CHAPTER XVI.

A Concise History of the Origin, Constitution, Resolutions, Principles, and Rapid Increase of the Maine Law Association of the City of Albany, considered as an Example worthy to be followed by all Lovers of the Temperance Reformation, and recommended in an Address to all Legal Voters at the Poll of Election in the State of New York, in our whole Country, and the World.

TEMPERANCE ADDRESS.

SINCE the beginning of days, when God said, "Let there be light, and there was light," to this present time, the great chain of Divine Providence has exhibited an innumerable variety of important links, each one of which has been descriptive of some momentous event relating to the great family of the human race, and all the events taken together, either separately or combined, as recorded in the Bible and history of Divine Providence, will, doubtless, afford subjects for the contemplation of the inhabitants of the heavenly world, when time shall cease to measure days, nights, weeks, months, years, and generations of mankind, and be enumerated only by ages of endless duration.

It has, providentially, fallen to the lot of the author of this essay to live in this nineteenth century to an advanced age, to be an eye and ear witness of some of the providential circumstances above alluded to, and to be permitted not only to witness, but to describe one of the links of the providential chain which time has revealed in these

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latter days of the earth's existence. The event to which allusion has been made comprises the history of the Temperance Reformation of this century, which is now pending throughout the bounds of all Christendom, divinely shaking the nations of the earth to their very center.

Although it has never fallen to the author's lot to be the distinguished originator of any of the grand temperance enterprises, yet, nothwithstanding, he would be grateful to the beneficent Parent of all Good, that he has been one of the number of the primeval movers of them, and a co-worker, a witness, and a recorder of what others have done, and are doing for the promotion of Temperance-a cause, the origin of which is DIVINE and not human, and the glory of which must ever be given to God, and not to man.

HISTORICAL TEMPERANCE REMINISCENCES.

In the latter part of January, 1853, a few gentlemen of the Seventh Ward of the city of Albany, in a store, in Broadway, at evening, being in conversation on the exciting subject of Temperance, just after the meeting of the New York State Temperance Society, the eldest man of the firm of said store, suggested the utility of a Temperance organization, on principles of political alliance, on a new plan, to carry into effect the adoption of the Maine Law Statute, and recommended that the plan should be immediately set on foot in the city. Whereupon, it was then agreed by those present that the

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attempt should be made, and, accordingly, a meeting of legal voters in said city ward was notified to be holden in the store aforesaid, on the evening of the 26th day of January, for purposes above-mentioned.

Previous to the time of that meeting, Capt. Gould S. Buckbee, a resident of the aforesaid ward, in Albany, presented a respectful invitation to the author of these historical remarks, requesting his attendance at said meeting in the store aforesaid, stating the object of the meeting, and his desire that the author would attend and address the audience on the occasion. Accordingly, the invitation was cheerfully accepted. The evening came, and fifteen legal voters of the seventh ward, in the city of Albany, subscribed their names to a new constructed alliance Temperance Pledge, as will appear in the following record of the doings of that meeting, which was closed with a short address by the author, encouraging them with the sentiment of his decided opinion that the event of that meeting was a step in advance of any preceding measure for the security of the legal adoption of the Maine Law Statute, or a similar law to the same effect, and that this new measure, if adhered to, would not fail, eventually, to produce the entire prohibition of the abominable liquor traffic in the State of New York, and throughout our whole country and world.

Their meeting was adjourned to a different place in the same ward on the second evening following, for the election of officers, and to consummate and set in order their well-concerted plan of Temper

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ance operations on political principles, all which was harmoniously accomplished on the following evening of their adjournment. Officers were elected, important resolutions were adopted, and several addresses were made, unitedly concurring for the promotion of the step in advance to insure the Maine Law Statute, or one of similar effect, on which occasion the author was invited to take part, which was most cheerfully responded to with cordiality.

Now, before any extract is made from their book of record to promulgate their noble enterprise, let the public be informed of the following circumstantial facts worthy of a place in the history of Divine Providence, and especially so in the history of the Temperance Reformation.

The place where the first suggestion was made, which resulted in the notice of a meeting for the organization of a new Temperance Society, in the city of Albany, was the oil store of the firm of John and Meritt Chrisler, in Broadway, forty paces from he celebrated ELM TREE, which was brought, when small shrub, from some distance, on the back of a espectable citizen of Albany (a Dutchman, by the ame of LANSING VISSCHER), and was transplanted on the east side of Broadway, on the day General Burgoyne resigned his sword to General Gates, in Saratoga County, October 17, 1777.

That little elm shrub, in its new and important station, was a silent, unerring witness to the providential glories of the American arms in a victory which led to a speedy consummation of the Ameri

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can Revolution. That little elm sprout stood where the noble tree now stands, in the soil of the bank of the ever-flowing Hudson, then an humble bush, set there to witness the perturbation of the conquered, humbled General BURGOYNE, when he was marched, with his vanquished troops, as prisoners of war, from Saratoga's victorious battle-ground to ALBANY'S BROADWAY, and through it down to the American headquarters, while the citizens of Albany rejoiced that their terrific fears of approaching desolation were lost in the TRIUMPHS OF VICTORY, and the joyful prospects of their country's Independence.

That once transplanted little elm-bush now spreads its towering branches a full-grown tree in Albany's thronged Broadway, in the seventh ward of the city, close by the railroad-track across that street, where thousands, from their seats in the passing cars, may see and admire the notable elm, and remember that it stands amid storms, dangers, and death all around it, as Albany's living signal of the time of her country's Independence, and the rural badge of her Capitol's brightest adorning.

Doubtless, DIVINE PROVIDENCE designed, when the elm shrub was transplanted, that it should stand as a REMEMBRANCER to all the future generations of Albany, in commemoration of the day of their country's providential deliverance from the despotism of a foreign national parent's oppressive power, by the capture of a despotic general and his invading hosts, on a sanguinary march, with design to cut the life-strings of a country's DECLARATION OF