Tract Society

“ The manners of the great body of the professional men must indicate much of the requisitions of the society they serve.—So, also, must every circumstance connected with the service of society: its character, whether slavish or free, abject or prosperous, comprehensive or narrow in its uses, must testify to the desires and habits, and therefore to the manners of a community, better than the conversation or deportment of any individual in the society can do. ”

“ I address you, fellow-citizens, to enlist your sympathies and efforts in behalf of an institution which, in accordance with the spirit of the times, has been established through our land by the almost united voice of the nation, and this for the suppression of one of the most alarming evils that ever infested human society; a vice, too, so odious in its nature, so injurious in its consequences, and attended with so many circumstances of suffering, mortification, and disgrace, that it seems difficult to understand how it should ever have become a prevalent evil among mankind ”

“ What does the voice of common humanity say to us? Can we feel for human woe, and not be moved at the spectacle of wretchedness and despair which the intemperance of this country presents? Let us imagine the condition of the hundreds of thousands who are now burning with the hidden flame, and hastening to utter destruction by this most pitiless of all vices; let us embrace in one view the countless woes inflicted by the cruel tempers, the deep disgrace, the hopeless poverty, and the corrupting examples of all these victims, upon wives, children, parents, friends, and the morals of society ”

“ Systems of equality, with a community of labour and of goods, are highly unfavourable to it. I begin with these, because, in all the objections to such systems, a common principle is involved, the knowledge of which, in its different bearings, will be useful to us afterwards, when we come to examine the encouragements to moral restraint, which, under the existing state of things, are offered to the different classes of society. ”

“ What right have men, by selling ardent spirit, to increase the danger, extend the ravages, and augment and perpetuate the malignancy of the cholera, and multiply upon the community numerous other mortal diseases? Who cannot see that it is a foul, deep, and fatal injury inflicted on society? that it is in a high degree cruel and unjust? that it scatters the population of our cities, renders our business stagnant, and exposes our sons and our daughters to premature and sudden death? ”

“ But, to increase your contempt for the habit of drinking, think how it especially prevails among the most degraded portions of the community. Inquire through the city, or village, for those who are so polluted as to be shut out from all decent society—so inured to vice that they cannot be looked upon but with utter disgust; learn their history, and you invariably find that the insidious glass has been their companion, their solace, and their counsellor. And should not dark suspicion and decided reprobation be stamped upon that which is thus associated with the lowest debasement and crime? ”

“ O, to die in our houses, amid our friends, and with the consolations of religion, strips not death of its character as the king of terrors. But to die as the drunkard dies, an outcast from society, in some hovel or almshouse, on a bed of straw, or in some ditch, or pond, or frozen in a storm; to die of the brain-fever, conscience upbraiding, hell opening, and foul spirits passing quick before his vision to seize him before his time—this, this is woe; this is the triumph of sin and Satan. Yet, in the last ten years, 300,000 have died in our land the death of the drunkard ”

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“ As long as you keep ardent spirits in your houses, as long as you drink it yourselves, as long as it is polite and genteel to sip the intoxicating bowl, so long society will remain just what it is now, and so long drunkards will spring from your loins, and so long drunkards will wear your names to future generations. ”

“ To arrest a great moral evil, and elevate the general standard of character in a community, the influence of the young is all-important. They can, if they please, put an end to the most demoralizing scourge that has ever invaded our country, and introduce a state of society far more pure and elevated than the world has yet seen. ”

“ Or what parent, inquiring for an eligible boarding-school, would think of asking, whether his son or daughter might there have the aid of such stimulus, or the example of its use? If, then, intoxicating liquor is thus disparaged in the most moral and intelligent circles, why should it not be universally abjured by individuals? Why should not the young, especially, of both sexes, keep themselves unspotted, and worthy of the most elevated society? ”

“ Next let us endeavor to make precise the meaning of the words community and society. It is clear that at different times men may be divided into groups of greater or less extent—tribes, clans, families, nations, towns. If a certain number of clans are struggling for existence, that portion of the conscience will be developed which tends to the preservation of the clan; so, if towns or families are struggling, we shall get a moral sense adapted to the advantage of the town or the family. In this way different portions of the moral sense may be developed at different stages of progress. ”

“ Investigates, in an orderly, scientific manner, the principles of association, and whatever relates to the interests and improvement of men in communities. It has its basis in psychology, as that science of the soul reveals most clearly the elements of a social nature. By instinctive longings for sympathy and fellowship, men are drawn together, and readily consent to the [381] restraints of society, whose earlier tacit agreements and maxims are at length formulated into rules and laws for their better government. ”

“ Moreover, however distant the final consummation may be, there are, I think, many indications of an approximation. Nothing is more characteristic of modern society than the enormous development of the power of association for particular purposes. In former days a society had to form an independent organ, a corporation, a college, and so forth, to discharge any particular function, and the resulting organ was so distinct as to absorb the whole life of its members. ”

“ We are apt indeed to think of the state of things in which the members of a family or clan hold land and stock in common, as the antithesis of one in which rights of property exist. In truth it is the earliest stage of their existence, because the most primitive form of society in which the fruit of his labour is secured to the individual by the society, under the influence of the conception of a common well-being. ”

“ The theory of socialistic teaching, namely, the conditions of production and distribution, could be constantly remodeled just as other human institutions, i.e. the customs of governments and societies, the laws, ideas of beauty and morality, knowledge of nature, and views of society. ”

“ It is now reduced to be a maxim, equally approved in philosophy and politics, that the existence of distinct and separate casts or classes, forming exceptions to the general system of polity adapted to the community, is an inherent vice in the composition of society ”

“ How would you like to have your neighbors one after another break down your fences, and turn their cattle into your corn-fields, cut down your fruit and ornamental trees, set your house or barn on fire, and threaten you with poverty and slavery? If you would not have your neighbor do thus to you, provided he had the power, then how can you, by preparing the food for intemperance, subject the property, the peace, the morality, the religion, and the liberties of your country to those dangers and fearful depredations which you are now inflicting upon her? ”

“ Proceeding then to define the specific purposes of these institutions, he declared that the object of the family is to assure the reproduction of individuals and prepare them, by guidance through childhood, to become reasonable beings; that the object of civil society is to enable each individual to reap advantage from the powers of all other individuals through division of labor, free exchange, and other economic means; that the object of the State is to protect each individual against aggression and secure him in his freedom as long as he observes the equal freedom of others ”

“ Corruption of manners and morals too, how rapidly it will spread under the operation of this poison! Nor can religious principle stand long before the overwhelming inundation; and just in the degree in which alcoholic liquors are used, will the Sabbath, and the institutions of religion, and the Bible be neglected and trodden under foot. And when the morality, and religion, and the conscience of the majority of our nation are gone, what but a miracle can save our liberties from ruin? Corrupt the majority, and what security is there in popular elections? ”

“ It is true it is still a conserving, co-operating, propagating group of individuals, in which appear many of the elemental functions of society. While it represents a group based on blood relationship, as in the old dominant family drawn together by psychical influences and preserved on account of the protection of the different members of the group and the various complex relations between them, still within its precincts are found the elementary practices of economic life, the rights of property, and the beginnings of education and religion. ”

“ Importance of social environment I take the explanation of the differences that distinguish communities to be this: That each society, small or great, necessarily weaves for itself a web of knowledge, beliefs, customs, language, tastes, institutions and laws. Into the web woven by each society (or rather, into these webs, for each community above the simplest is made up of minor societies that overlap and interlace each other) the individual is received at birth and continues until his death. ”

“ Such are the ravages of the demon we hunt. Its footsteps are marked with blood. We glory in our liberties, and every fourth of July our bells ring a merry peal, as if we were the happiest people on earth. But O, our country, our country! She has a worm at her vitals, making fast a wreck of her physical energies, her intellect, and her moral principle; augmenting her pauperism and her crime; nullifying her elections—for a drunkard is not fit for an elector—and preparing her for subjection to the most merciless tyranny that ever scourged any nation under heaven. ”

“ And first, we are met by a body of men who tell us that alcohol is useful. And what if it is? What if every benefit that the moderate and immoderate drinker can think of, flows from it? What will this do to compensate for its giant evils which are desolating our land? Is man so bent on self-gratification that he will have every sweet, though it be mingled with poison? Will he exercise no reason; make no discrimination between unmixed good and good followed by desolating woes? ”

“ You are soon to supplant those who have passed the state of life which you now are occupying. Soon the generation that is to grow up under the influence of your example and instruction, will have reached your place. Thus are you the heart of the nation. Corruption and debasement here must be felt to the extremities of the national body. Temperance here will eventually expel, by its strong pulsations, the last remnant of the burning blood of drunkenness from the system, and carry soberness and health to every member of our political constitution. ”

“ The traffic is a violation of that law which requires a man to honor God. Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. And yet is this a business which was ever engaged in, or ever pursued, with a desire to honor God? Is it an employment over which a man will pray? Can he ask the God of heaven to give him success? Let him, then, in imagination, follow what he sells to its direct result; let him attend it to its final distribution of poverty, and woes, and crimes, and death, and then kneel before heaven’s eternal King, and render thanksgiving for this success? ”

“ But, in a day of increasing light and purity, you can never rid treasures, thus acquired, of a stigma, which will render him miserably poor who holds them. Upon the dwelling you occupy, upon the fields you enclose, upon the spot that entombs your ashes, there will be fixed an indescribable gloom and odiousness, to offend the eye and sicken the heart of a virtuous community, till your memory shall perish. Quit, then, this vile business, and spare your name, spare your family, spare your children’s children such insupportable shame and reproach. ”

“ That which, when we become capable of reflection, we term conscience, consists in pleasure in forms of action furthering the welfare of society—forms gradually moulded to habit with the development of social relations,—and in a corresponding pain at the realization of having failed of such action; the knowledge of the demand, by society as a whole or by a part of society, of action in accord with the general welfare, and the sense of the justice of this demand, constituting the feeling of obligation and duty. ”