THE OBJECT OF TEMPERANCE LEGISLATION.
An exchange quotes a temperance man as saying: "It is believed by many a firm friend of practical temperance, that a sound and efficient license law will be certain to lessen the number of cheap dives and low groggeries in the State." Well, but what is the object of temperance legislation? Is it merely to lessen the number of places where liquor is openly sold, or is it to diminish the amount of liquor sold and swallowed? If the latter, as we have always supposed, a license law is hardly the thing to accomplish the object. What is gained by compelling a thousand local tipplers to go to five different groggeries instead of twenty-five? If this is to be the end of all our labors, the mountain travails only to bring forth a "ridiculous mouse."—Sel. THE license law is a great curse to this nation. The Government has no more right to license men to make drunkards, than it would have to license men to break the ten commandments. The enormity of the evil of intemperance is almost inconceivable. There are nearly 1,000,000 drunkards in the United States, and 3,000,000 women and children are suffering disgrace and poverty on account of this drunkenness. Nearly 100,000 men die drunkards every year, and go to a drunkard's grave, and I fear to a drunkard's hell, as we read in God's Book that no drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of God. See 1 Cor. 6:10. "A BOY came to me last winter," says a Michigan colporter, "for temperance tracts. Of this noble-spirited boy I afterwards learned the following fact: A relative of his in a grocery had poured out a dram of liquor in a tumbler, to drink. The boy stepped forward, and put a temperance tract over the mouth of the tumbler. The man took it up and looked at it, and the first words he cast his eyes upon were, 'No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of God.' He dashed the glass upon the floor, exclaiming, 'That is the last of my drinking liquor, God being my helper.' He has kept his resolution."
—Sel. THE Seattle Mirror says: "We have heard wails from the liquor men who claim that they have property rights that must not be invaded. But how about the property rights, and personal rights, of non-drinking people, whose property is taxed, and whose families are ruined, by the liquor traffic? Suppose we look at vested rights, property rights, and personal rights, on the side of temperance people, and those who are not in the liquor business, for a while? Will the advocates of rum tell us something about the rights of non-drinking people that are invaded?" TEMPERANCE puts coal on the fire, meal in the barrel, flour in the tub, money in the purse, credit in the country, contentment in the house, clothes on the children, vigor in the body, intelligence in the brain, and spirit in the whole constitution.—Benjamin Franklin.