p. 501 | OUR DYNAMITE

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 10, 1881

OUR DYNAMITE.

THE discovery of dynamite on board of British steamers in the harbor of Liverpool has alarmed the English shipping world. Matters are complicated by the facts coming out that the infernal machines were made at Peoria, Ill., and that there is a Fenian plan to blow up all the British shipping. A clock is made which after running six or twenty-four hours will strike a cap, and an explosion follows that will blow to pieces the largest steamer. This is a deliberate plan for murdering thousands who never heard of the questions at issue between the Irish patriot and his government. It would be the same atrocious deed if the fuse were made for six years instead of as many hours. The British government very justly asks this country's aid to suppress such murderous work. Our authorities will probably do as requested.

And yet we authorize the making, not of infernal machines but drinks, which in from six hours to as many years will rob and afterwards kill. The length of the fuse counts nothing as to the murderous design or effect. The government plans for this, and authorizes it, and divides the profits, first with the manufacturer or importer, and then with the retailer. Living men can remember when the entire annual expenses of our government were less than the sum it now receives for permission to make and sell intoxicating drinks. We are flooding our own land and stocking the world with liquid dynamite, which in a single year does more harm to life than Irish hate of England has ever done. Our government will probably engage in the hunt for the shop of some poor fanatic at Peoria, and never once think of the Peoria distilleries. England proposes to join us in taking the mote out of the national eye so as to look up the microscopic offenders who make dynamite machines; we invite both governments to cast out the beam from the eye of power so as to see the gigantic scale of murders planned by our license system.—Golden Censer.