Part 19 (2/2)
During a warmly contested election in the city of New York, it is stated in the daily papers that numerous applications were made for _pistols_ to those who kept them for sale. It is added that the application was extensively denied, on the ground of the apprehension that they were intended for bloodshed in the excitement of the contest. This was a n.o.ble instance of principle. But on the plea of the dealer in ardent spirits, why should they have been withheld? The dealer in fire-arms might have plead as the trafficker in poison does: ”This is my business.
I obtain a livelihood by it. _I am not responsible for what will be done with the fire-arms._ True, the people are agitated. I have every reason to believe that application is made with a purpose to take life. True, blood may flow and useful lives may be lost. But _I_ am not responsible.
If they take life, they are answerable. The excitement is a favorable opportunity to dispose of my stock on hand, and it is a part of my business to avail myself of all favorable circ.u.mstances in the community to make money.” Who would not have been struck with the cold-blooded and inhuman avarice of such a man? And yet there was not _half_ the moral certainty that those fire-arms would have been used for purposes of blood, that there is that ardent spirits will be employed to produce crime, and poverty, and death.
I have no time to notice other objections. Nor need I. I have stated the _principle_ of all. I just add here, that the excuses which are set up for this traffic will apply just as well to any other business as this, and will fully vindicate any other employment, if they are to be sustained. Apply these excuses to the case of a bookseller. The question might be suggested, whether it was a moral or an immoral business to deal in infidel, profligate, and obscene pictures and books. True, it might be alleged that they did evil, and only evil continually. It might be said that neither the love of G.o.d or man would prompt to it. He might be pointed to the fact, that they _always_ tended to corrupt the morals of youth; to blight the hopes of parents; to fill up houses of infamy; to blot out the hopes of heaven; and to sink men to h.e.l.l. But then he might with commendable coolness add, ”This traffic is not condemned in the Bible. If _I_ do not engage in it, others will. It contributes to my livelihood; to the support of the press; to the promotion of business; and I am not responsible for _their_ reading the books, nor for their desire for them. I am pursuing the way in which my fathers walked before me, and it is _my living, and I will do it_.” Wherein does this plea differ from that of the trafficker in ardent spirits? Alas, we have learned how to estimate its force in regard to other sins; but we shrink from its application in regard to this wide-spread business, that employs so much of the time and the wealth of the people of this land.
Here I close. The path of duty and of safety is plain. These evils may be corrected. A virtuous and an independent people may rise in their majesty and correct them all. I call on all whom I now address, to exert their influence in this cause; to abandon all connection with the traffic; and to become the firm, and warm, and thorough-going advocates of the temperance reformation. Your country calls you to it. Every man who loves her welfare, should pursue no half-way measures; should tread no vacillating course in this great and glorious reformation.
But more especially may I call on _young men_, and ask _their_ patronage in this cause. For they are in danger; and they are the source of our hopes, and they are our strength. I appeal to them by their hopes of happiness; by their prospects of long life; by their desire of property and health; by their wish for reputation; and by the fact that by abstinence, strict abstinence alone, are they safe from the crimes, and loathsomeness, and grave of the drunkard. Young men, I beseech you to regard the liberties of your country; the purity of the churches; your own usefulness; and the honor of your family--the feelings of a father, a mother, and a sister. And I conjure you to take this stand by a reference to your own immortal welfare; by a regard to that heaven which a drunkard enters not--and by a fear of that h.e.l.l which is his own appropriate, eternal home.
Again I appeal to my fellow professing Christians; the ministers of religion, the officers and members of the pure church of G.o.d. The pulpit should speak, in tones deep, and solemn, and constant, and reverberating through the land. The watchmen should see eye to eye. Of every officer and member of a church it should be known where he may be found. We want no vacillating counsels; no time-serving apologies; no coldness, no reluctance, no shrinking back in this cause. Every church of Christ, the world over, should be, in very deed, an organization of pure temperance under the heads.h.i.+p and patronage of Jesus Christ, the friend and the model of purity. Members of the church of G.o.d most pure, bear it in mind, that intemperance in our land, and the world over, stands in the way of the Gospel. It opposes the progress of the reign of Christ in every village and hamlet; in every city; and at every corner of the street. It stands in the way of revivals of religion, and of the glories of the millennial morn. Every drunkard opposes the millennium; every dram-drinker stands in the way of it; every dram-seller stands in the way of it. Let the sentiment be heard, and echoed, and reechoed, all along the hills, and vales, and streams of the land, _that the conversion of a man who habitually uses ardent spirits is all but hopeless_. And let this sentiment be followed up with that other melancholy truth, that the money wasted in this business--now a curse to all nations--nay, the money wasted in one year in this land for it, would place a Bible in every family on the earth, and establish a school in every village; and that the talent which intemperance consigns each year to infamy and eternal perdition, would be sufficient to bear the Gospel over sea and land--to polar snows, and to the sands of a burning sun. The pulpit must speak out. And the press must speak. And you, fellow-Christians, are summoned by the G.o.d of purity to take your stand, and cause your influence to be felt.
THE FOOLS' PENCE.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Gin-shop]
Have you ever seen a London gin-shop? There is perhaps no statelier shop in the magnificent chief city of England. No expense seems to be spared in the building and the furnis.h.i.+ng of a gin-shop.
Not many years ago a gin-shop was a mean-looking, and by no means a s.p.a.cious place, with a few small bottles, not bigger than a doctor's largest vials, in the dusty window. But now, however poor many of the working cla.s.ses may be, it seems to be their pleasure to squander their little remaining money upon a number of these palaces, as if they were determined that the persons whom they employ to sell them poison should dwell in the midst of luxury and splendor. I do not mean to say, that we have a right to throw all the blame upon the master or the mistress of a gin-shop. For my part, I should not like to keep one, and be obliged to get rich upon the money of the poor infatuated creatures who will ruin both soul and body in gin-drinking; but the master of the gin-shop may be heard to say, ”I don't force the people to drink; they will have gin, and if I do not sell to them somebody else will.” The story of ”The Fools' Pence,” which follows, is worth attending to.
A little mean-looking man sat talking to Mrs. Crowder, the mistress of the Punch-bowl: ”Why, Mrs. Crowder,” said he, ”I should hardly know you again. Really, I must say you have things in the first style. What an elegant paper; what n.o.ble chairs; what a pair of fire-screens; all so bright and so fresh; and yourself so well, and looking so well!”
Mrs. Crowder had dropped languidly into an arm-chair, and sat sighing and smiling with affectation, not turning a deaf ear to her visitor, but taking in with her eyes a full view of what pa.s.sed in the shop; having drawn aside the curtain of rose-colored silk, which sometimes covered the window in the wall between the shop and the parlor.
”Why, you see, Mr. Berriman,” she replied, ”our business is a thriving one, and we don't love to neglect it, for one must work hard for an honest livelihood; and then you see, my two girls, Let.i.tia and Lucy, were about to leave their boarding-school; so Mr. Crowder and I wished to make the old place as genteel and fas.h.i.+onable as we could; and what with new stone copings to the windows, and new French window-frames to the first floor, and a little paint, and a little papering, Mr. Berriman, we begin to look tolerable. I must say too, Mr. Crowder has laid out a deal of money in fitting up the shop, and in filling his cellars.”
”Well, ma'am,” continued Mr. Berriman, ”I don't know where you find the needful for all these improvements. For my part, I can only say, our trade seems quite at a stand-still.
There's my wife always begging for money to pay for this or that little necessary article, but I part from every penny with a pang. Dear Mrs. Crowder, how do you manage?”
Mrs. Crowder simpered, and raising her eyes, and looking with a glance of smiling contempt towards the crowd of customers in the shop, ”The fools' pence--'tis THE FOOLS'
PENCE that does it for us,” she said.
Perhaps it was owing to the door being just then opened and left ajar by Miss Lucy, who had been serving in the bar, that the words of Mrs. Crowder were heard by a man named George Manly, who stood at the upper end of the counter. He turned his eyes upon the customers who were standing near him, and saw pale, sunken cheeks, inflamed eyes, and ragged garments.
He turned them upon the stately apartment in which they were a.s.sembled; he saw that it had been fitted up at no trifling cost; he stared through the partly open doorway into the parlor, and saw looking-gla.s.ses, and pictures, and gilding, and fine furniture, and a rich carpet, and Miss Lucy, in a silk gown, sitting down to her piano-forte: and he thought within himself, how strange it is, by what a curious process it is, that all this wretchedness on my left hand is made to turn into all this rich finery on my right!
”Well, sir, and what's for you?”
These words were spoken in the same shrill voice which had made the ”fools' pence” ring in his ears.
George Manly was still in deep thought, and with the end of his rule--for he was a carpenter--he had been making a calculation, drawing the figures in the little puddles of gin upon the counter. He looked up and saw Mrs. Crowder herself as gay as her daughters, with a cap and colored ribbons flying off her head, and a pair of gold earrings almost touching her plump shoulders. ”A gla.s.s of gin, ma'am, is what I was waiting for to-night, but I think I've paid the last '_fools' pence_' I shall put down on this counter for many a long day.”
George Manly hastened home. His wife and his two little girls were sitting at work. They were thin and pale, really for want of food. The room looked very cheerless, and their fire was so small that its warmth was scarcely felt; yet the commonest observer must have been struck by the neatness and cleanliness of the apartment and every thing about it.
”This is indeed a treat, girls, to have dear father home so soon to-night,” said Susan Manly, looking up at her husband as he stood before the table, turning his eyes first upon one and then upon another of the little party; then throwing himself into a chair, and smiling, he said,
<script>