somebody else will. Is it a privilege to bear the responsibility of sending abroad pestilence, and misery, and death? 20. "Our cause is going down," said 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. This is the most common excuse for retailing. "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 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 retailing ardent spirit at the present day. The days of ignorance on this subject have passed by; every man acts with his eyes open. His 21. Look at the shop and company of the retailer. principal furniture is a barrel, two or three bottles, and a half dozen glasses. He has a few other things just for a show, brooms, earthenware, tobacco, &c. The inventory is soon made. I say he has a few other things, for even he is ashamed to appear as a dealer in spirit only. His shop needs no sign; every drunkard knows it as it were by instinct. And even the blind might discover it by infallible tokens, and the company is a combination of all the shameless and abandoned. And there stands the retailer in the midst of dissipation, and human nature in its last stages of earthly wretchedness, in all its degraded forms and filthy appearances, surrounding him. And his whole 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 to him? "He sunk down into the pit which he made, in the net which he hid is his own foot taken." 22. When we think of the years he has spent in this service, the quantity he has scattered abroad, and the misery he has caused, who can calculate the responsibility? And who would envy him, even though he had accumulated a fortune; or who would take his gains, burdened with all this responsibility? But some one will say, I neither make nor sell 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 houses, 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. 23. The alarm has been given; a hue and cry has been raised against it. 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 exer tions 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 the plenitude of his selfishness, stand up and say, “I'll make no promises; I'll not be bound; I am in no danger?" If he can say this, and stand aloof, shall we count him a good citizen? I speak as unto wise men: judge ye what I say. The passages of scripture upon which this most excellent temperance discourse is founded, are the 28th and 29th verses of the 21st chapter of Exodus: "If an ox gore a man or a woman that they die, then the ox shall surely be stoned; but the owner shall be quit; but if the ox were wont to push with his horn in time past, and it hath been testified to his owner, and he shall not keep him in, but that he hath killed a man or a woman; the ox shall be stoned, and the owner also shall be put to death." Although the precepts of Moses were designed for a peculiar people, yet in this instance, they embody and set forth a permanent and universal law, equally as obligatory upon us, as upon the individuals to whom they were originally given. The principle of the law brought out in this specific case, mentioned in the above passages, extends to ten thousand others. It appears to apply forcibly to the makers and retailers in the unhallowed traffic in ardent spirits. In the year 1832, the executive committee of the New-York State Temperance Society, of which Edward C. Delavan, Esquire, one of the greatest temperance philanthropists in our country, or in the world, was chairman, published at the city of Albany, two millions and two hundred thousand copies of this admirable Temperance Ox Discourse, and it was gratuitously circulated throughout the Union. It is hoped that by embodying it in my book, it will open the eyes of thousands and millions, to the fact that every man is responsible in the eye of justice for the known results of his doings. The famous enactment by the Maine legislature, called the Maine Liquor Law, which elicits, as it deserves, the attention of the friends of temperance, is as follows: 1. Prohibits any unauthorized person from selling spirituous and intoxicating liquors of any kind. 2. Authorizes the surveyors of each town to appoint an agent to reside in the most central and convenient part of the town, with the authority to sell liquor for medical and mechanical purposes; who is to hold his office for one year, unless removed. 3. Provides for a certificate to be given to the agent, expressive of his authority, and gives the form, &c. of the bond. 4. Provides that any person selling by himself, his clerk, or agent, shall be fined for the first offense, $10 and costs; for the second, $20 and costs; and in each case stand committed till paid; and for every subsequent offense, $20 and costs, and be imprisoned three or six months. 5. Provides the mode of prosecution, and designates that the penalties shall go for the support of the poor. 6. Provides that bonds shall be given in case of appeal, for the prosecution of the appeal, and the payment of all fines and costs. 7. Provides for the appointment of persons who may manufacture intoxicating liquors to be used for mechanical purposes and in the arts. 8. Provides for a penalty of $100, and in default thereof imprisonment for sixty days, for the first offense; and for double the penalty for every subsequent offense, in cases where persons undertake to manufacture without such legal appointment. 9. Provides that no person engaged in the traffic shall be competent to sit on a jury. 10. Provides that cases arising under the act shall take precedence in all courts of justice, except in certain criminal cases named. 11. Provides that any three voters, on making oath that in their belief liquors are unlawfully stored or kept for sale in any given place, the justice before whom such oath is made, shall issue his warrant for the seizure of the same, and if found, it is, after the proper inquiries, to be destroyed. If the owner sets up a claim that said liquors are imported, and that duties have been paid on them to the government, he mav recover if he can prove that they are so im ported; but neither the certificate of importation nor the custom house marks on the casks are to be taken in evidence. 12. Provides some safeguards against destroying liquors seized, until properly advertised, in cases where the owner may not be known. 13. Makes provision for appeal in certain cases. 14. Provides that if liquors are found at public trainings or other gatherings, the person owning the same shall be imprisoned thirty days, and the liquor be destroyed. 15. Makes provision for sureties in case of appeal. 16. Makes all payments for liquors, all notes given for liquors, all mortgages, &c. given to secure liquor debts, &c. unlawful, and null and void. THE END. |