Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1888 — Nuggets of sense. [ARTICLE]

Nuggets of sense.

Rev. Gilbert Small, o£ a well-known and able Prohibitionist, presents his view of his duty under the present circumstances, in the Idaville Observer, sensibly and unanswerably, as follows: “The question of licensing the liquor traffic bears a close relation to the moral code that many good people are unalterably it, and charge the government with alliance with evil when it gives permission to buy and sell it. Also, if a tax is laid on the article sufficient to pay the damage caused by the traffic in it, they fault the government for deriving support from its greatest national vice. As belonging to the advance guard in the new departure from old customs, sanctified by long use, these theorists are correct iu their interpretation of the moral code which forbids participation in other men’s sins and requires us to avoid the appearance of evil, yet they should exercise a full measure of forbearance towards those who are following hard after in this moral revolution now in progress, being reminded and requested not to forget that it is only a little while since the discovery was made that liquor was an evil, or that it was a sin to use it. Our fathers took it freely and used it on all occasions as a heavenly blessing and creature of com-. fort, at weddings, at christenings, funerals, wheat-harvest, corn-b uskings, barn-raisings, log-rollings and frolics generally, and he was dniggardly churl who would not furnish it Now, however, the tide of public opinion is turning the otlier way^-ainee—it—har beendiscovcred that the liquor business is the sum of all villianies, while he is a villain who deals in it,2 but during - the transition of public sentiment from the good to the evil of intoxicating beverages, and until a decided majority find out that it is wrong to use it, it is the propper thing for good government to regulate the tratlic by all necessary restrictions and make it pay ail expenses incurred on its account, tul such time as the people, moving »lowly and surely, shul detenuiue on Ito prohibition.