STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 20I 



Perhaps of all questions relating to the subject under consideration, 

 that commonly called the temperance question, more than any other, 

 engages the attention of the public mind. All agree that temperance is 

 a sterling virtue; and, on the other hand, no one doubts that intemper- 

 ance is a great evil. But temperance is an avoidance of extremes. At 

 one end of the series is drunkenness, at the othei^otal abstinence. Cer- 

 tainly temperance can be neither of these, for temperance signifies mod- 

 eration. The true philanthropist does not restrict the meaning of the 

 term to the excessive use of strong drinks. In its application it includes 

 eating, working, thinking, reading, equally with drinkmg, and extends 

 to the indulgence of all the appetites and desires. In a word, it is appli- 

 cable to every pleasure, and to every labor of life. 



I am an advocate of temperance in its broadest sense; and I favor its 

 widest, deepest, and its most searching applica}:ion to every class of 

 society, to eveiy act of life, and even to every emotion of the human heart. 

 But because men may and do become gluttons, shall we abstain from 

 food ? Because men may kill themselves with ovenvork, shall w^e cease 

 from labor.'' Because men poison the very fountains of life, and destroy 

 both soul and body by the excessive indulgence of certain passions, shall 

 celibacy be imposed upon the whole human race.'' No! let him rather 

 who has not sufficient self-command to assert his manhood, and to subject 

 his appetites to an intelligent control, draw lessons from his daily experi- 

 ence, and learn to compel himself to such wholesome restraints in all the 

 manifold duties and pri\ileges of life as shall preserve him from excess, 

 and lead him to a temperate life; for intemperance dwells only in the 

 abuse and not in the right and orderly use of any of the blessings which 

 God has vouchsafed to man. 



The temperance movement of our time includes only that branch of 

 intemperance which relates to the use of intoxicating drinks. The most 

 zealous total-abstainer in the land is not more fully aware of the enormity 

 of the evil, nor can he more deeply deplore its existence than I do. I 

 know the suffering which it inflicts on societ)^ and the misery it entails 

 upon mankind. Yet if I were assigned the task of curing the world of 

 drunkenness, I should look to the use of wine as a most important 

 element in the forces I should feel bound to employ. I speak from expe- 

 rience as well as from observation, when I assert that pure acid wines do 

 not cause that insatiable thirst for more, which comes of drinking distilled 

 liquors. A man is as easily and as uniformly satisfied with a glass of 

 pure wine as he is with a cup of tea or coffee; provided, always, that he 

 does not inherit a taste for liquors, and that his taste has not been already 

 depraved by the habitual use of distilled spirits. The people of wine- 

 growing countries employ acid wines in place of both tea and coft'ee 

 at their daily meals, with a decided advantage in physical developemcnt 

 in favor of the wine. 



Men who have spent their lives in the vineyard and wine-cellar are 

 remarkable rather for their abstemiousness than for the opposite. Can 

 the opponents of the use of wines point me to a single instance where the 

 use of acid wines only, has produced an inebriate. 



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