Select Temperance Tracts

by American Tract Society

I expostulate with him on the destructive influence of his habits upon his country. “But have I not a right,” says he, “to use my own property in such a way as I choose, provided I do not violate the laws of the land? If I may not employ a portion of my money in purchasing spirits, neither have you a right to lay out yours for a carriage, or for painting your house, or for any thing else which some of your neighbors may regard as unnecessary. I buy no more spirits than my health and comfort require; and I have as good a right to judge of the quantity, as you have in respect to the needless articles of dress and furniture which you procure.”

I urge the man who keeps a licensed gambling-house to abandon a pursuit that is ruining his country. “But I am not violating the laws,” he replies, “nor compelling any man to gamble and drink to excess in my house. The whole responsibility, therefore, rests upon those who do it. Expostulate with them. I have a right to my earnings.”

You see where this principle leads. Is it one that a true patriot ought to adopt? No: he alone is a true patriot who is ready to abandon every pursuit that is injuring his country, however profitable it may be to himself, and however tolerated by the civil law. Nor I would not attempt to extenuate the guilt of the intemperate man, nor of the merchant who sells him spirits; but I do say, that if those who distil, and those who furnish the materials, were to abandon the business altogether, it would almost put an end to intemperance in the land. For only a small proportion of the spirits used is imported; and its price must always continue so high that but few could afford to be drunkards were the domestic manufacture to cease. You have it in your power, then, to put a stop to this most dreadful national evil, and thus to save our liberties and all that is dear to us from ruin. Your fathers poured out their blood like water to purchase our independence, and to build up a bulwark around our rights. But the ten thousand distilleries which you ply are so many fiery batteries, pouring forth their forty-four million discharges every year, to level that bulwark in the dust. All Europe combined against us in war could not do us half as much injury as your distilleries are doing every year. Oh, abandon them—tear them down—melt your boilers in the furnace—give your grain and molasses to the poor, or to the fowls of heaven—make fuel of your fruit-trees, rather than destroy your country.

Some may say, that if they cease to manufacture spirits, others will take up the business and carry it on as extensively as they do. And since, therefore, the country will gain nothing by their discontinuance of distillation, they may as well have the profit of it as others. But what course of wickedness will not such reasoning justify? A highwayman robs you, or an assassin invades your dwelling at midnight and slaughters your wife and children. Now, would you think them justified, should they plead that they knew of others about to commit the same outrages, and therefore they thought their commission of these deeds was not wrong, since they needed the avails of the robbery and murder as much as any body? A man could pursue the slave-trade year after year on this principle, with no upbraidings of conscience, if he only suspected that the business would be carried on were he to stop. And a traitor might sell his country for gold, could he only ascertain that some one else was about to do it, and yet be exonerated from blame, if this principle be proper to act upon. Oh, how can any decent man plead a moment for a principle that leads to such monstrous results!

Some will say, however, that they sell the spirits which they manufacture only to those whom they know to be temperate, and therefore they are not accessory to the intemperance in the land; for they are not accountable for the sins of those who sell spirits to improper persons.

You supply them only to the temperate! The greater the blame and the guilt; for you are thus training up a new set of drunkards to take the place of those whom death will soon remove out of the way. Were you to sell only to the intemperate, you would do comparatively little injury to the community. For you would only hasten those out of the way who are a nuisance, and prevent the education of others to fill their places. But let not any man think that no blame attaches to himself because the poison goes into other hands before it is administered. A man is to blame for any evil to his fellow-men which he could prevent. Now, by stopping all the distilleries in the land, you could prevent men from becoming drunkards. The very head and front of the offending, therefore, lies with you. It is as idle for you to attempt to cast all the guilt upon others, in this way, as it was for Pilate, when he endeavored to fix the blood of Christ upon the people by washing his hands before them and declaring himself innocent, and then going back to his judgment-seat and passing sentence of death upon him. Good man! He did not touch a hair of the Saviour’s head. It was the cruel soldiers who executed his orders, that, according to this plea, were alone guilty!

Some distillers will probably say that they cannot support themselves and families if they abandon this business; and some farmers will say, if we cannot sell our cider and rye to the distillers, the products of our orchards must all be lost, and rye is the only article which we can raise upon our farms with any profit. And if I were not to purchase these articles, says the distiller, their price must be so low that no farmer could afford to raise them. Thus to reduce a large class of the yeomanry of our country—its very sinews—to poverty, would be a greater evil than even the intemperance that is so common.

Is it indeed true, that in this free and happy country an industrious, temperate, and economical man, cannot find any employment by which he can support himself and family in a comfortable manner without manufacturing poison and selling it to his countrymen? In other words, cannot he live without destroying them? Is land so scarce, or so eaten up with tithes and taxes, that he cannot thence derive subsistence unless he converts its products into money at the expense of others’ comfort, reputation, and life? Is every honest calling so crowded, or so unproductive, that every avenue is closed? Have the men who make this plea tried, even for a single year, to live without the manufacture of spirits? It may be, indeed, that for a time they will find other pursuits less productive than this. And is not this, after all, the true reason why they shrink from the sacrifice? But if superior profits be a sufficient reason for continuing distillation, it is a reason that will justify the robber, the thief, and every other depredator upon the rights of others.

But how does it appear that the stoppage of all the distilleries in the land will reduce the price of cider and rye? Their operation has produced a great demand for these articles, and that demand has thrown into the market an immense supply: the consequence is, that the prices are reduced as low as the articles can be afforded, at a very moderate profit, and the great complaint now among farmers is, that they are so low. Let the distilleries cease to exist, and the special demand for these articles will cease; and consequently the market will not be glutted with them, because no extra efforts will be made to raise them: the result will probably be, that in a very short time their price will be very nearly or quite as high as it now is.

But even if we suppose the worst, that the distiller and some farmers should be reduced to absolute beggary by the cessation of this manufacture; no reasonable, or patriotic, or Christian man can for a moment regard this as a reason why he should continue in any business that is productive of immense mischief to his country. Is it not better that he and his family should come to want, than that hundreds of thousands should be ruined, soul and body, for time and eternity? If he has a right to derive his subsistence from the ruin of others, then others, as the thief, the swindler, and the robber, have a right to obtain their subsistence from his ruin.