TEMPERANCE COLUMN

Otago Witness, Issue 2840, 19 August 1908, Page 13

TEMPERANCE COLUMN

A TEMPERANCE ADDRESS BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Mr Lincoln delivered a remarkable address before the Washingtonian Temperance Society of Springfield, ILL, at the Second Presbyterian Church on the 22nd of February, 1842, from which the following extracts are taken: " Whether -or not the world would be vastly benefited by a total and final banishment from it of all intoxicating drinks seems to me not an open question. Three-fourths* of mankind confess the affirmative with their tongues, and I believe that all the rest acknowledge it in their hearts.

" But when one who has long been known as a victim of intemperance bursts the fetters that have bound him, and appears before his neighbours ' clothed and in his right mind,' a redeemed specimen of long-lost humanity, and stands up with tears of joy trembling in his eyes to tell of the miseries once endured, now to be endured no more for ever ; of his once naked and starving children, now clad and fed comfortably ; of a wife, long weighed down with woe, weeping, and a broken heart, now restored to health, happiness, and a renewed affection, and how easily it is all done, once it is resolved to be done ; how simple bis language ; there is a logic and an eloquence in it that few with human feelings can resist.

" There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warmblooded to fall into this viee — the demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and generosity. What one of us but can call to mind some relative, more promising in youth than all his fellows, who has fallen a sacrifice to his rapacity? He ever seems to have gone forth like the Egyptian angel of death,' commissioned to slay, if not the first, the fairest born of every family. Shall he now be arrested in his desolating career? In that arrest all can give aid that will, and who shall be excused, that can and will not? Far around as human breath has ever blown, he keeps our fathers, our brothers, our sons, and our friends prostrate in the chains of moral death. To all the living everywhere we cry : ' Come, sound the moral trump, that these may rise and stand up, an exceeding great army. Come from the four winds, 0 breath ! and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.' If the relative • grandeur of revolutions shall be estimated by the great amount of human misery they alleviate, and the small amount they inflict, then, indeed, will this temperance reform be one of the grandest of our history.

"Of our political revolution of 1776 we are all justly proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom far exceeding that of any other nations of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of the long-mooted problem as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it was trie germ which has vegetated, an still is to grow and expand into the universal liberty of mankind.

" But with these glorious results, past, present, and to come, it had it 6 evils too. It breathed forth famine, swam in blood, and rode in fire; and long, long after, the orphans' cry and the widows' wail continued to break the sad silence that ensued. These were the price, the inevitable price, paid for the blessings it brought. " Turn now to the temperance revolution. In it we shall find a stronger bondage broken, a viler slavery manumitted, a greater tyrant deposed — in it, more of want supplied and disease healed, more sorrow assuaged. By it no orphans starving, no widows weeping ; by it, none wounded in feeling, none injured in interest. Even the dram-maker and dramseller will have glided into other occupations so gradually as never to have felt the change, and will stand ready to join all others in the universal song of gladness. And what a noble ally this to the cause of political freedom ; with such an aid, its march cannot fail to be on and on, till every son of earth shall drink in rich fruition the sorrow-quenching draughts of perfect liberty! Happy day, when all appetites controlled, all passions subdued, all matter subjugated, mind, all-conquer-ing mind, shall live and move, the monarch of the world ! Glorious consummation! Hail, fall of fury! Rein of reason, all hail !

"And when the victory shall be complete — when there shall be neither a slave nor drunkard on the earth— how proud the title of that land which may truly claim to be the birthplace and the cradle of botli those revolutions that 'shall have ended in that victory. How nobly distinguished that people who shall have planted and nurtured to maturity both the political and moral freedom of their species."

Speaking ijp Sydney, Professor Anderson Stuart stated that the demand fo_r competent locally-trained medical men was greater than the supply. Mrs T. Burton, Albert road, Epsom, New Zealand, writes: — "We all ui?e Chamberlain's Cough Remedy, and think a lot of it. My husband, who 16 a conductor on the" Auckland trams, takes it wheii he has the leaet symptom of a cold; ajkt it $£v?i.jq lessens tho attack. HaV© given jl to oujf children 'maaiy times for coughs or croup, and it has never Vfaijed-jjo cum. '3 For -sale e-vertfwhewL'""'^" f~~*» --rf^ PP s ** ! *~-~<ri3Krr 1 "-