he who fills an empty purse at his neighbor's
expense, only endeavors to regulate an irregularity.

But suppose we make the system a strict one, what process should be
employed? Probably you would say--"break up all these filthy and low
haunts; all these places where the habitually intemperate, the degraded,
the wretchedly poor congregate; and let these beverages be sold only in
respectable places and to respectable people." But is this really the
best plan? On the contrary, it seems quite reasonable to maintain that
it is better to sell to the intemperate than to the sober--to the
degraded than to the respectable--for the same reason that it is better
to burn up an old hulk than to set fire to a new and splendid ship. I
think it worse to put the first glass to a young man's lips, than to
crown with madness an old drunkard's life-long alienation--worse to wake
the fierce appetite in the depths of a generous and promising nature,
than to take the carrion of a man, a mere shell of imbecility, and soak
it in a fresh debauch. Therefore, if I were going to say where the
License should be granted in order to show its efficacy, I would
say--take the worst sinks of intemperance in the city, give them the
sanction of the Law, and let them run to overflowing. But shut up the
gilded apartments where youth takes its first draught, and
respectability just begins to falter from its level. Close the ample
doors through which enters the long train of those who stumble to
destruction and reel into quick graves, and let the flood overwhelm only
the maimed and battered conscripts that remain. Besides, it is better to
see vice as it really is, than as it sometimes appears. The danger of
intemperance is when it assumes this very garb of respectability, and
sits in the radiant circle of fashion attended by wit and beauty and
social delight. Let us see the Tempter, not as he seems when he throws
out his earliest lures, in festal garments and with roses around his
brow; but as he looks when fairly engaged in his work, showing his
genuine expression. Let us see this vice of intemperance in its
_results_, as they teem and darken here in the midst of our city life.
Lay bare its channel--let us see to its very depths--where it flows over
the wrecks of human happiness, and over dead men's bones. Lay bare its
festering heaps of disease, its madness, its despair, its domestic
desolation, its reckless sweep over all order and sanctity; and thus,
traci