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THE RUMSELLER'S PLEA.

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such quantities or qualities as may best accord with my business calculations, without being confined to time, place, quantity, quality, or circumstances. Such is my CRAFT.

By my craft, I have accumulated real estate, estimated at some millions of dollars, for which I pay taxes for the support of government, and of the poor in the land. As a freeman, I have chosen the city of New York for my residence and place of business thus far through life; am now extensively engaged in business; and my ships of the ocean, hotels, various liquor manufactories, houses of entertainment, and places where I furnish liquors for sale at many corners and cellars, every day and night in the week, as may easily be seen, and will show that I furnish both business and pleasure to hundreds of poor families, and perhaps thousands of persons, who are furnished at home and abroad with any and all kinds of liquors, through my means and instrumentality.

Now, the sum of the whole matter is, that if the Liquor Law of Maine should be enacted by the Legislature, and become a statute of the State of New York, my whole business calculations would be overthrown-all my dependents would be beggared, and all customers would be reduced to the necessity of quenching their thirst on cold water, the very element that beasts of the field and all other "inferior animals" make use of to quench their thirst, just as though human beings were brutes! And this is not all; but thousands of others, of less ability to bear the loss than myself, would be thrown out of business, and their comforts of a social glass would be lost, if the Liquor Law of Maine should become a statute of the Empire State.

Now, that such is the amount of the plea of REMONSTRANCE against the passage of the Maine law, as a legislative STATUTE of the State of New York, must be evident to all who consider and understand the import of Twelve Reasons, which have been respectfully presented to the Hon. Legislature of the State, A. D. 1852, in a remonstrance against the petitioned enactment of the law of Maine as a statute of the State of New York. We shall now attempt to analyze the TWELVE REASONS OF THE CELEBRATED REMONSTRANCE OF CITIZENS OF NEW YORK.

THIRD REASON OF REMONSTRANCE.

The third reason of said remonstrance is founded on the assumption of the baseness of the confederate character of petitioners to the Legislature of New York, for a law to prevent drunkenness. The following extract from their third reason is first presented to consideration for the better understanding of the other eleven reasons to sustain the remonstrance in question:

REASON THIRD." We regard the proposed law [Maine Law] as the audacious and fanatical project of certain conventional associations, known as temperance or total abstinence societies. We believe that these societies have justly incurred the indignation, and the political resistance and hostility of every enlightened freeman of the land, as the instigators and abettors of a despotic usurpation, more degrading to the dignity of a free people, and more atrocious in its political character than any which history records."

Now, it is worthy of special notice, that hundreds of thousands, male and female, in the State of New York,

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in A. D. 1852, have respectfully petitioned the Hon. Legislature of their State, for the enactment of a law to suppress drunkenness and its woes, comprising evils that are drowning our whole country in ruin. And that New York city gentlemen, if they all may be so called, to the number of ten, twenty, or thirty thousand names of gentlemen, with not the name of one female among them, have signed a remonstrance to the passage of said law. And yet, doubtless, many of those gentlemen have wives, daughters, sisters, mothers, and other female relatives and friends, many of whom belong to temperance societies. And, from the wretchedness which those females daily witness among the gentlemen of their own households or neighborhood, resulting from the fumes of intoxicating liquors; the bloated faces which they daily see, the staggering gait which they witness, the profane oaths, curses, wrangling, elamor, tumults, poverty, children in tatters crying with cold or for bread, and thousands of other indescribable scenes of the most horrid wretchedness, even among such New York city GENTLEMEN, who prefer various kinds of intoxicating beverages for common drink, instead of cold water, may, for aught any body knows, have prevented females from subscribing a remonstance, backed up with no less than Twelve Reasons to prevent the enactment of a law to suppress drunkenness !

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Doubtless, among the vast number of "RESPECTABLE GEN· TLEMEN" subscribers to the remonstrance in question, some are immensely rich men, and have become so by their tact and prosperity in the business of their craft of liquor manufacture or traffic. But it is very doubtful if not a ten or

twenty, or an hundred-fold greater number of the gentlemen subscribers to the remonstrance in question were not the mere political tools of the HEAD MEN of the liquor-monopoly craft, who were so firmly held under the beck or nod of their political masters, that not a drop of their daily alcoholic beverages could be obtained for favor, if they proved recreant, till the ban was removed by the humiliation of political penance, and a return to the politness hat under arm of "Y'ur most obadient sarvint, sur. A dhrop or two, ef ye plaze, and I'll be content to sarve y'ur 'onor.

Now, with all deference to the feelings of every honest, sober gentleman subscriber to the remonstrance, got up in New York city, against the legislative enactment of the law of Maine, for twelve specific reasons, can the public be ever made to believe that there were many of the number of subscribers to that remonstrance who were not rich manufacturers, and traffickers, or poor wretched drunken consumers of intoxicating liquors, or persons directly or indirectly interested in the prosperity of the abominable liquorcraft monopoly, to obtain wealth, popularity, political power, and influence, to crush and root out the principles of temperance, to the total failure and overthrow of the hated Temperance Reformation, the God and religion of the Bible to the contrary, notwithstanding! But to be more plainly uncompromising on this important subject, let the truth appear in all its moral, temperate, and religious bearings, and the conviction must be irresistible, that intemperance, the prevailing liquor-craft monopoly of wealth, popularity, and power, is sustained by the prevalent antitemperance political economy, at the expense of untold

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human wretchedness, and the whole combination of research, perfected by the infidel philosophy of this celebrated "Age of Reason," evinced by youthful irreverence for venerable age; geological reasonings to disprove the authenticity of Divine revelation; and human, fanciful communication with the spirit world, reduced to a system of unlettered language, systematically conferred on favorite mesmeratic believers and aspirants after the secrets of the Almighty by the professed sensible tokens of spirit knockings, without the intervening inspiration of a Bible, or the ordinances of a Christian Church, or the necessity of a crucified, atoning, risen, ascended, interceding Saviour, who alone can redeem lost sinners from the ruins of the fall in Eden, and from the wrath to come! In all such the ancient Roman proverb is verified, "Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat" "Whom God will destroy He gives up to madness. Let all opposers of temperance beware, for the day of retribution is hastening on, and the Lord's battleday will decide the contest.

The following analytical expositions and logical deductions, founded respectively on the import of the cleven remaining reasons offered to sustain the remonstrance against the petitioned adoption of the Liquor Law of Maine, are hereby submitted to the consideration of the Hon. Legislature, remonstrators, and all readers of this book of reminiscences.

FIRST REASON OF REMONSTRANCE.

The first reason entire is as follows: "We believe it to be our natural, primary, and irrevocable right to use the fruits of the earth, whether naturally produced, or artificially

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