Hold
out to your children all warnings, all rewards, all counsels, lest in
after days they break your heart, and curse your gray hairs.
A man laughed at my father for his scrupulous temperance principles,
and said--"I am more liberal than you. I always give my children the
sugar in the glass after we have been taking a drink."
Three of his sons have died drunkards; and the fourth is imbecile
through intemperate habits.
Again, we will battle this evil at the ballot-box. How many men are
there who can rise above the feelings of partisanship, and demand that
our officials shall be sober men?
I maintain that the question of sobriety is higher than the question
of availability; and that however eminent a man's services may be, if
he have habits of intoxication, he is unfit for any office in the gift
of a Christian people. Our laws will be no better than the men who
make them.
Spend a few days at Harrisburg, or Albany, or Washington, and you will
find out why, upon these subjects, it is impossible to get righteous
enactments.
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