Young men, shall we not enlist heartily and unitedly in promoting the
extermination of intemperance? What question have we to decide? Is it a
question whether the country is cursed with this plague to a most
horrible and alarming extent? No. Is it a question whether the present
power and the progressive character of intemperance among us demand an
_immediate_ rising up of all the moral force of the nation to subdue it?
No. Is it a question whether the most important part of the strength and
success of such an effort depends upon the part in it which the young
men in the United States shall take? No. Then what does the spirit of
patriotism say to us? If we love our country; if we would rise in arms
to shake off the hosts of an invader from our shores; if every heart
among us would swell with indignation at the attempt of an internal
power to break in pieces our free constitution, and substitute a
government of chains and bayonets; what does the love of country bid us
do, when by universal acknowledgment an enemy is now among us whose
breath is pestilence and whose progress desolation--an enemy that has
already done and is daily doing a more dreadful work against the
happiness of the people than all the wars and plagues we have ever
suffered?
What does the voice of common humanity say to us? Can we feel for human
woe, and not be moved at the spectacle of wretchedness and despair which
the intemperance of this country presents? Let us imagine the condition
of the hundreds of thousands who are now burning with the hidden flame,
and hastening to utter destruction by this most pitiless of all vices;
let us embrace in one view the countless woes inflicted by the cruel
tempers, the deep disgrace, the hopeless poverty, and the corrupting
examples of all these victims, upon wives, children, parents, friends,
and the morals of society; let us stand at the graves of the thirty
thousand that annually perish by intemperance, and there be still, and
listen to what the _voice of humanity_ speaks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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