Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 October 1879 — Moderation. [ARTICLE]

Moderation.

Harper’s Magazine: We have heard an intelligent but not a wise politician call the grog shop the poor man’s club, and the question is often asked' why the poor man should not take his whisky if the rich man takes his champagne. But any reasonable orator will see the fallacy of such reasoning. If the whisky be no more noxious than the wine, and the wine be innocent, and if the man can afford it, and if he drink it without excess—in other words, if conditions exist which do not exist—there can be no harm. If the postulate of the temperance orator be in every form of wine as well as of ardent spirits is wholesome, and can not be taken without injury, that it is in face aseductive poison, the use of which every moral and sanitary and social reason condemns, then, of course, there is no degree in the wrong of the use, as there is none in the freshness of an egg. But if the cause is to wait until this point is settled, and it will not advance. Indeed, the merit of Dr. Crosby’s position is that he proposes to punish the disorder which drunkenness produces, while he restrics in the most ..sensible way the sale of dram 8, and meanwhile encourages every appeal to the moral character and resolution of- those whom the tempter tempts. Of course his plan does not discourage 4he efforts of those who are persuaded that the use of wiue or of any beverage but water is morally wrong and physically pernicious. But he says only that if we would prevent the immediate consequences to society of drunkenness, we must agreo that the sale shall be sensibly regulated, and that drunkards shall be made to

pay for the offenses which drunkenness produces. The question of the essential poisonousness of all forms of the juice of the grape, of the iniquity of the least sip, ana of mutual responsibility he leaves to be fully considered. But “moderation" wisely insists that meanwhile the work of regulating the sale and of relieving society «hn|| go on, and it holds it to be a pity to repel the active and earnest co-operation in this good work of those who are very powerful and always sober. It is pleasant to remark the cordial welcome which Mr. W. E. Dodge, a patriarch of abstinence, gives to the movement as a forward step.