102 ELEVENTH REASON OF REMONSTRANCE. hole in the State of New York, neither in city nor in country, but the glorious contrast everywhere displayed, by the unfurled banners of total abstinence, temperance, joy, peace, plenty, and prosperity, waving over the land! Behold now the portrait representation of the moral condition of the whole temperance State of New York. Not a single liquor-tippling, hard-drinker, manufacturer of alcohol, liquor-trafficker, rum-seller, nor liquor capitalist opposed to temperance-no; not one of the above description elected to Congress, nor to be found in either department of the State Legislature; nor one such to be found in the official capacity of a county, town, or cityward officer! Not a tippling physician would be found on a visit to the sick and dying. Not a drunken mechanic even to seek for employment. Not a staggering daylaborer would be found in the street begging bread because he could find no employment. Not a drunken husband would be found beating his wife in hunger, because he had provided nothing for his household to eat. Not a drunkard's heart-broken wife could be found, with her freezing, starving children in tatters, hovering over a few coals, or supperless in a bunk of straw, while the father was snoring in the rum-seller's catch-penny room, under the fumes of his last sixpence worth of whisky. Not a tippling, red-nosed, red-eyed professed minister of the Gospel of Christ crucified, to be found in any pulpit in the land. Not a mob liquor-tumult in the street, nor a murder committed in a drunken revel-no; not an instance of the kind, through the rolling years of a longer or ELEVENTH REASON OF REMONSTRANCE. 103 shorter period, during the existence of the Maine Liquor Law statute of the State of New York. Such would be the total abstinence GAIN of the statute of New York for the destruction of alcoholic poison-for the preservation of life, comfort, peace, and prosperity to the general community, and the preservation of poor drunkards and their families from the degradation, wretchedness, and woes of intemperance. But, alas! during such a period of trial, eminently calculated, by its intrinsic excellence, to perpetuate its indubitable existence indefinitely, what becomes of the liquordealer's cause, the state of their business and funds—what is the amount of their loss, and the destiny of their CRAFT to get rich by making and killing drunkards? The word "overthrown" comprises the import of the whole answer. Their whole business, which has so long filled the world with drunkards, wretchedness, and misery, is overthrown by the wisdom, and goodness, and power of Divine Omnipotence! Their boasted one hundred millions of dollars, at hazard of loss, in the city of New York (if truly estimated), were lost the first year of the existence of the Maine Law statute, enacted and executed according to law. Their additional loss, in proportional estimate on the other fifty-seven counties of the state, whatever that amount might be, whether five hundred and seventy millions of dollars, or ten times that amount-even fifty- · seven hundreds of millions, less or more- -all would be lost, and scattered in the wind like chaff by the statute Law of Maine, the whole liquor-craft monopoly would be totally overthrown, and succeeded by temperance, 104 ELEVENTH REASON OF REMONSTRANCE. peace, and prosperity to the millions of human beings the world over, gloriously emancipated from the thralldom and all the woes of Intemperance, and triumphantly happy in the accomplishment of the Temperance Reformation. CHAPTER VI. Further Considerations on the comparative amount of Loss and Gain Estimations, at Hazard by the Adoption or Rejection of the Law of Maine, as a Statute of the State of New York-Importance of Humiliation and Prayer, in View of this General War of Principle, for and against the Cause of Temperance, in answer to the Forebodings of the Twelfth Reason of the Remonstrancers against the Adoption of the Law of Maine, as a Statute of the Empire State. COMPARATIVE LOSS AND GAIN. THE subject of this chapter is to consider a comparative view of the loss and gain, at hazard, pending upon the legislative adoption of the Liquor Law of Maine, as a statute of the State of New York, in compliance with hundreds of thousands of petitions from advocates of total abstinence temperance societies, for the enactment of the statute aforesaid; or, the legislative rejection of the Maine Law statute, in accordance with the remonstrance of thousands of citizens of New York, sustained by their "Twelve Reasons, Review, and Defense," in favor of the prevailing liquor-craft monopoly. We have been thus particular in stating this concluding article of the eleventh "reason" of the New York remonstrance, because it comprises an estimation of the loss and gain on the two great principles of loss and gain, which have thrown the whole community of the State of New 106 COMPARATIVE LOSS AND GAIN. York into two grand divisions, in direct opposition to each other, on one great question of interest; to be estimated in "dollars and cents" by the grand division of all interested advocates of the liquor trade, who are remonstrancers against the proposed statute in question; and the professed, paramount interest claims of all total abstinence temperance advocates, to be estimated, not in paltry dollars and cents, nor even in any amount of millions of dollars, but in the more important valuation of a sober community, instead of tipplers, hard drinkers, and drunkards, and the inestimable value of immortal souls of human beings, in competition with the claims of any amount of cash, real estate, or liquor-stock valuation what ever. Now, the comparative difference between many millions of dollars, indefinitely, lost or gained, to a party concerned, on the one hand, and the valuation of a sober community, and the worth of an indefinite number of human souls, lost by drunkenness, or gained by total abstinence from all intoxicating liquors, and washed from the guilt of sin in the blood of atonement, delineated and exhibited in contrast, is the design of this descriptive and comparative conclusion. And let it be distinctly understood, that the amount of valuation, computed by each party above described on the respective principles of their estimation, namely, of an amount of cash, or cash valuation, on the one hand, and the amount of sobriety and the value of human souls, on the other hand, even both of which conflicting amounts, we claim, are to be considered as at hazard, of loss or |