Here the question occurs, What can be done? How can this woe be arrested? The answer is plain. Nothing can be done, but in one of the three following ways. You must either suffer people to drink immoderately; or you must endeavor to promote moderation in drinking; or you must try to persuade them to drink none at all. One of these plans must be adopted. Which shall we choose? The first is condemned already.
What say we to the second, the moderate use of intoxicating drinks? It has unquestionably the sanction of high and ancient ancestry. It is precisely the plan on which intemperance has been wrestled with ever since it was first discovered that “wine is a mocker,” and that “strong drink is raging.” But hence comes its condemnation. Its long use is its death-witness. Were it new, we might hope something from its adoption. But it is old enough to have been tried to the uttermost. The wisdom, the energy, the benevolence of centuries have made the best of it. The attempt to keep down intemperance by endeavoring to persuade people to indulge only moderately in strong drink, has been the world’s favorite for ages; while every age has wondered that the vice increased so rapidly.
At last we have been awakened to a fair estimate of the success of the plan. And what is it? So far from its having shown the least tendency to exterminate the evil, it is the mother of all its abominations. All who have attained the stature of full-grown intemperance, were once children in this nursery, sucking at the breasts of this parent. All the “men of strength to mingle strong drink,” who are now full graduates in the vice, and “masters in the arts” of drunkenness, began their education and served their apprenticeship under the discipline of moderate drinking. All that have learned to lie down in the streets, and carry terror into their families, and whom intemperance has conducted to the penitentiary and the madhouse, may look back to this as the beginning of their course—the author of their destiny. No man ever set out to use strong drink with the expectation of becoming eventually a drunkard. No man ever became a drunkard without having at first assured himself that he could keep a safe rein upon every disposition that might endanger his strict sobriety. “I am in no danger while I only take a little,” is the first principle in the doctrine of intemperance. It is high time it were discarded. It has deluged the land with vice, and sunk the population into debasement. The same results will ensue again, just in proportion as the moderate use of ardent spirits continues to be encouraged. Let the multitude continue to drink a little, and still our hundreds of thousands will annually drink to death.
It is settled, therefore, that to encourage moderate drinking is not the plan on which the temperance reformation can be successfully prosecuted. The faithful experiment of generation after generation, decides that it must be abandoned. A cloud of witnesses, illustrating its consequences in all the tender mercies of a drunkard’s portion, demand that it should be abandoned. Its full time is come. Long enough have we refused to open our eyes to the evident deceitfulness of its pretensions. At last the country is awaking, and begins to realize the emptiness of this dream. Let it go as a dream, and only be remembered that we may wonder how it deceived, and lament how it injured us.
But, if this be discarded, what plan of reformation remains? If nothing is to be expected from endeavoring to promote a moderate use of ardent spirits, and still less from an immoderate use, what can be done? There is but one possible answer. Persuade people to use none at all. Total abstinence is the only plan on which reformation can be hoped for. We are shut up to this. We have tried the consequences of encouraging people to venture but moderately into the atmosphere of infection; and we are now convinced that it was the very plan to feed its strength and extend its ravages. We are forced to the conclusion, that, to arrest the pestilence, we must starve it. All the healthy must abstain from its neighborhood. All those who are now temperate must give up the use of the means of intemperance. The deliverance of this land from its present degradation, and from the increasing woes attendant on this vice, depends altogether upon the extent to which the principle of total abstinence shall be adopted by our citizens.
But suppose this principle universally adopted, would it clear the country of intemperance? Evidently it is the only, but is it the effectual remedy? Most certainly, if all temperate persons would disuse ardent spirits, they could not cease to be temperate. Many a drunkard, under the powerful check of their omnipresent reproof, would be sobered. His companions would totter, one after another, to their graves. A few years would see them buried, and the land relinquished to the temperate. Then what would be the security against a new inroad of the exterminated vice? Why, public opinion would stand guard at every avenue by which it could come in.
Consider the operation of this influence. Why is it now so easy to entice a young man into the haunts of drunkenness? Because public opinion favors the use of the very means of his ruin. He may drink habitually, and fasten upon himself the appetite of drink, till he becomes enchained and feels himself a slave; but if he has never fallen into manifest intoxication, he has forfeited no character in public opinion. All this is a direct result of the fact, that those considered as temperate people set the example, and patronize the snare of moderate drinking. But suppose them to take the ground proposed, and bear down with the whole force of their example and influence on the side of entire abstinence, would they not create an immense force of public opinion against the least use of ardent spirits? How then could a temperate man ever become a drunkard? He has not yet contracted the desire for ardent spirits; and how will he contract it? Will he risk his character; fly in the face of public feeling and opinion; despise all the warnings in the history of intemperance, to get at the use, and put himself under the torture of that for which, as yet, he has no disposition? Only post a wakeful public sentiment at the little opening of moderate drinking, and the whole highway to the drunkard’s ruin will be closed up. All its present travellers will soon pass away, while none will be entering to keep up the character of the road.
Most assuredly, then, the reformation of the land is in the power of public opinion. It is equally certain, that public opinion will accomplish nothing but by setting its influence directly in opposition to any indulgence in strong drink. And it is just as plain, that in order to accomplish this, the temperate part of the population must create a power of example by setting out upon the firm and open ground of total abstinence. In proportion, then, as the temperate throughout the country shall come up to this ground, will the redemption of our enslaved republic be accomplished.