Consistency by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 16, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 39.

Consistency.

By Editor

A POLITICAL paper recently made loud lamentations over the confiscation or destruction of so much valuable property invested in the liquor business in Iowa. In the same number of that paper was an account of a man who returned to his home in a drunken condition, where he found that his neglected and abused wife had been delivered of a dead child. Seizing the child, he beat the helpless mother to death with it! Oh, yes; by all means license the liquor traffic. Defend it by law; it is a "legitimate business" in its way—and its way is to make maniacs and murderers; to abuse the suffering and the helpless; to fill jails; to support criminal lawyers; to make tax-payers bear the load of criminal trials, to increase the necessity for insane asylums and State prisons. License it, and defy the word of God, which has pronounced a curse upon him that putteth the bottle to his neighbor's lips. Can a man have the welfare of society at heart, and say a word in favor of the liquor traffic?