Although the temperance cause has been in progress for near twenty
years, it is apparent to all that it is just now being crowned with a
degree of success hitherto unparalleled.
The list of its friends is daily swelled by the additions of
fifties, of hundreds, and of thousands. The cause itself seems suddenly
transformed from a cold abstract theory to a living, breathing, active,
and powerful chieftain, going forth "conquering and to conquer." The
citadels of his great adversary are daily being stormed and dismantled;
his temple and his altars, where the rites of his idolatrous worship
have long been performed, and where human sacrifices have long been wont
to be made, are daily desecrated and deserted. The triumph of the
conqueror's fame is sounding from hill to hill, from sea to sea, and
from land to land, and calling millions to his standard at a blast.
For this new and splendid success we heartily rejoice. That that
success is so much greater now than heretofore is doubtless owing to
rational causes; and if we would have it continue, we shall do well to
inquire what those causes are.
The warfare heretofore waged against the demon intemperance has
somehow or other been erroneous. Either the champions engaged or the
tactics they adopted have not been the most proper. These champions for
the most part have been preachers, lawyers, and hired agents. Between
these and the mass of mankind there is a want of approachability, if the
term be admissible, partially, at least, fatal to their success. They
are supposed to have no sympathy of feeling or interest with those very
persons whom it is their object to convince and persuade.
And again, it is so common and so easy to ascribe motives to men
of these classes other than those they profess to act upon. The
preacher, it is said, advocates temperance because he is a fanatic, and
desires a union of the church and state; the lawyer from his pride and
vanity of hearing himself speak; and the hired agent for his salary. But
when one who has long been known as a victim of intemperance bursts the
fetters that have bound him, and appears before his neighbors "clothed
and in his right mind," a redeemed specimen of long-lost humanity, and
stands up, with tears of joy trembling in his eyes, to tell of the
miseries once endured, now to be endured no more forever; of his once
naked and starving children, now clad and fed comfortably; of a wife
long weighed down with woe, weeping, and a broken heart, now restored to
health, happiness, and a renewed affection; and how easily it is all
done, once it is resolved to be done; how simple his language! - there
is a logic and an eloquence in it that few with human feelings can
resist. They cannot say that he desires a union of church and state, for
he is not a church member; they cannot say he is vain of hearing himself
speak, for his whole demeanor shows he would gladly avoid speaking at
all; they cannot say he speaks for pay, for he receives none, and asks
for none. Nor can his sincerity in any way be doubted, or his sympathy
for those he would persuade to imitate his example be denied.
In my judgment, it is to the battles of this new class of
champions that our late success is greatly, perhaps chiefly, owing. But,
had the old-school champions themselves been of the most wise selecting,
was their system of tactics the most judicious? It seems to me it was
not. Too much denunciation against dram-sellers and dram-drinkers was
indulged in. This I think was both impolitic and unjust. It was
impolitic, because it is not much in the nature of man to be driven to
anything; still less to be driven about that which is exclusively his
own business; and least of all where such driving is to be submitted to
at the expense of pecuniary interest or burning appetite. When the
dram-seller and drinker were incessantly told - not in accents of
entreaty and persuasion, diffidently addressed by erring man to an
erring brother, but in the thundering tones of anathema and denunciation
with which the lordly judge often groups together all the crimes of the
felon's life, and thrusts them in his face just ere he passes sentence
of death upon him - that they were the authors of all the vice and
misery and crime in the land; that they were the manufacturers and
material of all the thieves and robbers and murderers that infest the
earth; that their houses were the workshops of the devil; and that their
persons should be shunned by all the good and virtuous, as moral
pestilences - I say, when they were told all this, and in this way, it
is not wonderful that they were slow, very slow, to acknowledge the
truth of such denunciations, and to join the ranks of their denouncers
in a hue and cry against themselves.
To have expected them to do otherwise than they did - to have
expected them not to meet denunciation with denunciation, crimination
with crimination, and anathema with anathema - was to expect a reversal
of human nature, which is God's decree and can never be reversed. When
the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind,
unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true
maxim "that a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall."
So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him
that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches
his heart, which, say what he will, is the great highroad to his reason,
and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in
convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that
cause really be a just one. On the contrary, assume to dictate to his
judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned
and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues
to his head and his heart; and though your cause be naked truth itself,
transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel, and sharper than
steel can be made, and though you throw it with more than herculean
force and precision, you shall be no more able to pierce him than to
penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw. Such is man,
and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his
own best interests.
On this point the Washingtonians greatly excel the temperance
advocates of former times. Those whom they desire to convince and
persuade are their old friends and companions. They know they are not
demons, nor even the worst of men; they know that generally they are
kind, generous, and charitable, even beyond the example of their more
staid and sober neighbors. They are practical philanthropists; and they
glow with a generous and brotherly zeal that mere theorizers are
incapable of feeling. Benevolence and charity possess their hearts
entirely; and out of the abundance of their hearts their tongues give
utterance; "Love through all their actions runs, and all their words are
mild." In this spirit they speak and act, and in the same they are heard
and regarded. And when such is the temper of the advocate, and such of
the audience, no good cause can be unsuccessful. But I have said that
denunciations against dram-sellers and dram-drinkers are unjust, as well
as impolitic. Let us see. I have not inquired at what period of time the
use of intoxicating liquors commenced; nor is it important to know. It
is sufficient that to all of us who now inhabit the world, the practice
of drinking them is just as old as the world itself - that is, we have
seen the one just as long as we have seen the other. When all such of us
as have now reached the years of maturity first opened our eyes upon the
stage of existence, we found intoxicating liquor recognized by
everybody, used by everybody, repudiated by nobody. It commonly entered
into the first draught of the infant and the last draught of the dying
man. From the sideboard of the parson down to the ragged pocket of the
houseless loafer, it was constantly found. Physicians prescribed it in
this, that, and the other disease; government provided it for soldiers
and sailors; and to have a rolling or raising, a husking or "hoedown,"
anywhere about without it was positively insufferable. So, too, it was
everywhere a respectable article of manufacture and merchandise. The
making of it was regarded as an honorable livelihood, and he who could
make most was the most enterprising and respectable. Large and small
manufactories of it were everywhere erected, in which all the earthly
goods of their owners were invested. Wagons drew it from town to town;
boats bore it from clime to clime, and the winds wafted it from nation
to nation; and merchants bought and sold it, by wholesale and retail,
with precisely the same feelings on the part of the seller, buyer, and
bystander as are felt at the selling and buying of plows, beef, bacon,
or any other of the real necessaries of life. Universal public opinion
not only tolerated but recognized and adopted its use.
It is true that even then it was known and acknowledged that many
were greatly injured by it; but none seemed to think the injury arose
from the use of a bad thing, but from the abuse of a very good thing.
The victims of it were to be pitied and compassionated, just as are the
heirs of consumption and other hereditary diseases. Their failing was
treated as a misfortune, and not as a crime, or even as a disgrace. If,
then, what I have been saying is true, is it wonderful that some should
think and act now as all thought and acted twenty years ago? and is it
just to assail, condemn, or despise them for doing so? The universal
sense of mankind on any subject is an argument, or at least an
influence, not easily overcome. The success of the argument in favor of
the existence of an overruling Providence mainly depends upon that
sense; and men ought not in justice to be denounced for yielding to it
in any case, or giving it up slowly, especially when they are backed by
interest, fixed habits, or burning appetites.
Another error, as it seems to me, into which the old reformers
fell, was the position that all habitual drunkards were utterly
incorrigible, and therefore must be turned adrift and damned without
remedy in order that the grace of temperance might abound, to the
temperate then, and to all mankind some hundreds of years thereafter.
There is in this something so repugnant to humanity, so uncharitable, so
cold-blooded and feelingless, that it never did nor ever can enlist the
enthusiasm of a popular cause. We could not love the man who taught it -
we could not hear him with patience. The heart could not throw open its
portals to it, the generous man could not adopt it - it could not mix
with his blood. It looked so fiendishly selfish, so like throwing
fathers and brothers overboard to lighten the boat for our security,
that the noble-minded shrank from the manifest meanness of the thing.
And besides this, the benefits of a reformation to be effected by such a
system were too remote in point of time to warmly engage many in its
behalf. Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity; and none
will do it enthusiastically. Posterity has done nothing for us; and
theorize on it as we may, practically we shall do very little for it,
unless we are made to think we are at the same time doing something for
ourselves.
What an ignorance of human nature does it exhibit, to ask or
expect a whole community to rise up and labor for the temporal happiness
of others, after themselves shall be consigned to the dust, a majority
of which community take no pains whatever to secure their own eternal
welfare at no more distant day? Great distance in either time or space
has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind.
Pleasures to be enjoyed, or pains to be endured, after we shall be dead
and gone are but little regarded even in our own cases, and much less in
the cases of others. Still, in addition to this there is something so
ludicrous in promises of good or threats of evil a great way off as to
render the whole subject with which they are connected easily turned
into ridicule. "Better lay down that spade you are stealing, Paddy; if
you don't you'll pay for it at the day of judgment." "Be the powers, if
ye'll credit me so long I'll take another jist."
By the Washingtonians this system of consigning the habitual
drunkard to hopeless ruin is repudiated. They adopt a more enlarged
philanthropy; they go for present as well as future good. They labor for
all now living, as well as hereafter to live. They teach hope to all -
despair to none. As applying to their cause, they deny the doctrine of
unpardonable sin; as in Christianity it is taught, so in this they teach
- "While the lamp holds out to burn, The vilest sinner may return." And,
what is a matter of more profound congratulation, they, by experiment
upon experiment and example upon example, prove the maxim to be no less
true in the one case than in the other. On every hand we behold those
who but yesterday were the chief of sinners, now the chief apostles of
the cause. Drunken devils are cast out by ones, by sevens, by legions;
and their unfortunate victims like the poor possessed who were redeemed
from their long and lonely wanderings in the tombs, are publishing to
the ends of the earth how great things have been done for them.
To these new champions and this new system of tactics our late
success is mainly owing, and to them we must mainly look for the final
consummation. The ball is now rolling gloriously on, and none are so
able as they to increase its speed and its bulk, to add to its momentum
and its magnitude - even though unlearned in letters, for this task none
are so well educated. To fit them for this work they have been taught in
the true school.
They have been in that gulf from which they would teach others the
means of escape. They have passed that prison wall, which others have
long declared impassable; and who that has not shall dare to weigh
opinions with them as to the mode of passing?
But if it be true, as I have insisted, that those who have
suffered by intemperance personally, and have reformed, are the most
powerful and efficient instruments to push the reformation to ultimate
success, it does not follow that those who have not suffered have no
part left them to perform. Whether or not the world would be vastly
benefited by a total and final banishment from it of all intoxicating
drinks seems to me not now an open question. Three fourths of mankind
confess the affirmative with their tongues, and, I believe, all the rest
acknowledge it in their hearts.
Ought any, then, to refuse their aid in doing what good the good
of the whole demands? Shall he who cannot do much be for that reason
excused if he do nothing? "But," says one, "what good can I do by
signing the pledge? I never drink, even without signing." This question
has already been asked and answered more than a million of times. Let it
be answered once more. For the man suddenly or in any other way to break
off from the use of drams, who has indulged in them for a long course of
years, and until his appetite for them has grown ten- or a hundred-fold
stronger, and more craving than any natural appetite can be, requires a
most powerful moral effort. In such an undertaking he needs every moral
support and influence that can possibly be brought to his aid and thrown
around him. And not only so, but every moral prop should be taken from
whatever argument might rise in his mind to lure him to his backsliding.
When he casts his eyes around him, he should be able to see all that he
respects, all that he admires, all that he loves, kindly and anxiously
pointing him onward, and none beckoning him back to his former miserable
"wallowing in the mire."
But it is said by some that men will think and act for themselves;
that none will disuse spirits or anything else because his neighbors do;
and that moral influence is not that powerful engine contended for. Let
us examine this. Let me ask the man who could maintain this position
most stiffly, what compensation he will accept to go to church some
Sunday and sit during the sermon with his wife's bonnet upon his head?
Not a trifle, I'll venture. And why not? There would be nothing
irreligious in it, nothing immoral, nothing uncomfortable - then why
not? Is it not because there would be something egregiously
unfashionable in it? Then it is the influence of fashion; and what is
the influence of fashion but the influence that other people's actions
have on our actions - the strong inclination each of us feels to do as
we see all our neighbors do? Nor is the influence of fashion confined to
any particular thing or class of things; it is just as strong on one
subject as another. Let us make it as unfashionable to withhold our
names from the temperance cause as for husbands to wear their wives'
bonnets to church, and instances will be just as rare in the one case as
the other.
"But," say some, "we are no drunkards, and we shall not
acknowledge ourselves such by joining a reformed drunkards' society,
whatever our influence might be." Surely no Christian will adhere to
this objection. If they believe as they profess, that Omnipotence
condescended to take on himself the form of sinful man, and as such to
die an ignominious death for their sakes, surely they will not refuse
submission to the infinitely lesser condescension, for the temporal, and
perhaps eternal, salvation of a large, erring, and unfortunate class of
their fellow-creatures. Nor is the condescension very great. In my
judgment such of us as have never fallen victims have been spared more
by the absence of appetite than from any mental or moral superiority
over those who have. Indeed, I believe if we take habitual drunkards as
a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous
comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been
a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice -
the demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the
blood of genius and of generosity. What one of us but can call to mind
some relative, more promising in youth than all his fellows, who has
fallen a sacrifice to his rapacity? He ever seems to have gone forth
like the Egyptian angel of death, commissioned to slay, if not the
first, the fairest born of every family. Shall he now be arrested in his
desolating career? In that arrest all can give aid that will; and who
shall be excused that can and will not? Far around as human breath has
ever blown he keeps our fathers, our brothers, our sons, and our friends
prostrate in the chains of moral death. To all the living everywhere we
cry, "Come sound the moral trump, that these may rise and stand up an
exceeding great army." "Come from the four winds, O breath! and breathe
upon these slain that they may live" If the relative grandeur of
revolutions shall be estimated by the great amount of human misery they
alleviate, and the small amount they inflict then indeed will this be
the grandest the world shall ever have seen.
Of our political revolution of '76 we are all justly proud. It has
given us a degree of political freedom far exceeding that of any other
nation of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of the
long-mooted problem as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it
was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow and expand into
the universal liberty of mankind. But, with all these glorious results,
past, present, and to come, it had its evils too. It breathed forth
famine, swam in blood, and rode in fire; and long, long after, the
orphan's cry and the widow's wail continued to break the sad silence
that ensued. These were the price, the inevitable price, paid for the
blessings it bought.
Turn now to the temperance revolution. In it we shall find a
stronger bondage broken, a viler slavery manumitted, a greater tyrant
deposed; in it, more of want supplied, more disease healed, more sorrow
assuaged. By it no orphans starving, no widows weeping. By it, none
wounded in feeling, none injured in interest; even the dram-maker and
dram-seller will have glided into other occupations so gradually as
never to have felt the change, and will stand ready to join all others
in the universal song of gladness. And what a noble ally this to the
cause of political freedom; with such an aid its march cannot fail to be
on and on, till every son of earth shall drink in rich fruition the
sorrow-quenching draughts of perfect liberty. Happy day when - all
appetites controlled, all poisons subdued, all matter subjected - mind,
all conquering mind, shall live and move, the monarch of the world.
Glorious consummation! Hail, fall of fury! Reign of reason, all hail!
And when the victory shall be complete, - when there shall be
neither a slave nor a drunkard on the earth, - how proud the title of
that land which may truly claim to be the birthplace and the cradle of
both those revolutions that shall have ended in that victory. How nobly
distinguished that people who shall have planted and nurtured to
maturity both the political and moral freedom of their species.
This is the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the birthday of
Washington; we are met to celebrate this day. Washington is the
mightiest name of earth - long since mightiest in the cause of civil
liberty, still mightiest in moral reformation. On that name no eulogy is
expected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the sun or glory to the
name of Washington is alike impossible. Let none attempt it. In solemn
awe pronounce the name, and in its naked deathless splendor leave it
shining on.
APStudent.com | www.apstudent.com