Select Temperance Tracts Part 18

AT THE RETAILER'S STAND.

CONSCIENCE. Do you know that little half-starved, bare-footed child, that you just sent home with two quarts of rank poison?

(Retailer hums a tune to himself, and affects not to hear the question.)

CONSCIENCE. I see by the paper of this morning, that the furniture of Mr. M---- is to be sold under the hammer to-morrow. Have I not often seen him in your taproom?

RETAILER. I am extremely busy just now, in bringing up our ledger.

CONSCIENCE. Have you heard how N---- abused his family, and turned them all into the street the other night, after being supplied by you with whiskey?

RETAILER. He is a _brute_, and ought to be confined in a dungeon six months at least, upon bread and water.

CONSCIENCE. Was not S----, who hung himself lately, one of your steady customers? and where do you think his soul is now fixed for eternity?

You sold him rum that evening, not ten minutes before you went to the prayer-meeting, and had his money in your pocket--for you would not trust him--when you led in the exercises. I heard you ask him once, why he did not attend meeting, and send his children to the Sabbath-school; and I shall never forget his answer. "Come, you talk like a minister; but, after all, we are about of one mind--at least in some things. Let me have my jug and be going."

RETAILER. I know he was an impudent, hardened wretch; and though his death was extremely shocking, I am glad to be rid of him.

CONSCIENCE. Are you ready to meet him at the bar of G.o.d, and to say to the Judge, "He was my neighbor--I saw him going down the broad way, and I did every thing that a Christian could do to save him?"

RETAILER. (Aside. O that I could stifle the upbraidings of this cruel monitor.) You keep me in constant torment. This everlasting cant about _rank poison, and liquid fire, and blood, and murder_, is too much for even a Christian to put up with. Why, if any body but Conscience were to make such insinuations and charges, he would be indictable as a foul slanderer, before a court of justice.

CONSCIENCE. Is it _slander_, or is it _because I tell you the truth_, that your temper is so deeply ruffled under my remonstrances? Suppose I were to hold my peace, while your hands are becoming more and more deeply crimsoned with this b.l.o.o.d.y traffic. What would you say to me, when you come to meet that poor boy who just went out, and his drunken father, and broken-hearted mother, at the bar of G.o.d? Would you thank your conscience for having let you alone while there was s.p.a.ce left for repentance?

RETAILER. Ah, had honest trader ever _such_ a conscience to deal with before? Always just so uncompromising--always talking about the "golden rule"--always insisting upon a moral standard which n.o.body can live up to--always scenting poverty, murder, and suicide, in every gla.s.s of whiskey, though it were a mile off. The truth is, you are not fit to live in this world at all. Acting in conformity with your more than puritanical rules, would starve any man and his family to death.

CONSCIENCE. Well, here comes another customer--see the carbuncles! Will you fill his bottle with wrath, to be poured out without mixture, by and by, upon your own head? Do you not know that his pious wife is extremely ill, and suffering for want of every comfort, in their miserable cabin?

RETAILER. No, Mr. E----, go home and take care of your family. I am determined to harbor no more drunkards here.

CONSCIENCE. You mean to make a distinction then, do you, between harboring those who are already ruined, and helping to destroy such as are now respectable members of society. You will not hereafter tolerate a single _drunkard_ on your premises; but--

RETAILER. Ah, I see what you are aiming at; and really, it is too much for any honest man, and still more for any Christian to bear. You know it is a long time since I have pretended to answer half your captious questions. There's no use in it. It only leads on to others still more impertinent and puzzling. If I am the hundredth part of that factor of Satan which you would make me, I ought to be dealt with, and cast out of the church at once; and why don't my good brethren see to it?

CONSCIENCE. That's a hard question, which they, perhaps, better know how to answer than I do.

RETAILER. But have you forgotten, my good Conscience, that in retailing spirit, I am under the immediate eye and sanction of the laws. Mine is no contraband traffic, as you very well know. I hold a license from the rulers and fathers of the state, and have paid my money for it into the public treasury. Why do they continue to grant and sell licenses, if it is wrong for me to sell rum?

CONSCIENCE. Another hard question, which I leave them to answer as best they can. It is said, however, that public bodies have no soul, and if they have no soul, it is difficult to see how they can have any conscience; and if not, what should hinder them from selling licenses?

But suppose the civil authorities should offer to sell you a license to keep a gambling-house, or a brothel, would you purchase such a license, and present it as a salvo to your conscience?

RETAILER. I tell you once more, there is no use in trying to answer your questions; for say what I will, you have the art of turning every thing against me. It was not always so, as you must very distinctly remember.

Formerly I could retail hogshead after hogshead of all kinds of spirits, and you slept as quietly as a child. But since you began to read these Reports and Tracts about drinking, and to attend Temperance meetings, I have scarcely had an hour's peace of my life. I feared that something like this would be the effect upon your nervous temperament, when you began; and you may recollect that I strongly objected to your troubling yourself with these new speculations. It now grieves me to think that I ever yielded to your importunity; and beware that you do not push me to extremities in this matter, for I have about come to the resolution that I will have no more of these mischievous pamphlets, either about my store or tavern; and that your temperance agents may declaim to the winds and walls, if they please.

CONSCIENCE. I am amazed at your blindness and obstinacy. It is now from three to five years since I began to speak--though in a kind of indistinct undertone at first--against this b.l.o.o.d.y traffic. I have reasoned, I have remonstrated, and latterly I have threatened and implored with increasing earnestness. At times you have listened, and been convinced that the course which you are pursuing, in this day of light, is infamous, and utterly inconsistent with a Christian profession; but before your convictions and resolutions have time to ripen into action, the love of _money_ regains its ascendency: and thus have you gone on _resolving, and relapsing, and re-resolving_--one hour at the preparatory lecture, and the next unloading whiskey at your door; one moment mourning over the prevalence of intemperance, and the next arranging your decanters to entice the simple; one day partaking of the cup of the Lord at his table, and the next offering the cup of devils to your neighbors; one day singing,

"All that I have, and all I am, I consecrate to Thee,"

and the next, _for the sake of a little gain_, sacrificing your character, and polluting all you can induce to drink! O, how can I hold my peace? How can I let you alone? If you will persist, your blood, and the blood of those whom you thus entice and destroy, be upon your own head. Whether you will hear, or whether you will forbear, I shall not cease to remonstrate; and when I can do no more to reclaim you, I will sit down at your gate, in the bitterness of despair, and cry, _Murder!_ Murder!! MURDER!!!

RETAILER. (Pale and trembling.) "Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee."

BARNES ON THE TRAFFIC IN ARDENT SPIRITS.

There are some great principles in regard to _our_ country, which are settled, and which are never to be violated, so long as our liberties are safe. Among them are these: that every thing may be subjected to candid and most free discussion; that public opinion, enlightened and correct, may be turned against any course of evil conduct; that that public opinion is, under G.o.d, the prime source of security to our laws and to our morals; and that men may be induced, by an ample and liberal discussion, and by the voice of conscience and of reason, to abandon any course that is erroneous. We are to presume that we may approach any cla.s.s of American citizens with the conviction that if they are _convinced_ that they are wrong, and that their course of life leads to sap the foundation of morals and the liberties of their country, they will abandon it.

Our present proposition is, that THE MANUFACTURING AND VENDING OF ARDENT SPIRITS IS MORALLY WRONG, AND OUGHT TO BE FORTHWITH ABANDONED.

We _mean by the proposition_, that it is an employment which _violates the rules of morals that ought to regulate a man's business and conduct_. The doctrine proceeds on the supposition, that there is somewhere a correct standard of morals--a standard by which a man's whole conduct and course of life is to be tried; and that _this_ business cannot be vindicated by a reference to that standard. Or, for example, we mean that it is man's duty to love G.o.d, and seek to honor him, and that this business cannot be vindicated by a reference to that standard. That it is man's duty to love his fellow-men, and seek to promote their welfare, and that this business cannot be vindicated by that standard. That it is man's duty to render a valuable compensation to his fellow-men in his transactions with them, and that this business cannot be vindicated by that standard. That every man is bound to pursue such a course of life as shall promote the welfare of the entire community in which he lives, as shall _not_ tend to promote crime, and pauperism, and misery, and to make widows and orphans, and that this business cannot be vindicated by that standard. In one word, that by any rules of life that have been set up to regulate the conduct of men, whether in the Bible, in the necessary relations of the social compact, in the reason and conscience of Christians, and of other men, this business is incapable of vindication, and is to be regarded as immoral.

In this proposition, however, it is important to be understood. We mean to confine it simply to the business where it is sold as an article of _drink_. For to sell it as a medicine, with the same precaution as other poisons are sold, would be no more immoral than it is to sell a.r.s.enic.

And to sell it for purposes of manufacture, where it is necessary for that purpose, is no more immoral than to sell any other article with that design. Between selling it for _these_ purposes, and selling it as an article of drink, there is, as any one can see, the widest possible difference.

When we speak of this business as _immoral_, it is also important to guard the use of the word _immoral_. That word, with us, has come to have a definite and well understood signification. When we speak of an immoral man, we are commonly understood to attack the foundations of his character; to designate some gross vice of which he is guilty, and to speak of him as profane, or licentious, or profligate, or dishonest, or as unworthy of our confidence and respect. Now, we by no means intend to use the word in such a wide sense, when we say that this business is immoral. We do not mean to intimate that in no circ.u.mstances a man may be engaged in it and be worthy of our confidence, and be an honest man, or even a Christian: for our belief is, that many such men have been, and are still, unhappily engaged in this traffic. The time has been, when it was thought to be as reputable as any other employment. Men may not see the injurious tendency of their conduct. They may not be apprized of its consequences; or they may be ignorant of the proper rules by which human life is to be regulated. Thus, the slave-trade was long pursued, and duelling was deemed right, and bigamy was practised.

But for a man to maintain that all these would be right _now_, and to practise them, would be a very different thing.

In this view of the subject, we do not of course speak of the dead, or offer any reflection on their conduct or character. Many men are unwilling to regard this traffic as wrong, because, by so doing, they would seem to convey a reflection on their parents, or friends, who may have been engaged in the same business. But nothing of this kind is intended. The great laws of morals are indeed unchanged: but the degrees of light and knowledge which men possess may be very different. We should not deem it right to apply _our_ laws and knowledge, in judging of the laws of Sparta, which authorized theft; nor our laws to judge of the conduct of the Hindoo in exposing his father on the banks of the Ganges; nor our present views to determine on the morality of our fathers an hundred years ago in the slave-trade; nor our views of the marriage relation to condemn the conduct of Abraham, David, or Jacob.

Man's conduct is to be estimated by the light which he has. They who sin without law, are to be judged without law; and they who sin in the law, are to be judged by the law. Your father might have been engaged in the traffic in ardent spirits. Whether he was innocent or not, is not now the question, and has been determined by a higher tribunal than any on earth. The question now is, whether _you_ can pursue it with a good conscience; or whether, with all that you know of the effects of the traffic, it be right or wrong for you to pursue it.

With these necessary explanations, I proceed to PROVE that, in the sense in which it has been explained, the traffic is MORALLY WRONG.

In proving this proposition, I shall take for granted two or three points which are now conceded, and to establish which would lead me too far out of my way. The first is, that this is not an employment in which _the properties of the article are unknown_. The seller has as good an opportunity to be acquainted with the qualities of the article, and its effects, as the buyer. There is no concealment of its character and tendency; there can be no pretence that you were deceived in regard to those qualities, and that you were unintentionally engaged in the sale of an article which has turned out to be otherwise than you supposed it to be. For, alas, those properties are too well ascertained; and all who are engaged in this employment have ample opportunity to know what they are doing, and engage in it with their eyes open.

The _effects_ of this traffic are well known. The public mind has been, with remarkable intensity, directed to this subject for ten years in this land, and the details have been laid before the American public. It is believed that no vice has ever been so faithfully gauged, and the details so well ascertained, as the vice of intemperance in this nation.

It is far better understood than the extent of gambling, of piracy, or robbery, or the slave-trade. It is established now, beyond the possibility of debate, that ardent spirits is a poison, as certain, as deadly, and destructive, as any other poison. It may be more slow in its effects, but it is not the less certain. This is established by the testimony of all physicians and chemists who have expressed an opinion on the subject. It is not necessary for the welfare of man as an ordinary drink. This is proved by the like testimony, by the example of many thousands who abstain from it, and by the fact, that before its invention, the Roman soldier, the Scythian, and the Greek, were as hardy and long-lived as men have been since. Its direct tendency is to produce disease, poverty, crime, and death. Its use tends to corrupt the morals, to enfeeble the intellect, to produce indolence, wretchedness, and woe in the family circle; to shorten life, and to hurry to a loathsome grave; to spread a pall of grief over families and nations. It is ascertained to be the source of nine-tenths of all the pauperism, and nine-tenths of all the crimes in the land. It fills our streets with drunkards, our almshouses with loathsome wretches, our jails with poor criminals, and supplies our gibbets with victims. It costs the land in which we live more than 100,000,000 of dollars annually, and renders us no compensation but poverty, want, curses, loathsomeness, and tears.

In any single year in this Union, could the effects be gathered into one single grasp, they would present to the eye the following affecting details. An army of at least 300,000 drunkards--not made up of old men, of the feeble, but of those in early life; of our youth, of our men of talents and influence; an enlistment from the bar, the bench, the pulpit, the homes of the rich, and the firesides of piety; the abodes of the intelligent, as well as the places of obscurity, and the humble ranks--all reeling together to a drunkard's grave. With this army Napoleon would have overran Europe. In the same group would be no less than 75,000 criminals, made such by the use of ardent spirits; criminals of every grade and dye, supported at the expense of the sober, and lost to morality, and industry, and hope; the source of lawsuits, and the fountain of no small part of the expenses of courts of justice. In the same group would be no less than 200,000 paupers, in a land abounding in all the wealth that the richest soil can give, and under all the facilities which the most favored spot under the whole heaven can furnish for acquiring a decent and an honest subsistence. Paupers, supported at the expense of the sober and the industrious, and creating no small part of our taxes, to pay for their indolence, and wretchedness, and crimes. And in the same group would be no less than 600 insane persons, made such by intemperance, in all the horrid and revolting forms of delirium--the conscience destroyed, the mind obliterated, and hope and happiness fled for ever. And in the same group there would be no less than 30,000 of our countrymen, who die annually, as the direct effect of the use of ardent spirit. Thirty thousand of our countrymen sinking to the most loathsome and dishonored of all graves, the grave of the drunkard. This is just a summary of the obvious and sure effects of this vice. The innumerable woes that it incidentally causes; the weeping and groans of the widow and the fatherless; the crimes and vices which it tends to introduce into abodes that would, but for this, be the abodes of peace, are not, and cannot be taken into the account.

Now, this state of things, if produced in any other way, would spread weeping and sackcloth over nations and continents. Any sweeping pestilence that could do this, would hold a nation in alarm, and diffuse, from one end of it to the other, trembling and horror. The world has never known any thing else like it. The father of mischief has never been able to invent any thing that should diffuse more wide-spread and dreadful evils.

It is agreed further, and well understood, that this is the _regular effect of the traffic, and manufacture, and use of this article_. It is not casual, incidental, irregular. It is uniform, certain, deadly, as the sirocco of the desert, or as the malaria of the Pontine marshes. It is not a periodical influence, returning at distant intervals; but it is a pestilence, breathing always--diffusing the poison when men sleep and when they wake, by day and by night, in seed-time and harvest--attending the manufacture and sale of the article _always_. The destroyer seeks his victim alike in every hogshead, and in every gla.s.s. He exempts no man from danger that uses it; and is always secure of prostrating the most vigorous frame, of clouding the most splendid intellect, of benumbing the most delicate moral feelings, of palsying the most eloquent tongue, of teaching those on whose lips listening senates hung, to mutter and babble with the drunkard, and of entombing the most brilliant talents and hopes of youth, wherever man can be induced to drink. The establishment of every distillery, and every dram-shop, and every grocery where it is sold, secures the certainty that many a man will thereby become a drunkard, and be a curse to himself and to the world. The traffic is not only occasionally and incidentally injurious, but it is like the generation before the flood in its effects, evil, and only evil continually.

Now the question is, whether this is an employment in which a moral man and a Christian man _ought_ to be engaged. Is it such a business as his countrymen ought to approve? Is it such as his conscience and sober judgment approve? Is it such as his G.o.d and Judge will approve?

In examining this, let it be remembered, that the _reason_ why this occupation is engaged in, and the sole reason, is, _to make money_. It is not because it is supposed that it will benefit mankind; nor is it because the man supposes that duty to his Creator requires it; nor is it because it is presumed that it will promote public health, or morals, or happiness; but it is engaged in and pursued solely as a means of livelihood or of wealth. And the question then is reduced to a very narrow compa.s.s: Is it _right_ for a man, for the sake of gain, to be engaged in the sale of a poison--a poison attended with destruction to the property, health, happiness, peace, and salvation of his neighbors; producing mania, and poverty, and curses, and death, and woes innumerable to the land, and to the church of G.o.d? A question this, one would think, that might be very soon answered. In answering it, I invite attention to a few very obvious, but undeniable positions.

1. It is an employment which tends to _counteract the very design of the organization of society_. Society is organized on a benevolent principle. The structure of that organization is one of the best adapted instances of design, and of benevolence, anywhere to be found. It is on this principle that a lawful employment--an employment fitted to produce subsistence for a man and his family, will not interfere with the rights and happiness of others. It may be pursued without violating any of their rights, or infringing on their happiness in any way. Nay, it may not only not interfere wits _their_ rights and happiness, but it will tend to promote directly their welfare, by promoting the happiness of the whole. Or, for example, the employment of the farmer may be pursued, not only without interfering with the rights or privileges of the mechanic, the physician, or the merchant, but it will directly contribute to _their_ welfare, and is indispensable to it. The employment of the physician not only contributes to the support of himself and family, but to the welfare of the whole community. It not only does _not_ interfere with the rights and happiness of the farmer and the mechanic, but it tends directly to their advantage. The employment of the merchant in lawful traffic, not only contributes to his support, but is directly beneficial to the whole agricultural part of the community; for, as has been well said, "the merchant is the friend of mankind." He injures no man, at the same time that he benefits himself; and he contributes to the welfare of the community, by promoting a healthful and desirable exchange of commodities in different parts of the land, and of various natures. The same is true of the mechanic, the mariner, the legislator, the bookmaker, the day-laborer, the schoolmaster, the lawyer, the clergyman.

Now, we maintain that the traffic in ardent spirits, as a drink, is a violation of this wise arrangement. It tends to sap the foundation of the whole economy. It is solely to benefit the trafficker, and it tends to evil, evil only, evil continually. If every man should act on this principle, society could not exist. If every man should choose an employment that should _necessarily_ and _always_ interfere with the peace, and happiness, and morals of others, it would at once break up the organization. If every manufacturer should erect a manufactory, as numerous as our distilleries and dram-shops, that should necessarily blight every farm, and produce _sterility_ in its neighborhood, every farmer would regard it as an unlawful employment; and if pursued, the business of agriculture would end. If a physician could live only by diffusing disease and death, who would regard his as a moral employment?

if a mariner could pursue his business from this port to Calcutta or Canton, only by importing the plague in every return voyage, who would deem it an honorable employment? If an apothecary could pursue his business only by killing nine persons out of ten of those with whom he had dealing, who would deem it a lawful business? If a man can get a living in his employment only by fitting out a privateer and preying upon the peaceful commerce of the world, who will deem it a lawful employment? If a man lives only to make a descent on the peaceful abodes of Africa, and to tear away parents from their weeping children, and husbands from their wives and homes, where is the man that will deem this a _moral_ business? And why not? Does he not act on the same principle as the man who deals in ardent spirits--a desire to make money, and that only? The truth is, that in all these cases there would be a violation of the great fundamental law on which men must agree to live together in society--a violation of that great, n.o.ble, and benevolent law of our organization, by which an honest employment interferes with no other, but may tend to diffuse blessings in the whole circle of human engagements. And the traffic in ardent spirits is just as much a violation of this law, as in any of the cases specified.