Temperance and total abstinence, or the use and abuse of alcoholic liquors in health and disease / By Spencer Thomson.

  • Spencer Thomson
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Temperance and total abstinence, or the use and abuse of alcoholic liquors in health and disease / By Spencer Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    hesitate at sanctioning all that ignorant enthusiasts think fit to assert, have been stigmatised as enemies rather than as friends to the great cause of emancipation. Now, we must fully recognise the importance of earnest and awakening ap- peals to those who are sunk in the lethargic slavery of one of the most brutalizing of all sensual indulgences; but we are certain that exaggeration never ultimately serves the interests of truth. No words caw depict too strongly the evils of in- temperance ; no appeals cam be too urgent or awakening to the blunted feelings of those who are ruining themselves, both for time and eternity, by a habitual mdulgence in this over- powering propensity ; but surely there is plenty matter for the advocates of abstinence, without going out of their way to condemn those who maintain that fermented liquors are the gifts of God, to be wsed in moderation, but not abused. We are quite sure that the manner in which their public proceed- ings have been conducted has kept many aloof who would have been most valuable and influential advocates of this great cause of social and individual reformation. The fact, we be- lieve to be, that a large proportion of the intemperate denun- ciations and rash statements to which we allude, have been put forth by men who have themselves felt all the tyranny of this dréadful slavery, and (as we have been informed by some most competent observers) they feel, on their emancipation from it, a sort of excitement that is almost uncontrollable, urging them to bear public testimony to the evils from which they have escaped, and infusing into that testimony a strength that makes it operate powerfully on the minds of those whom they desire to awaken; whilst it leads them (with the want
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