1 ART. V. No tax or taxes shall exceed two dollars in any one year. ART. VI. Any member, on application to the Society, may be discharged, on paying the taxes, fines, and expenses due from such member, and the Secretary shall give him a certificate to that effect. ART. VII. No member shall be compelled to serve two successive years in the same office. ART. VIII. The Trustees shall execute any resolution of the Society, as to the laying out of their moneys for the purchase of books and other purposes. ART. IX. The several officers shall deliver to their successors all books, money, paper, or other property possessed by them in virtue of their offices. ART. X. In case of the death, absence, or removal of the President, then the Vice President shall act in his stead; and of the death, absence, or removal of the Secretary, the Treasurer shall act as Secretary, and of the death, absence, or removal of the Treasurer, then the Secretary shall act as Treasurer, and each until the next election, or an appointment pro tem. ART. XI. It shall be the duty of each member to accuse any other member of a breach of any regulation contained in article and the mode of accusative process and trial shall be regulated by a by-law. IV. SEC. 2. No member shall be expelled, except by the concurrence of two thirds of the members present at any meeting. ART. XII. Three quarterly meetings shall be holden on the last Mondays of January, April, and August, at one P. M., in each year, at such place as the Society shall appoint. ART. XIII. Any member, or in case of his death, his legal representatives, may transfer his share in the stock to any person who will become a member, and the property in such share shall be deemed to be vested in the purchaser, only from the time of such purchaser's subscribing to this Constitution. ART. XIV. Any member expelled shall forfeit all his rights and privileges in this Society. DEFICIENCY OF THE FIRST TEMPERANCE PLEDGE. 25 ART. XV. The manner of amending this Constitution shall be as follows, and not otherwise: any member wishing an amendment shall submit it, in writing, to the Trustees, who, if they approve thereof, shall deliver it to the Secretary, who shall read it to the Society at the next quarterly meeting. The Society shall, therefore, appoint a committee of not less than three nor more than five, to consider and report therefor, at the next annual meeting; and if approved by two-thirds of the members of that meeting, the same shall then become a part of this Constitution. (Adopted last Tuesday of April, 1808.) SIDNEY BERRY, JOIN DUMONT, MEMBERS. CHARLES KELLOGG, JR., JOHN BERRY, WILLIAM VELSEY, JOHN THOMPSON, OLIVER BISSEL, JR., GURDON G. SILL, WILLIAM H. JACOBS, JOSEPH SILL, SAMUEL HINCHE, DAN KELLOGG, JESSE BILLINGS, JR., JESSE WOODRUFF STEPHEN PAYN, JOSEPH DE WOLF, ALVARO HAWLEY, DEFICIENCY OF THE FIRST TEMPERANCE PLEDGE. It is readily admitted that the pledge of the first organized temperance society was imperfect, and so is almost every other human production, in its incipient stages. This conceded fact can not, of course, be a matter of wonder, and would not have been even here noticed by way of apology, were it not for the fact that the author's ears have been so often cloyed, and his heart grieved by unfeeling throes and cants upon the picneers of the temperance reformation, on account of deficiencies in their original temperance pledge, representing it as directly calculated to "make drunkards, and foster the principles of intemperance!" The author of these reminiscences hopes to be able to convince all who read or hear, that such was not the fact. The pioneers of the temperance reformation had to contend with their own propensities to evil, and with the prejudices, appetites, customs, pride, and interests of the whole community around them, who were accustomed from infancy to the free use of intoxicating liquors, and were urged on to continue their use by innumerable wiles of Satan to defeat every contemplated measure of reform! Under such circumstances, the restrictions specified in the pledge of their adopted Constitution comprised the ne plus ultra point that could possibly be secured at that time, by a temperance organization. But let not the imperfect attainment of that auspicious event be disparaged as a thing of naught by succeeding generations, who have acquired, or may hereafter acquire, improvements in the system of reform. The temperance reformation, at the commencement, was evidently the work of JEHOVAH. He foresaw the evil, and provided for the remedy in His eternal purpose, revealed to man in the Book of Divine inspiration. And, although it was like a grain of mustard seed in the beginning, yet it was then. the incipient development of God's predicted plan for the destruction of the curse of intemperance, the most subtle, DEFICIENCY OF THE FIRST TEMPERANCE PLEDGE. 27 complicated, and effectual stratagem of Satan to destroy the Church of God among the millions of drunkards, who would be swept, by the overwhelming flood of intoxicating liquors, into the oceanic whirlpool of endless perdition. The temperance reformation, though feeble in its commencement, began, in the providence of God, just as many other important events have commenced, which have blessed the world in past ages, and will bless it to the end of time. A little cloud, like a man's hand, once seen "rising from the sea," was the first token of a plentiful rain on the whole land of Israel, after a three-and-an-halfyear's famine by drought, in the reign of wicked Ahab. Time was, when the whole Church of God on earth, eight persons in number, were inclosed in an ark of "gopher-wood," tossing on the billows of a shoreless ocean! At another period the whole Church was found in a patriarchal family. Afterward an upper room contained the whole company; and still the Church is God's kingdom, and is divinely ordained to people the earth, from the rising to the setting sun. Time was, when young Joseph was envied, hated, cast Into a pit to die, taken out, sold a slave, imprisoned on false accusation; then, from the depth of that humiliation, was raised to honor and fame, and eventually became the temporal saviour of his brethren who hated him, and of the whole patriarchal household of his father from the impending desolation of famine and death. The whole house and Church of Israel once groaned under Egyptian bondage, oppression, and tyrannical in fanticide. But time was, when their temporal deliverer and lawgiver was an Hebrew infant, under sentence of death, concealed in an ark of bulrushes among the flags of the Nile; and, when found by the king's daughter, lay helpless and weeping in his little boat! Sweet babe— safe in danger! born to be great, good, and eminently useful in God's vineyard! The great Redeemer of mankind was once God incarnate; an infant of poverty in the manger of Bethlehem; in manhood was hated to death; but now lives to save lost sinners of earth, that the seats in heaven, once vacated by apostate angels, may be filled with redeemed saints, the purchase of His precious blood; and God have all the glory. Hence, evidently, God's eye is upon little things. Surely, then, it is His divine prerogative to bring to pass great events from small beginnings; and, doubtless, millions will forever praise Him in glory, that the temperance reformation now pending is one of this class. This standard of the Lord's lifting up, is to show forth His power and glory by the choice of "weak things of the world to confound the mighty, and things which are despised to bring to NAUGHT things that are," even such things as the woes, and sorrows, and degradation, and crime of a life of drunkenness, and all the concomitant curses of intemper ance. That little feeble band of temperance brethren, holding their quarterly and annual meetings in a country district school-house from April, 1808, onward, for several years, without the presence of a single female at their temperance meetings: who were made the song of the drunkard; |