which intoxicating liquor has blasted, and the tears it has caused to
flow. Let any one of us count up the number of its victims which we have
known--consider their character and standing in society--their once
happy families and prospects, and what a fearful change has a few years'
use of strong drink produced. Very few but remember twenty, thirty,
fifty, or one hundred families ruined in this way. Some of them were
once our intimate friends--and their story is soon told.
They drank occasionally, for the sake of company, or merely for
exhilaration. The relish for stimulants was thus acquired, and habits of
dissipation formed. They became idle, and of course uneasy. And they
continued to drink, partly to gratify taste and partly to quiet
conscience. They saw the ruin that was coming upon them, and they made
some earnest but ineffectual struggles against it. But the resistance
became weaker and weaker--by and by the struggle is ended--they float
with the current, and where are they? One has been found by the
temperance reformation, a mere wreck in property, character, body, and
mind, and reclaimed. Another is dead: his constitution could not bear
his continued dissipation. Another died in a fit; another was found by
the road-side one cold morning, a stiffened corpse. Another was thrown
from his horse, and is a cripple for life, but still can contrive means
to pay a daily visit to the dram-shop. Another is a mere vagabond,
unprincipled and shameless--wandering from shop to shop, a fit companion
for the lowest company, a nuisance to society and a curse to his
kindred. Another is in the penitentiary for a crime which he committed
in a drunken frolic.
Go into the crowded court-house and you may see another; his countenance
haggard and ghastly, and his eye wildly rolling in despair. What has he
done? One night, after spending all his money for drink, and loitering
about till all the shops were closed, he returned to his miserable
habitation. He found a few coals on the hearth, and his wife and
children sitting by them. He threw one child this way and another that,
for he was cold. His wife remonstrated, and withal told him that what
little fire there was was none of his providing. With many a horrid oath
he declared he would not be scolded after that sort. He would let her
know who should govern, and by way of supporting his authority, beat her
brains out with the last remaining stick of wood. He did not mean to
kill her. Her dying struggles brought him to his senses, and he stood
horror-struck. He would give almost any thing that the deed were not
done. If that could restore her to life, he would be almost ready to
give a pledge never to taste intoxicating liquor again. Now look at the
wretchedness of his family. For years he has made very little provision
for them; they have lived as they could, half naked and half starved,
and not educated at all--with a most wretched example before their eyes.
What encouragement had the wife or the children to attempt any thing--to
make any exertion? The children are abused and trampled on at home, and
they grow up without self-respect, without shame, and without principle.
Can any thing good be expected of them? And if they do rise, it must be
through a world of difficulty.
How many thousand families have been ruined in some such way as this.
The father was a drunkard, and the mother--what could she do? She
endured, hoping against hope--and for the children's sake bore up
against the current; and many a time disguised a sad despairing heart
under a joyful countenance, till at length she died of a broken heart,
or died by the hands of him who had sworn to protect her.
These, and things like these, are the effects of intoxicating
liquor--not casual, accidental, but common, natural edicts, seen
everywhere, in every town, in every neighborhood, and in every
connection. Look which way we will, we see some of these effects. The
greatest wretchedness which human nature in this world is called to
endure, is connected with the use of inebriating drink. There is
nothing else that degrades and debases man like it--nothing so mean
that a drunkard will not stoop to it--nothing too base for him to do to
obtain his favorite drink. Nothing else so sinks the whole man--so
completely destroys not only all moral principle, but all self-respect,
all regard to character, all shame, all human feeling. The drunkard can
break out from every kind of endearing connection, and break over every
kind of restraint; so completely extinct is human feeling, that he can
be drunk at the funeral of his dearest relative, and call for drink in
the last accents of expiring nature.
Now look at a human being, whom God has made for noble purposes, and
endowed with noble faculties, degraded, disgraced, polluted, unfit for
heaven, and a nuisance on earth. He is the centre of a circle--count up
his influence in his family and his neighborhood--the wretchedness he
endures, and the wretchedness he causes--count up the tears of a
wretched wife who curses the day of her espousals, and of wretched
children who curse the day of their birth. To all this positive evil
which intoxicating liquor has caused, add the happiness which but for it
this family might have enjoyed and communicated. Go through a
neighborhood or a town in this way, count up all the misery which
follows in the train of intoxicating liquor, and you will be ready to
ask, Can the regions of eternal death send forth any thing more deadly?
Wherever it goes, the same cry may be heard--lamentation, and mourning,
and woe; and whatever things are pure, or lovely, or venerable, or of
good report, fall before it. These are its effects. Can any man deny
that "the ox is wont to push with his horn?"
2. _Has this been testified to the owner?_ Are the makers and venders
aware of its effects? The effects are manifest, and they have eyes,
ears, and understandings, as well as others. They know that whatever
profit they make is at the expense of human life or comfort; and that
the tide which is swelled by their unhallowed merchandise sweeps ten
thousand yearly to temporal and eternal ruin. But this is not all. The
attention of the public has been strongly turned to this subject. The
minds of men have been enlightened, and their responsibility pressed
home upon them. The subject has been presented to them in a new light,
and men cannot but see the absurdity of reprobating the tempted, while
the tempter is honored--of blaming drunkards, and holding in reputation
those whose business it is to make drunkards.
But are the makers of intoxicating liquor aware of its effects? Look at
the neighborhood of a distillery--an influence goes forth from that spot
which reaches miles around--a kind of constraining influence, that
brings in the poor, and wretched, and thirsty, and vicious. Those who
have money bring it--those who have none, bring corn--those who have
neither, bring household furniture--those who have nothing, bring
themselves and pay in labor. Now the maker knows all these men, and
knows their temperament, and probably knows their families. He can
calculate effects, and he sends them off, one to die by the way, another
to abuse his family, and another just ready for any deed of wickedness.
Will he say that he is not responsible, and like Cain ask, "Am I my
brother's keeper?" He knew what might be the result, and for a mere
pittance of gain was willing to risk it. Whether this man should abuse
his family, or that man die by the way, so his purpose was answered, he
did not care. The ox was wont to push with his horn, and he knew it; and
for a little paltry gain he let him loose, and God will support his law
by holding him responsible for the consequences.
But a common excuse is, that "very little of our manufacture is used in
the neighborhood; we send it off." And are its effects any less deadly?
In this way you avoid _seeing_ the effects, and poison strangers instead
of neighbors. What would you say to a man who traded in clothes infected
with the smallpox, and who would say by way of apology, that he sent
them off--he did not sell any in the neighborhood? Good man! he is
willing to send disease and death all abroad; but he is too kind-hearted
to expose his neighbors. Would you not say to him, you may send them
off, but you cannot send off the responsibility? The eye of God goes
with them, and all the misery which they cause will be charged to you.
So we say to the man who sends off his intoxicating liquor.
"But if I do not make it and traffic in it, somebody else will." What
sin or crime cannot be excused in this way? I know of a plot to rob my
neighbor; if I do not plunder him, somebody else will. Is it a privilege
to bear the responsibility of sending abroad pestilence and misery and
death? "Our cause is going down," thought Judas, "and a price is set
upon the head of our Master, and if I do not betray him somebody else
will. And why may not I as well pocket the money as another?" If you
consider it a privilege to pocket the wages of unrighteousness, do so.
But do not pretend to be the friend of God or man while you count it a
privilege to insult the one and ruin the other?
Says another, "I wish it were banished from the earth. But then what can
I do?" What can you do? You can keep one man clear; you can wash your
own hands of this wretched business. And if you are not willing to do
that, very little reliance can be placed on your good wishes. He that is
unjust in the least, is unjust also in much. I can hardly conceive any
thing more inconsistent with every generous feeling, every noble
principle, than the traffic in intoxicating liquor at the present day.
The days of ignorance on this subject have passed by; every man acts
with his eyes open.
Look at the shop and company of the retailer. There he stands in the
midst of dissipation, surrounded by the most degraded and filthy of
human beings, in the last stages of earthly wretchedness. His business
is to kindle strife, to encourage profanity, to excite every evil
passion, to destroy all salutary fears, to remove every restraint, and
to produce a recklessness that regards neither God nor man. And how
often in the providence of God is he given over to drink his own poison,
and to become the most wretched of this wretched company. Who can behold
an instance of this kind without feeling that God is just. "He sunk down
into the pit which he made; in the net which he hid is his own foot
taken."
Another will say, "I neither make nor traffic in it." But you drink it
occasionally, and your example goes to support the use of it. You see
its tremendous effects, and yet you receive it into your house and bid
it God speed. As far as your influence supports it and gives it
currency, so far are you a partaker of its evil deeds. If you lend your
influence to make the path of ruin respectable, or will not help to
affix disgrace to that path, God will not hold you guiltless. You cannot
innocently stand aside and do nothing.
A deadly poison is circulating over the land, carrying disease and
desolation and death in its course. The alarm has been given. Its deadly
effects have been described, seen, and felt. Its victims are of every
class; and however wide the difference in fortune, education, intellect,
it brings them to the same dead level. An effort has been made to stay
the plague, and a success surpassing all expectation has crowned the
effort. Still, the plague rages to an immense extent. What will every
good citizen do? Will he not clear his house, his shop, his premises of
it? Will he not take every precaution to defend himself against it, and
use his influence and his exertions to diminish its circulation and thus
diminish human misery? If he fears God or regards man, can he stop short
of this? Can he, in his recklessness and selfishness say, "Let others
take care of themselves? I'll make no promises--I'll not be bound--I am
in no danger?" If he can speak and act thus, and stands aloof, and
continues to drink, is he not guilty, and with the distiller and vender
accountable to God for the perpetuation of these mighty evils, which but
for his cooperation and agency must soon cease to exist? "I speak as
unto wise men; judge ye what I say."
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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully
as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings. Obvious
typographical errors in punctuation (misplaced quotes and the like) have
been fixed. The letter after the page number indicates the Tract (see
the Table of Contents). Corrections [in brackets] in the text are noted
below:
page 3, A: typo corrected
and I have heard of its speading[spreading] through a whole
family composed of members
page 8, A: typo corrected
The strength they produce in labor is of a transient nature, and
is always followed by a sense of weakness nd[and] fatigue.
page 3, D: removed extraneous quote
his influence to continue a practice, or he should at least be
conniving at a practice, which was ["]destroying more lives,
making more mothers widows, and children
page 8, D: typo fixed
attend public worship. In a word, their whole deportment, both at
home and abread,[abroad] is improved, and to a greater extent
than any, without witnessing it, can well imagine.
page 4, P: typo fixed
It is believed that no vice has ever been so faithfully
guaged[gauged], and the details so well ascertained, as the vice
End of Project Gutenberg's Select Temperance Tracts, by American Tract Society