From Wealth to Poverty; Or, the Tricks of the Traffic. A Story of the Drink CursePotter, Austin
General
From Wealth to Poverty; Or, the Tricks of the Traffic. A Story of the Drink Curse
Potter, Austin
Temperance -- Fiction
Not only were these unprincipled hirelings, and would-be M.P.'s,
on the stump, to assist the liquor party in their endeavors, but,
astonishing to relate, there was also a minister of the Gospel,
who was actually engaged as a co-adjutor of these men and their
drunken battalions. The person to whom I refer was a certain Mr.
Turnwell. Dryden's picture of a celebrated personage in his day
would equally serve as a description of him; for he certainly was
"everything by turns and nothing long." He had, in his early
manhood, belonged to a certain church, and owed the education and
the culture he possessed to it; but because that body did not, as
he thought, recognize his exalted ability, nor give him such
charges as a man of his exceptional powers should occupy, he left
them in disgust, and from that time forward was their most rabid
opponent. In the charge he occupied immediately preceding his
present one, finding that his leading men were in sympathy with
the Dunkin Act, he gave it his actual support--stumping the
country in its behalf--and even after coming to Bayton he spoke in
favor of it; but receiving a hint from some who financially, were
main pillars of his church, he suddenly veered round and became
one of the strongest champions for its repeal. If he had possessed
the smallest modicum of good sense he would, after changing his
views--remembering his former course--have remained neutral, or,
in a modest manner, have endeavored to convince men he was
influenced simply by his convictions; but he was so lost to good
taste and what he owed to his holy office, as a professed priest
of Him who said, "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it
must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the
offence cometh," as to take the stump as a blatant opponent of
what the great mass of the good and pure of the county were
advocating in order to arrest the ravages of the greatest curse
that ever destroyed mankind. He soon became a recognized leader of
the rum party, and there is no doubt he influenced some, as he was
constantly quoting Scripture and twisting its meaning to suit his
purpose, conveniently forgetting to mention those passages that
would consign the major portion of those whose cause he was
advocating to everlasting infamy and woe. As might be expected,
the party he was assisting pointed to him as a model clergyman;
many of them who had not read a passage of Scripture for years,
having shaken the dust off their Bibles, turned to the verses to
which he referred, and when in the taverns, so intoxicated as to
be scarcely able to stand, they, with maudlin utterances, and
serio-comic grimaces, would unctiously quote these hackneyed texts
in the pauses which intervened between their drinks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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