An appeal to the people for the suppression of the liquor traffic : a prize essay / by Rev. H.D. Kitchel.

  • Kitchel, Henry Denison, 1812-1895.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An appeal to the people for the suppression of the liquor traffic : a prize essay / by Rev. H.D. Kitchel. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    It has its system, and talks loudly of its interests and rights. It sustains a scheme of vigorous and almost universal operation. Its dram-shops line our thoroughfares, and float on all our waters. Every point of concourse is seized and occupied by its agents. The Tavern is perverted from the Traveller’s Home into a den of tipplers, and fitted out in the name of the State with all that can entice the temperate and push on the falling to their ruin. While this continues, we may bail away forever at the pool t)f Intemperance, but this system will pour in fresh floods incessantly upon us. Let this horrid enginery play on, and we shall forever have wo to alleviate, pauperism to provide for, crimes to punish, and victims to pull from the burning gulf. Let us be weary of working so. We have rolled this stone of Sisyphus till patience has ceased to be a virtue. The Present Demands of the Work. The effort now on all hands clearly indicated for the advance¬ ment of this cause is a vigorous and united onset upon the Traffic. Let us suppress this systematic agency for the tempta¬ tion and ruin of men. While sparing this, we allow in the field an enemy capable of counteiworking all our moral measures. With absolute certainty, while it continues, this Traffic will sternly and powerfully resist us at every point. It is the only effective mode of opposition with which v7e have now to con¬ tend, the only form of the foe which wre have no weapons to reach. We have run upon an obstacle which no zeal, nor amount of exerti'on, in the old wTay, can ever surmount. Our moral means have no relevancj^ to this part of the work. The enemy is now7 entrenched in a fortress as impregnable as rock to all mere influence and argumentation. Shielded behind the ram¬ parts of Law and Custom, the Traffic is proof against all those weapons wTdch we have found effectual in other directions. It laughs at the shaking of our moral spear. The whole artil¬ lery of moral suasion glances from it as a powTerless imperti¬ nence, harmless as the pattering of hail on a rock. The strong arm of Law alone can reach it. And this is the point which we have reached in the process of this reform. Our business now is with the Traffic. To this wre are summoned now as our first duty. We must stop this authorized trade in destructive drinks. This has indeed begun to be felt. For some time past we
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