Select Temperance Tracts

by American Tract Society

The talents God has given you might be applied to advance the welfare of your fellow-men. It is your duty—your highest honor—thus to apply them. And on the bed of death, in near prospect of the judgment, it will surely be a melancholy reflection that, as regards the happiness of mankind, your life has been an utter blank.

2. The business of distilling is not only useless, but is the occasion of many and great evils. Recent examination has developed a number of appalling facts, which few, if any, pretend to question. It is admitted that the use of ardent spirit has been a tax on the population of our country, of from fifty to a hundred millions of dollars annually. It is admitted that three-fourths of all the crimes of the land result from the use of intoxicating liquor. It is admitted that at least three-fourths of all the sufferings of poverty arise from the same source. It is admitted that upwards of thirty thousand of our citizens have annually descended to the drunkard’s grave. It is admitted, by those who believe the Bible, that drunkards shall not inherit eternal life, but must have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone. In a word, it is admitted that health, fortune, social happiness, intellect, conscience, heaven, are all swept away by the tide of intemperance.

And now, what you are specially bound to ponder is, that this burning tide, with all its desolations, flows from those very fountains you have opened—the boiling flood can be perpetuated only by those fires which your hands kindle, and which it is your daily task to tend.

The position you occupy, then, is one of most fearful responsibility. You are directly and peculiarly accessary to a degree of guilt and misery which none but the infinite mind can comprehend. I hear for you a loud remonstrance from every court of justice, from every prison of collected crime, from every chamber of debasement, and from every graveyard, as well as from the dark world of despair. I hear the cries of unnumbered mothers, and widows, and orphans, all with one voice imploring you to extinguish those fires, to dry up those fountains, and to abandon an occupation pregnant with infamy, and death, and perdition.

3. The business of distilling destroys, to a great extent, the bounties of Providence. Many of the substances converted into ardent spirit are indispensable to the comfort of man—some of them the very staff of life. But the work of distillation not only destroys them as articles of food, but actually converts them to poison. An incalculable amount of grain, and tens of thousands of hogsheads of sugar and molasses, besides enormous quantities of other useful articles, are every year thus wickedly perverted in this Christian land. Who does not know the odious fact that, in many places, the distillery has regulated the price of bread? Who does not know that this engine of iniquity has at times so consumed the products of industry as to make it difficult for the poorer classes to get a supply? “The poor we have always with us;” and cries of the suffering are often heard from other lands. Such facts, it would seem, might reach the conscience of all who are wantonly destroying Heaven’s gifts. Can you, for a little selfish gain, persist in converting the bread of multitudes into pestilential fire? How utterly unlike the example of Him who, while feeding thousands by miracle, could still say, “Gather up the fragments which remain, that nothing be lost.”

4. By continuing this destructive business, you greatly offend the virtuous and respectable part of the community. The temperance reformation has been commenced and prosecuted by enlightened men. It is not the enterprise of any political party or religious sect. It has the general support of ministers and Christians of different denominations, of statesmen, judges, lawyers, physicians, and hundreds of thousands in the walks of private life. They regard the enterprise as one, on the success of which hang the liberties of our republic and the happiness of future millions.

You cannot be surprised, then, that they look with pain on operations directly adapted to defeat their plans, and perpetuate the dread evil they deplore. You cannot suppose that their eye will light on the fountains of this mighty evil but with inexpressible grief, disgust, and indignation. And if you have the common magnanimity of our nature, you will surely cease to outrage the feelings of the virtuous throughout the nation.

5. You pursue a pernicious calling, in opposition to great light. The time was when good men extensively engaged in the distilling business, and when few seemed to be aware of its fearfully mischievous tendency. The matter had not been a subject of solemn and extensive discussion. The sin was one of comparative ignorance. But circumstances have changed. Inquiry has thrown upon the community a flood of light. The evil of intemperance has been exhibited in its complicated horrors. Ardent spirit has been found to be not only useless, but fearfully destructive; so that the guilt of manufacturing it is now enormously aggravated.

Good men were once engaged in importing slaves. They suspected not the iniquity of the business; and an apology can be offered for them, on the ground of ignorance. But their trade has now come to be regarded by the civilized world in the same odious light as piracy and murder. The man who engages in it is stamped with everlasting infamy. And the reason is, that, like the distiller, he now sins amid that fulness of light which an age of philanthropy has poured around him.