A SOVEREIGN REMEDY.

405

Fellow-citizens, HERE IS A REMEDY, such as the world never saw before. So it has proved in Maine. Receive and apply it, and so it will prove in the State of New York.

And now the question arises, How shall it be effected? Who shall cause the Law of Maine to become the law of the State of New York? We answer, THE PEOPLE! THE PEOPLE!-You, yourselves, the Sovereigns of the State.

The following extracts are from a tract, entitled "THE LIQUOR TRADE," by E. C. DELAVAN, Esq., of Ballston Centre:

If there was no intoxicating drink to be had, there would be no moderate drinking or drunkards. All drunkards, of course, were once moderate drinkers. The line between these two classes never has been, nor ever can be, intelligibly drawn. What a country ours would be, should the use of intoxicating liquor cease! What can we do to present ourselves before the world thus free, not only from drunkards, but from that which alone makes drunkards?

Stringent laws are now in operation, prohibiting the sale under severe penalties in some of our States, from which great and beneficial results are expected. A prohibitory act against the sale is, in effect, a prohibitory act against the use of intoxicating liquors. Could such a prohibition be carried into full effect, there would not long remain either drunkard or moderate drinker in the land.

It appears to me that the time has fully come for the people of this great State to arouse to action, and unite heart and hand to protect themselves from the spirit trade.

406

THE LIQUOR TRADE IS A PESTILENCE.

If the trade in intoxicating liquors to be used as a beverage is an immoral trade, and productive of evil only, why should it not be classed with gambling, counterfeiting, and vending poisonous food, adulterated drugs, and clothing tainted with the plague, small-pox, yellow fever, and other infectious disease?

Every individual having facts calculated to place this trade in its true light, so as to render it as odious as it deserves to be, should give them publicity in every justifiable way. Should one fourth of the poisons, now used in the beverages of the drunkard and the temperate drinker, be mingled in our food by the venders thereof, and the fact be made known as it has been in regard to intoxicating liquors, to what infamy, as well as penal suffering, would an indignant public doom the perpetrators of so great a wrong!

Steps then should be taken to enlighten every family in the State; to present to them such facts and arguments as exist, and which go to show that the trade is a curse, and that all employed in it are contributing to extend and perpetuate that curse.

To bring about a correct public opinion is the first step in this grand enterprise. And let those who wish that step to be taken ask themselves, what can we do to insure it? One thing we can do, and have a right to do, and that is, to exercise the right of freemen at the ballot-box.

Let all who love the cause of temperance, and wish to see the liquor trade stopped, do all they can in their own party to secure that result-a result that can only be secured by the co-operation of different parties. Let us,

VALUE OF A DRUNKARD'S VOTE.

407

then, in our respective parties, select good men and true, who, by their example and their votes alike, will co-operate in hastening the time of our national deliverance. Temperance men are bound in all suitable ways to promote the cause of temperance; and temperance now, in its appropriate signification, means total abstinence from all that can intoxicate. And is not the purification of the ballot-box one of the ways in which this cause can be promoted? What reliance can be placed on a drunkard in defense of freedom? His vote can be purchased and repurchased a dozen times before it is cast, for a glass of rum! a bribe that costs the buyer three cents, and the seller the half only of one, if that.

Before our country can be entirely free, a great work has to be done at Washington. When the people shall have purified their respective States from the liquor trade, they will be prepared to purify the United States from the same trade. For the same people are sovereign in both. The importation of intoxicating drinks, prohibited by law, must be brought about, before we can become either a free or a virtuous people, and before our children and children's children can be safe. When, by an act of national sovereignty, the liquor trade shall be inhibited, then the millions of bushels of grain now consumed in the distilleries and breweries will be saved, and the suffering poor be relieved from the double curse of inebriety and starvation. The cause of temperance can not triumph while the making, importing, and vending of intoxicating liquors, "to be used as a beverage, are permitted.

minate before the victory can be won.

These must ter

This the friends

of temperance should fully understand, and in all their efforts, have the ultimate extermination of the traffic con stantly in view. The man, or men, who matured and ob tained the passage of the Liquor Law of Maine, deserve the highest honor. The law, when carried out in all its details, uproots this dreadful traffic entirely, and termi nates all the miseries following in its filthy and poisonous train. If Maine triumphs, it will be one of the most wonderful Moral Reforms of any age. That her triumph may be complete, should be the prayer of all good men. With such a triumph before the other States and the world, with the practical results of such triumphs universally made known, would come a universal desire of all, anxious for the welfare of the world, to follow so glorious an example.

Such is the language of the venerable Mr. Delavan, and when this becomes the sentiment and effort of the sOVEREIGN PEOPLE, the world will be free from Intemperance.

CHAPTER XV.

TEMPERANCE ADDRESS.

[Delivered before the Hon. Legislature of the State of New York, in the Assembly Chamber of the Capitol, in Albany, March 29, 1853, by the Author.]

MESSRS. SPEAKERS, Gentlemen, Members of the Hon. Legislature in Senate and Assembly of the reputed Empire State of New York, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I CAN NOT but esteem it a favor that I am providentially permitted to address you in the Legislative Capitol of the State which gave me birth, more than seventy-seven years ago, and on a subject of no less importance in its results than weal or woe to our whole country, and to the whole human family comprised in the nations of this globe of earth on which we dwell.

The subject to which I allude will comprehend a brief review of the past and present prevalence of intoxicating liquors as a common beverage, their results on various individuals and classes of the general community, and the past and present diversity of public sentiments and measures adopted, pro and con, under the influence of a public array, against the predominant vice of Intemperance, and its concomitant degrading and destructive evils.

Time was, when the prevalence of intemperance in the unrestrained use of intoxicating liquors as a