Frontier and pioneer life -- Illinois; Shelby County (Ill.) -- Social life and customs
WE BELIEVE there is no evil in our land so great as the use of
intoxicating liquors. No evil is causing so much sorrow, so many tears,
blighting so many bright hopes and sunny prospects, breaking up so
many happy homes. We punish the robber by the law, and no robber can
compare with the Robber Intemperance. He robs the home of its sanctity
and its joys; it robs the brain of its power and its intelligence; it
robs the heart of its love and its emotions; it robs the man of his
manliness and reduces him to a level with the brute; it robs youth of
its hopes and its prospects; it robs childhood of everything which
makes for comfort and happiness. We furnish the murder by law. No
murderer is so cold-blooded as is intemperance. It murders one hundred
thousand American citizens annually. If an epidemic were to break
out, like smallpox, cholera, or yellow fever, which was destroying
half as many lives our authorities would quarantine against it very
quickly, and would spend millions of dollars, if need be, to stop the
devastation, while that which intemperance is making no great notice
is taken, for if we do, we will hurt our party, for the whisky element
will vote with the other party. Now, gentle reader, isn’t it better to
stand for the right, for God and the home, and for the country? even
at the risk of being defeated in the election, than to stand for wrong
in order to carry the election. Think of gray heads going to their
graves in sorrow, because intemperance has ruined their children, and
your vote helped to cause that ruin. Think of the men who are now in
the various state prisons, and your vote helped to put them there.
Think of the oceans of tears that wives and mothers have shed, and your
vote helped to cause those tears. Think of the hunger and cold that
little innocent children have suffered, and your vote helped to cause
that suffering. Look at that little innocent boy and think that maybe
that little boy will fill a drunkard’s grave, and my vote will help
to cause it so, because of my love for my beloved party. Look at the
little innocent girl, and think maybe, that little girl is to be the
wife of a drunkard, and that my vote helped to cause it so, for the
sake of my party. Dear reader, let me appeal to you: Why should we rate
political party above every other consideration? Oh! the cruel monster,
intemperance. No pen can ever write the enormity of his crimes. No
orator’s tongue can ever tell the magnitude of his guilt. Like a vile
serpent, he tightens his slimy coils around everything that is noble
and good, of American institutions and American manhood. No place on
earth is too sacred for his poisonous fangs. No hopes or prospects are
too bright for his blighting and withering influence. Oh! let us arise
in our manhood and bury him so deep that there will be no possibility
of his resurrection. How I would like to be one of the pall-bearers and
help to bear him to his last resting place. Then a shout of joy would
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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