4. In this remedy there is no expense. To those who complain of other works of usefulness because of their cost, this is without blame. To drink no spirits, will cost no money. But what will it save? It will save the majority of the poorer class of the population, in most of our towns, one half their annual rent. It will empty all our almshouses and hospitals of two thirds their inhabitants, and support the remainder. Yes, such is the tax which the consumption of ardent spirits annually levies upon this nation, that the simple disuse of strong drink, throughout the land, would save in one year the value of at least five times the whole national revenue.
It is too late to say that a general adoption of the great principle of total abstinence is too much to be hoped for. A few years ago, who would not have been considered almost deranged had he predicted what has already been accomplished in this cause? Great things, wonderful things, have already been effected. The enemies of this reformation, whose pecuniary interests set them in opposition, are unable to deny this fact. It is felt from the distillery to the dram-shop. It is seen from Maine to the utmost South and West. Every traveller perceives it. Every vender knows it. The whole country wonders at the progress of this cause. It is rapidly and powerfully advancing. One thing, and only one, can prevent its entire success. The frenzy of drunkenness cannot arrest its goings. The hundreds of thousands in the armies of intemperance cannot resist its march. But the temperate can. If backward to come up to the vital principle of this work, they will prevent its accomplishment. But the banner of triumph will wave in peace over all the land, hailed by thousands of grateful captives from the gripe of death, in spite of all the warring of the “mighty to drink wine,” if those who abhor intemperance, and think they would be willing to make a great sacrifice to save their children or friends from its blasting curse, will only come up to the little effort of entire abstinence. This is the surest and shortest way to drain off the river of fire now flowing through the land. It is the moderate use of the temperate that keeps open the smoking fountains from which that tide is poured.
To young men who have not yet been brought under the dominion of intemperate habits, we address the urgent exhortation of this cause. Consider the immense responsibility that devolves upon you. It is not too much to say that the question, whether this nation is to be delivered front the yoke of death—whether the present march of reformation shall go on till the last hiding-place of this vice shall be subdued, or else be arrested and turned back, with the sorrow of beholding the vaunting triumph, and the emboldened increase of all the ministers of woe which attend in the train of intemperance, rests ultimately with you. You compose the muscle and sinew of this nation. You are to set the example by which the next generation is to be influenced. By your influence its character will be formed. By your stand its position will, in a great measure, be determined. You are soon to supplant those who have passed the state of life which you now are occupying. Soon the generation that is to grow up under the influence of your example and instruction, will have reached your place. Thus are you the heart of the nation. Corruption and debasement here must be felt to the extremities of the national body. Temperance here will eventually expel, by its strong pulsations, the last remnant of the burning blood of drunkenness from the system, and carry soberness and health to every member of our political constitution.
Are these things so? Suppose them exaggerations. Grant that the importance of your vigorous and unanimous coöperation in this work of reformation is unreasonably magnified; still, how much can you do. Were our coasts invaded by a powerful enemy, come to ravage our cities, chain our liberties, poison our fountains, burn our harvests, and carry off our youth into perpetual slavery, what could young men do? To whom would the trump of battle be sounded so effectually? Who else would feel upon themselves the chief responsibility for their country’s rescue? What excuse could they find for supineness and sloth? Such indeed is the enemy by which the country is already desolated. And now it is to the warm hearts, and the strong hands, and the active energies, and the powerful example of young men, that the dearest interests of the nation look for deliverance.
Young men, shall we not enlist heartily and unitedly in promoting the extermination of intemperance? What question have we to decide? Is it a question whether the country is cursed with this plague to a most horrible and alarming extent? No. Is it a question whether the present power and the progressive character of intemperance among us demand an immediate rising up of all the moral force of the nation to subdue it? No. Is it a question whether the most important part of the strength and success of such an effort depends upon the part in it which the young men in the United States shall take? No. Then what does the spirit of patriotism say to us? If we love our country; if we would rise in arms to shake off the hosts of an invader from our shores; if every heart among us would swell with indignation at the attempt of an internal power to break in pieces our free constitution, and substitute a government of chains and bayonets; what does the love of country bid us do, when by universal acknowledgment an enemy is now among us whose breath is pestilence and whose progress desolation—an enemy that has already done and is daily doing a more dreadful work against the happiness of the people than all the wars and plagues we have ever suffered?
What does the voice of common humanity say to us? Can we feel for human woe, and not be moved at the spectacle of wretchedness and despair which the intemperance of this country presents? Let us imagine the condition of the hundreds of thousands who are now burning with the hidden flame, and hastening to utter destruction by this most pitiless of all vices; let us embrace in one view the countless woes inflicted by the cruel tempers, the deep disgrace, the hopeless poverty, and the corrupting examples of all these victims, upon wives, children, parents, friends, and the morals of society; let us stand at the graves of the thirty thousand that annually perish by intemperance, and there be still, and listen to what the voice of humanity speaks.
What does the exhortation of religion say to us? What undermines more insidiously every moral principle of the heart; what palsies so entirely every moral faculty of the soul; what so soon and so awfully makes man dead while he liveth; what spreads through the whole frame-work of society such rottenness, or so effectually opens the door to all those powers of darkness by which the pillars of public order are crumbled and the restraints of religion are mocked; what so universally excludes from the death-bed of a sinner the consolations of the Gospel, or writes upon his grave such a sentence of despair, as intemperance? Behold the immense crowd of its victims! Where are they not seen? Read in the book of God that declaration, “nor thieves, nor drunkards, shall inherit the kingdom of God;” then listen to what the exhortation of Christian benevolence speaks to us. Is it asked, What can young men do? We can do this one thing at least. We can continue temperate. What if every one of us, now free from the appetite of strong drink, should hold on to our liberty; how would the ranks of intemperance, which death is continually wasting, be filled up? But how shall we continue temperate? Not by using the means of destruction. Not by a moderate indulgence in the cup of seduction. Not by beginning where all those began who have since ended in ruin. But by entire abstinence from strong drink. Let us renounce entirely what cannot profit us, what forms no important item in our comforts, what may bring us, as it has brought such multitudes as strong as we, to the mire and dirt of drunkenness.
But we can do something more. We can contribute the influence of our example to help bring into disrepute the use of ardent spirits for any purposes but those of medicine. If any of us are confident that we could go on in the moderate, without ever coming to the immoderate use of strong drink, we know that the deliverance of the country from its present curse is utterly hopeless while ardent spirit is in the hands of the people. It must be banished. Public opinion must set it aside. Young men must contribute to form that opinion. It cannot be formed without the total abstinence of the temperate. Let us not dare to stand in its way.
But we can do something more. We have an influence which, in a variety of ways, we may use in the community to diminish the temptations which, wherever we look, are presented to the unwary to entice them to intemperance. We can employ the influence of example, of opinion, and of persuasion, to drive out of fashion and into disrepute, the common but ensnaring practice of evincing hospitality by the display of strong drink, and of testifying friendship and good-will over the glass. We can contribute much powerful coöperation in the effort to make the use of ardent spirits for the ordinary purposes of drink so unbecoming the character of temperate people, that he who wishes to have his reputation for temperance unsuspected, will either renounce the dangerous cup, or wait till no eye but that of God can see him taste it. We can do much, in union with those of more age and more established influence, to create a public feeling against the licensing of those innumerable houses of corruption where seduction into the miseries of drunkenness is the trade of their keepers, and the means of destruction are vended so low, and offered so attractively, that the poorest may purchase his death, and the strongest may be persuaded to do so. These horrible abodes of iniquity not only facilitate the daily inebriation of the veteran drunkard, but they encourage, and kindle, and nourish, and confirm the incipient appetite of the novice, and put forth the first influence in that system of persuasion by which the sober are ultimately subdued and levelled to the degradation of wretches, from whose loathsomeness they once turned away in disgust. Why are these instruments of cruelty permitted? Not because the authorities will not refuse to license them. Public opinion is the conscience of those authorities. Let the opinions and feelings of that portion of the community where the strength and patronage of society reside, be once enlisted in opposition to such houses, and the evil will be remedied; the morals of society will not be insulted, nor the happiness of families endangered at every step by the agents and means and attractions of intemperance. Young men have much to do, and are capable of doing a great work in creating such a public opinion.