The Liquor Question. 



people, and was empowered to punish, and did punish drunkenness 

 with excessive severity. He was required to be a man of rigidly ab- 

 stemious habits, and was liable to expulsion from the order for a 

 single violation of the laws relative to sobriety. These censors turned 

 drunken members out of the Senate without the least mercy, and 

 branded them with perpetual infamy. They were allowed no place of 

 honor or profit in the government. 



The epistles of the New Testament bear evidence that intemperance 

 prevailed to an alarming extent in the Gentile world, especially in the 

 cities of Greece and Rome, where the first efforts were made to estab- 

 lish the Christian religion. The drinking habits of the people greatly 

 hindered the progress of the Gospel, and the early converts were fre- 

 quently warned to avoid drunkenness, and not to keep company with 

 drunkards, and to remember " that no drunkards can inherit the 

 kingdom of God." 



But to extend our historical researches to all the nations of the 

 earth, ancient and modern, that have attempted to deal with this sub- 

 ject, would carry this paper into a field that was not within my pur- 

 pose, and my only apology for looking into the darkness of the past 

 is to show that we of the present time are struggling to overcome evil 

 in a form that has manifested itself from the earliest times, and the 

 remedies we invoke are essentially the same as those directed against 

 the traffic in all times. 



Any one who is curious to trace the history of this traffic in all of 

 its ramifications will find it has been present to curse the people of 

 every nation, ancient and modern, and is a problem, perhaps no 

 nearer solution now than it was four thousand years ago. Perhaps 

 it is not strictly true to charge all the evils that appear to flow 

 from the immoderate use of intoxicants, to the intoxicants them- 

 selves. May it not be rather that undue indulgence so weakens the 

 power of self-control and restraint as to let loose much of the evil 

 in our human natures to prey upon society, without the governing 

 and restraining influences of judgment, discretion and propriety. 

 Again, may not the evils supposed to result from the improper use 

 of intoxicants be but so many manifestations of the evil that is in the 

 world, and as a necessary adjunct to human existence? Would the 

 banishment of all intoxicants banish evil from the world? By no 

 means; the same evil would exist with the same vicious tendencies; 

 and it is fair to assume it would manifest itself in ways perhaps 

 equally injurious to society. But these are speculations that we can 

 hardly enter upon, however inviting the field. We are to deal more 



