TEMPERANCE CAUSE:

Last, Present and Future.

BY

CHARLES JEWETT, M. D.

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

CHICAGO:

CHURCH, GOODMAN & CUSHING, STEAM PRINT,

51 & 53 La Salle Street.

To all who desire and labor for the diffusion of useful knowledge, the suppression of vice, the promotion of sound morals, true social refinement, and universal freedom, as antecedent to, or coincident with the general happiness of our race and the reign of Christ's kingdom on earth, the following work is respectfully inscribed, by their earnest fellow-laborer,

THE AUTHOR.

CHAPTER I.

The Present Condition of the Cause Unsatisfactory.-The Period of Active Educational Effort one of Great Success.-The Popularity of the Liquor System when first Attacked.-The Revolution wrought prior to 1845.-The Means employed to effect it.-Why has their use been so generally Discontinued?

There are indications in various quarters that the Christian men of this country, especially its religious teachers, are by no means satisfied with the present state of things generally, or even with their own present position in relation to the cause of temperance. They have witnessed the gradual decline and final death of most of those forms of organization and the general discontinuance of those modes of action which God so abundantly blessed twenty-five years ago, and which in their aggregate influence revolutionized the public opinion, social customs, and even the laws of the New England States. Other States, out of New England, changed their laws, but as the change was not preceeded by a proper and sufficient education of the people, the masses, in relation to the questions at issue between the contending parties, in other words, as the revolution in public opinion and social customs was not complete, or suf ficiently advanced prior to the change of their laws, those laws were soon repealed, or remain a nullity. Even in one of the New England States, Connecticut, the education of the people, on the particular questions involved, was so im-perfect and the party in power which passed the Prohibitory Law was so nearly equaled in numbers and power by the

party opposed to it, that the law has exerted but little influence to restrict the traffic in liquor, though pronounced constitutional by its highest courts, and just and righteous by the entire Christian sentiment of the State.

That the era of active, persistent, sensible, educational temperance effort was signalized by continual advance in the right direction; that efforts so simple, and that taxed so lightly the time and purses of moral and Christian men were never before so blessed, I assert without fear of contradiction. I challenge the historian to point us to a social revolution, wrought in an equal period of time, and on an equal portion of earth's surface, so thorough and fraught with results so marked and so rich to the great interests of human society, as that produced by the temperance efforts in New England during the intervening period from 1825 to 1855.

Consider for a moment what was done during those thirtyyears. In 1825 alcoholic liquors in public estimation were the most potent and beneficent of all agents for the prevention and cure of disease. Thousands of families if compelled to choose spirituous liquors without the doctor, or the doctor without the liquors, would have dispensed with the doctor. Alcohol in some form was the healer of bruises, the soother of burns, the panacea for punctures. It contributed like nothing else to "restore the Union" when parts had been divided by cutting instruments, and the masses of men would have deemed it simply impossible to treat properly the fracture of a bone or a dislocation without the products of the still. It was the great refrigerator in inflammations, even when ice and snow were abundant, and where animal heat was deficient, it was the king of calorifacients. Cider brandy was the cure-all in rheumatism, and gin the sheet anchor in dropsies. It would "break a fever" if used in the forming stage; if it did not, it was certainly a glorious adjunct in its treatment, and finally a great helper during convalescence. With all sorts of people, at all times, in all places, and in almost all forms of disease it was the great reliable, all-trusted medicine. We began life with alcoholic liquors, and ended it in the same company. It first saluted