Maine Law, sustained by electors of independent opposition to all the powers and machinations of a destructive liquor craft monopoly; and cheered and comforted by all virtuous Temperance ladies, who are not afraid to trust the good of their country in the hands of God, and such legislators as are in favor of Temperance and the Maine Law.

Hence, in a word, if it be true, that both God and his friends are PATRONS of Temperance and of the Maine Law Statute, that Satan and his angels, and liquor-loving, intemperate, drunken fiends, of human form on the earth, are opposed to the Temperance Reformation and to the Maine Law Statute, that God will maintain his cause in opposition to Satan; that, ultimately, Satan's cause must fail, and this earth become a sober world, and that such will be the final result of the contest, in a glorious victory over all the powers of ungodliness; would it not be well for LEGISLATORS, as well as their petitioners, to renounce Satan's cause and standard, and resort in array to the Lord's banner of holiness, and righteousness, and Temperance, and the hopeful expectance, looking and longing for salvation from all sin, in the final victory of the Lord's great battle day, when all his enemies shall meet their predicted final overthrow? Impressed with such sentiments, gentlemen, your humble petitioners pray, that you would enact a prohibitory law to destroy the liquor traffic.

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

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 Temper ance 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 ther agreed by those present that the

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TO LEGAL VOTERS.

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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

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 the celebrated ELM TREE, which was brought, when a small shrub, from some distance, on the back of a respectable citizen of Albany (a Dutchman, by the name 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