miseries, however direful? Do you believe me impotent, imbecile, and
idiot-like, with no understanding to contrive my escape and thy ruin, and
no energy to perpetrate it? I will tell the end of thy infernal works. The
country, in justice, shall hear me. I would that I had the language of
fire, that my words might glow, and burn, and drop like molten lava, that I
might wipe you from the face of the earth, or persuade mankind to turn away
and starve you to death. Think you that I would regret the ruin that had
overwhelmed you? Too long I have been tender-hearted and forbearing.
Whisky, whisky sellers and whisky makers, traffickers and dealers in tears,
blood, sin, shame, and woe!--ten thousand times you have dipped your bloody
talons in my blood. There is no evil you have scrupled to accumulate upon
me! Neither will I be more scrupulous. You have shown me no mercy, and you
shall receive none.

Let us look at the rumseller, that we may know what manner of man he is,
and then ask if he deserves the pity, sympathy, or respect of society, or
any part of it. Viewed considerately, in the light of their respective
motives, the drunkard is an innocent and honorable man in comparison with
the retailer of drinks. The one yields under the impulse--it may be the
torture--of appetite; the other is a cool, mercenary speculator, thriving
on the frailties and vices of others. He is a man selling for gain what he
knows to be worthless and pernicious; good for none, dangerous for all, and
deadly to many. He has looked in the face the sure consequences of his
course, and if he can but make gain of it, is prepared to corrupt the
souls, embitter the lives, and blast the prosperity of an indefinite number
of his fellow-creatures. By the selling of his poisons he sees that with
terrible certainty, along with the havoc of health, lives, homes, and souls
of men, he can succeed in setting afloat a certain vast amount of property,
and that as it is thrown to the winds, some small share of it will float
within his grasp. He knows that if men remain virtuous and thrifty, if
these homes around him continue peaceful and joyous, his craft can not
prosper. The injured old mothers, the wives, and the sisters are found
where rum is sold. Orphan children throng from hut and hovel, and lift
their childish hands in supplication, asking at the hands of the guilty
whisky sellers for those who rocked their cradles, and fed and loved them.
The murderer, now sober a