Legal prohibition the only remedy for drunkenness : being the substance of two discourses, delivered in the Chestnut Street Church, Louisville, on the first Sabbaths of April and July, 1955 / by L.J. Halsey.

  • Halsey, Leroy J. (Leroy Jones), 1812-1896.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Legal prohibition the only remedy for drunkenness : being the substance of two discourses, delivered in the Chestnut Street Church, Louisville, on the first Sabbaths of April and July, 1955 / by L.J. Halsey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    to fill up the ranks of their miserable predecessors, even faster than they fall. In spite of all these efforts, the liquor traffic still drives on its dreadful enginery of de- struction more prosperously than at the first. During these twenty-five years of moral suasion, one million of our countrymen, at the lowest calculation, have gone down to the death and hell of the drunkard. In the face of facts like these, will any one tell us that moral suasion is a sufficient cure for drunkenness ? Why, all that the dealers in strong drink could desire at the hands of the temperance movement is, that its apostles would just stick to this old policy of moral suasion. Nothing would please them better, than that we should go on forever, as we have done so long, preaching this moral crusade of reason and argument against the dangers of in- temperance—and the)', shielded by the law of the land, will just drive this infernal business on all the harder for our efforts. They chuckle at the thought of the good bar- gain they are making with the public, that we should sow the wheat of persuasion, while they sow the tares of temp- tation in the same field. They know full well, from a rich harvest of experience, that all the array of logic we can bring, even backed by the high authority of God Almighty, will be no match against those attractions which art, money and the law of the land enable them to throw around the glittering wine-cup. They know, that with their gilded palaces of pleasure on every corner, saloons that outsparkle the day-light open at every hour, bar-rooms in every hotel and on every steamboat, they can gain a hundred new vic- tims from the young and unwary, while we are making one convert from drunkenness. It would be amusing, if it were not so mournful, to hear these men recommending moral suasion as the remedy for drunkenness—extolling a virtue which they never possessed, urging upon others an influence which they never felt, and gravely telling us that reason and argument are the only weapons needed in this warfare. Well, moral suasion has had its day. It has been the pioneer of the temperance cause. As such it has done a great and glorious work. But the most important thing it has done, lias been to bring the country to see that it needs another and stronger influence—to prepare the public mind to take another great step forward in this work. It has required twenty-five years of reasoning to enlighten the