cold-blooded and inhuman guilt of the money-loving farmer? And yet we
witness a thing like this every day, on our wharves, and in our ships,
and our groceries, and our inns, and from our men of wealth, and our
moral men, and our _professed Christians_--and a horror comes through
the souls of men, when we dare to intimate that this is an immoral
business.
4. A man is bound to pursue such a course of life as _not necessarily to
increase the burdens and the taxes_ of the community. The pauperism and
crimes of this land grow out of this vice, as an overflowing fountain.
Three-fourths of the taxes for prisons, and houses of refuge, and
almshouses, would be cut off, but for this traffic and the attendant
vices. Nine-tenths of the crimes of the country, and of the expenses of
litigation for crime, would be prevented by arresting it. Of 653 who
were in one year committed to the house of correction in Boston, 453
were drunkards. Of 3,000 persons admitted to the workhouse in Salem,
Mass., 2,900 were brought there directly or indirectly by intemperance.
Of 592 male adults in the almshouse in New York, not 20, says the
superintendent, can be called sober; and of 601 women, not as many as
50. Only three instances of murder in the space of fifteen years, in New
York, occurred, that could not be traced to ardent spirit as the cause.
In Philadelphia, ten. This is the legitimate, regular effect of the
business. It tends to poverty, crime, and woe, and greatly to increase
the taxes and burdens of the community.
What is done then in this traffic? You are filling our almshouses, and
jails, and penitentiaries, with victims loathsome and burdensome to the
community. You are engaged in a business which is compelling your
fellow-citizens to pay taxes to support the victims of your employment.
You are filling up these abodes of wretchedness and guilt, and then
asking your fellow-citizens to pay enormous taxes indirectly to support
this traffic. For, if every place where ardent spirits can be obtained,
were closed in this city and its suburbs, how long might your splendid
palaces for the poor be almost untenanted piles; how soon would your
jails disgorge their inmates, and be no more filled; how soon would the
habitations of guilt and infamy in every city become the abodes of
contentment and peace; and how soon would reeling loathsomeness and want
cease to assail your doors with importunate pleadings for charity.
Now we have only to ask our fellow-citizens, what right they have to
pursue an employment tending thus to burden the community with taxes,
and to endanger the dwellings of their fellow-men, and to send to my
door, and to every other man's door, hordes of beggars loathsome to the
sight; or to compel the virtuous to seek out their wives and children,
amidst the squalidness of poverty, and the cold of winter, and the
pinchings of hunger, to supply their wants? Could impartial justice be
done in the world, an end would soon be put to the traffic in ardent
spirits. Were every man bound to alleviate all the wretchedness which
his business creates, to support all the poor which his traffic causes,
an end would soon be made of this employment. But alas, you can diffuse
this poison for gain, and then call on your industrious and virtuous
countrymen to alleviate the wretchedness, to tax themselves to build
granite prisons for the inmates which your business has made; and
splendid palaces, at an enormous expense, to extend a shelter and a home
for those whom your employment has turned from their own habitations. Is
this a moral employment? Would it be well to obtain a living in this way
in any other business?
5. The business is _inconsistent with the law of God_, which requires
us to love our neighbor as ourselves. A sufficient proof of this would
be a fact which no one could deny, that no man yet, probably, ever
undertook the business, or pursued it from that motive. Its defence is
not, and cannot be put on that ground. No man in the community believes
that a continuance in it is required by a regard to the welfare of his
neighbor. Every one knows that his welfare does not require it; and that
it would be conferring an inestimable blessing on other men, if the
traffic was abandoned. The single, sole object is gain; and the sole
question is, whether the love of gain is a sufficient motive for
continuing that which works no good, but constant ill to your neighbor.
There is another law of God which has an important bearing on this
subject. It is that golden rule of the New Testament, which commends
itself to the conscience of all men, to do to others as you would wish
them to do to you. You may easily conceive of your having a son, who was
in danger of becoming a drunkard. Your hope might centre in him. He
might be the stay of your age. He may be inclined to dissipation; and it
may have required all your vigilance, and prayers, and tears, and
authority, to keep him in the ways of soberness. The simple question now
is, what would you wish a neighbor to do in such a case? Would it be the
desire of your heart, that he should open a fountain of poison at your
next door; that he should, for gain, be willing to put a cup into the
hands of your son, and entice him to the ways of intemperance? Would you
be pleased if he would listen to no remonstrance of yours, if he should
even disregard your entreaties and your tears, and coolly see, for the
love of gold, ruin coming into your family, and your prop taken from
beneath you, and your gray hairs coming down with sorrow to the grave?
And yet to many such a son may you sell the poison; to many a father
whose children are clothed in rags; to many a man whose wife sits
weeping amidst poverty and want, and dreading to hear the tread and the
voice of the husband of her youth, once her protector, who now comes to
convert his own habitation into a hell. And there are not a few men of
fair standing in society who are engaged in this; and not a few--O tell
it not in Gath--who claim the honored name of Christian, and who profess
to bear the image of Him who went about doing good. Can such be a
_moral_ business?
6. The traffic is _a violation of that law which requires a man to honor
God_. Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory
of God. And yet is this a business which was ever engaged in, or ever
pursued, with a desire to honor God? Is it an employment over which a
man will pray? Can he ask the God of heaven to give him success? Let
him, then, in imagination, follow what he sells to its direct result;
let him attend it to its final distribution of poverty, and woes, and
crimes, and death, and then kneel before heaven's eternal King, and
render thanksgiving for this success? Alas, it cannot be. Man pursues it
not from a desire to honor God. And can the man who is engaged in a
business on which he cannot implore the blessing of heaven; who is
obliged to conceal all thoughts of it if he ever prays; who never
engaged in it with a desire to glorify God, or to meet his approbation,
can _he_ be engaged in a business which is lawful and right?
I might dwell further on these points. But I am now prepared to ask,
with emphasis, whether an employment that has been attended with so many
ills to the bodies and souls of men; with so much woe and crime; whose
results are evil, and only evil continually; an employment which cannot
be pursued without tending to destroy the very purposes of the
organization of society; without violating the rule which requires us to
render a valuable consideration in business; without violating the rule
which requires a man to promote the welfare of the whole of the
community; which promotes pauperism and crime, and imposes heavy burdens
on your fellow-citizens; which is opposed equally to the love of man and
the law of God--_whether this is a moral, or an immoral employment?_
The question is submitted. If moral, it should be driven on with all the
power of American energy; with all the aids of wealth, and all the might
of steam, and all the facilities of railroads and canals; for our
country and the church calls the man to the honorable employment. But if
it be immoral and wrong, it should be abandoned on the spot. Not another
gallon should ever pass from your store, if it be evil, only evil, and
that continually.
* * * * *
We are prepared now to examine a few of the OBJECTIONS to this doctrine.
1. The first is, that the traffic is not condemned in the Bible. To this
the answer is very obvious. The article was then unknown. Nor was it
known until 600 years after the Bible was completed. This mode of
extending and perpetuating depravity in the world was not suggested by
the father of evil, until it was too late to make a formal law against
it in the Bible, or to fortify the argument of human depravity from this
source. It is neither in the Bible, nor in any other code of laws, the
custom to specify crimes which do not exist. How remarkable in a code of
laws would have been such a declaration as the trafficker demands, "Thou
shalt not deal in ardent spirits," hundreds of years before the article
was known. The world would have stood in amazement, and would have been
perplexed and confounded by an unmeaning statute. But further, it is not
the practice in the Bible, or in any other book of laws, to specify each
shade and degree of wrong. Had it been, there could have been no end of
legislation, and no end to books of law. I ask the dealer in ardent
spirits, where is there a formal prohibition of piracy, or bigamy, or
kidnapping, or suicide, or duelling, or the sale of obscene books and
paintings? And yet does any man doubt that these are immoral? Does he
believe that the Bible will countenance them? Will he engage in them,
because they are not specified formally, and with technical precision,
in the Scriptures? The truth is, that the Bible has laid down great
principles of conduct, which on all these subjects can be easily
applied, which _are_ applied, and which, under the guidance of equal
honesty, may be as easily applied to the traffic of which I am speaking.
Still further, the Bible _has_ forbidden it in principle, and with all
the precision which can be demanded. A man cannot pursue the business,
as has been shown, without violating its great principles. He cannot do
justly in it; he cannot show mercy by it; he cannot seek to alleviate
human woes by it; he cannot do as he would wish to be done unto; he
cannot pursue it to glorify God. The great principles of the Bible, the
spirit of the Bible, and a thousand texts of the Bible are pointed
against it; and every step the trafficker takes, he infringes on the
spirit and bearing of some declaration of God. And still further, it is
_his_ business to make out the propriety of the employment, not ours to
make out the case against him. Here is the rule--for him to judge. By
this he is to be tried; and unless he can find in the volume a rule that
will justify him in a business for gain that scatters inevitable woes
and death; that accomplishes more destruction than all the chariots of
war and the desolations of gunpowder on the field of blood; that sends
more human beings to the grave, than fire, and flood, and pestilence,
and famine, altogether; that heaps on human society more burdens than
all other causes combined; that sends armies on armies, in a form more
appalling, and infinitely more loathsome than Napoleon's "food for
cannon," to the grave: unless he can find some prophecy, or some
principle, or some declaration, that will justify these, the Bible is
against him, and he knows it. As well might he search for a principle to
authorize him to plant a Bohon Upas on every man's farm, and in the
heart of every city and hamlet.
2. A second plea is, "If I do not do it, others will; the traffic will
go on." Then, I answer, _let_ others do it, and on them, not on you, be
the responsibility. But it is said, perhaps, if it is not in your
hands--the hands of the respectable and the pious--it will be in the
hands of the unprincipled and the profligate. I answer, THERE LET IT BE.
There, if anywhere, it should be. There, if these principles are
correct, is its appropriate place. And if that were done, intemperance
would soon cease to curse the land. _It is just because it is upheld by
the rich, and the reputable, and by professed Christians, that the
reform drags so heavily._ The business has never found its proper level.
And O that the dealers in it would kindly forego this plea of
benevolence, and feel themselves released from this obligation. But is
this a correct principle of conduct? Is this the rule which heaven has
given, or which conscience gives, to direct the doings of man? Have I a
right to do all which I know other men will do? Other men will commit
murder. Have I a right to do it? Other men will commit adultery. Have I
a right to do it? Other men will curse, and swear, and steal. Have you a
right to do it? Other men will prey on unoffending Africa, and bear
human sinews across the ocean to be sold. Have you a right to do it? The
traffic in human flesh will go on; ships will be fitted out from
American ports; and American hands will bear a part of the price of the
tears and groans of enslaved men. And why should not you participate
with them, on the same principle?
3. A third excuse is, that the traffic is the source of gain to the
country. Now this is known to be not so. More than 100,000,000 of
dollars would be necessary to repair to this land the annual loss in
this business. Is it no loss that 300,000 men are drunkards, and are the
slaves of indolence and want? Is it no loss to the nation that 30,000
each year go to the grave? Is there no loss in the expense of supporting
75,000 criminals, and nine-tenths of the paupers in the land? Is it no
loss that bad debts are made, and men are made unable and unwilling to
pay their debts? Whence are _your_ bad debts? Whence, but directly or
indirectly from this business? From the indolence, and want of
principle, and want of attention, which intemperance produces?
4. The man who is engaged in this business says, perhaps, "I have
inherited it, and it is the source of my gain; and what shall I do?" I
answer, beg, dig--do any thing _but_ this. It would be a glorious
martyrdom _to starve_, contrasted with obtaining a livelihood by such an
employment. In this land, assuredly, men cannot plead that there are no
honorable sources of livelihood open before them. Besides, from whom do
we hear this plea? As often as otherwise from the man that rolls in
wealth; that lives in a palace; that clothes his family in the attire of
princes and of courts; and that moves in the circles of fashion and
splendor. O how cheering is _consistent_ pleading; how lovely the
expressions of perfect honesty! This business may be abandoned without
difficulty. The only question is, whether the love of man, and the
dictates of conscience, and the fear of God, shall prevail over the love
of that polluted gold which this traffic in the lives and souls of men
shall introduce into your dwelling.
During a warmly contested election in the city of New York, it is stated
in the daily papers that numerous applications were made for _pistols_
to those who kept them for sale. It is added that the application was
extensively denied, on the ground of the apprehension that they were
intended for bloodshed in the excitement of the contest. This was a
noble instance of principle. But on the plea of the dealer in ardent
spirits, why should they have been withheld? The dealer in fire-arms
might have plead as the trafficker in poison does: "This is my business.
I obtain a livelihood by it. _I am not responsible for what will be done
with the fire-arms._ True, the people are agitated. I have every reason
to believe that application is made with a purpose to take life. True,
blood may flow and useful lives may be lost. But _I_ am not responsible.
If they take life, they are answerable. The excitement is a favorable
opportunity to dispose of my stock on hand, and it is a part of my
business to avail myself of all favorable circumstances in the community
to make money." Who would not have been struck with the cold-blooded and
inhuman avarice of such a man? And yet there was not _half_ the moral
certainty that those fire-arms would have been used for purposes of
blood, that there is that ardent spirits will be employed to produce
crime, and poverty, and death.
I have no time to notice other objections. Nor need I. I have stated the
_principle_ of all. I just add here, that the excuses which are set up
for this traffic will apply just as well to any other business as this,
and will fully vindicate any other employment, if they are to be
sustained. Apply these excuses to the case of a bookseller. The question
might be suggested, whether it was a moral or an immoral business to
deal in infidel, profligate, and obscene pictures and books. True, it
might be alleged that they did evil, and only evil continually. It might
be said that neither the love of God or man would prompt to it. He might
be pointed to the fact, that they _always_ tended to corrupt the morals
of youth; to blight the hopes of parents; to fill up houses of infamy;
to blot out the hopes of heaven; and to sink men to hell. But then he
might with commendable coolness add, "This traffic is not condemned in
the Bible. If _I_ do not engage in it, others will. It contributes to my
livelihood; to the support of the press; to the promotion of business;
and I am not responsible for _their_ reading the books, nor for their
desire for them. I am pursuing the way in which my fathers walked before
me, and it is _my living, and I will do it_." Wherein does this plea
differ from that of the trafficker in ardent spirits? Alas, we have
learned how to estimate its force in regard to other sins; but we shrink
from its application in regard to this wide-spread business, that
employs so much of the time and the wealth of the people of this land.
Here I close. The path of duty and of safety is plain. These evils may
be corrected. A virtuous and an independent people may rise in their
majesty and correct them all. I call on all whom I now address, to exert
their influence in this cause; to abandon all connection with the
traffic; and to become the firm, and warm, and thorough-going advocates
of the temperance reformation. Your country calls you to it. Every man
who loves her welfare, should pursue no half-way measures; should tread
no vacillating course in this great and glorious reformation.
But more especially may I call on _young men_, and ask _their_ patronage
in this cause. For they are in danger; and they are the source of our
hopes, and they are our strength. I appeal to them by their hopes of
happiness; by their prospects of long life; by their desire of property
and health; by their wish for reputation; and by the fact that by
abstinence, strict abstinence alone, are they safe from the crimes, and
loathsomeness, and grave of the drunkard. Young men, I beseech you to
regard the liberties of your country; the purity of the churches; your
own usefulness; and the honor of your family--the feelings of a father,
a mother, and a sister. And I conjure you to take this stand by a
reference to your own immortal welfare; by a regard to that heaven which
a drunkard enters not--and by a fear of that hell which is his own
appropriate, eternal home.