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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 8

That is Communism

That is Communism.

If you turn now to the influence of this liquor traffic upon citizens in the attitude of the governed, in which relation the state is most deeply pledged to their well being, you come upon social facts of transcendent consequence. Whatever virtue shall be possessed by the people in their subject character, whatever shall tend to elevate their lives, to make them more susceptible to duty, more incorruptible, will unquestionably be so much gained in the direction of good government. And all that operates in hostility thereto is a wrong done to good citizenship. It is the recognition of this that causes public opinion to welcome all reforms and induces multitudes to give countenance to them, even though they do not reform them-selves. The aggregate good is plain as the sun that shines; the personal adhesion is put off, or its influence undervalued. And to no reform has the general public ever given more sympathetic greeting than to that which seeks to abate the evils of intemperance. The patient ear listens to the pitying speech which tells its miseries, and all tender emotions gather to the rescue of the fallen ones. Indeed so sacred are the depths of feeling which are sounded by its appeals that many are lot to profane its conquest by any invocation of law. Moral suasion is their talisman. And blistered be the tongue that would speak reproach to such pure enthusiasm. But this is a very practical world where result follows cause with unfailing sequence, and surroundings which have produced intemperance in the first instance are very sure to tempt relapse after enthusiasm shall have subsided.