A CALM VIEW OF THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. BY CHANCELLOR CROSBY, OF NEW YORK. An Address delivered in Tremont Temple, Jan. 10, 1881, in the Boston Monday Lecture Course. THE HE object of temperance societies is to prevent drunkenness. The cardinal principle in these societies is total abstinence from all that can intoxicate. That total abstinence, if adopted by all, will prevent drunkenness no one will dispute. The object of temperance societies would be gained. But two questions arise after contemplating these propositions: first, will this plan of total abstinence be adopted? and, secondly, ought it to be adopted? The first question is prudential, the second is moral. THE PRUDENTIAL QUESTION. 1. Will the plan of total abstinence from all that intoxicates be received by men in general? We desire to use in all measures of reform a plan that is practicable. We cannot be satisfied with mere testimony to a theory that will be unproductive of results. Herein reform differs from religion. Religion demands adhesion to a truth stamped by the conscience, even though that truth find no other adherent. But reform lies in the domain of the expedient. It seeks to make society better, and if it cannot raise society to the highest level it will raise it as high as it can. It will not prefer to let society wallow be cause it cannot place it in an ideal Utopia. The most religious and conscientious man will be glad to see men leave off strife and discord, even if they do not act from the highest motives or attain to the heights of a genuine charity. His conscience will not be injured by their improved condition, however much he would like to see them still more enlightened. It is an important point to make clear to the mind this distinction between the conduct of reform and the movement of personal religion, for confusion here has led to much false action. A common argument of the radical agitator is that his conscience cannot stop short of total abstinence in the temperance question, and on that ground he will not have any affiliation with one who seeks to subdue the intemperance of the land by any other method. But his argument is a complete non sequitur. His conscience con cerns his own personal habits. In the matter of other people's habits he is simply to do the best the circumstances allow. The conscience that prescribes his personal habits may make him long to see others like him, and may make him work to that end, but it cannot rebuke him if that end is not attained, but only an approximation is gained; nay, it should make him work for the approximation with all zeal. Too often that which is called conscience is mere obstinacy of opinion and personal pride. A large part of the fanaticism that history records has been made in this way. Men have gone to the stake as martyrs, or sufferers for conscience' sake, when the heresy they professed never went deeper than their sentiment, and might readily have been altered by a free judgment. While this fact does not justify their persecutors or palliate their guilt, yet it certainly detracts from the merit of the martyrdom. In this matter of arresting the progress of drunkenness we may have very different views of the means to be used, and we may conscientiously adhere to our own plan of working toward the end, but we cannot conscientiously object to the means employed by others unless they contain an immorality. Nay, more, we must conscientiously wish them success. If this principle of sympathy and co-operation on the part of all who seek the abatement of intemperance were once established, we should see effects that are now thwarted by the divisions and mutual hostility of those who profess to have the same end in view. One of the reasons for this confirmed hostility of the total-abstinence advocates against the reformers who do not adopt that principle is found in the power of a false usage. I refer to the word "temperance." The word has been violently wrested from its legitimate meaning. By a persistent use of a moderate word for radical measures the great unthinking public, so far as they are seekers for the common good, have been led to see in these radical measures the only path of duty. They have learned to consider all that was opposed to the party called by the name of temperance as inimical to temperance, and so have enormously swelled the radical ranks by their unenlightened adhesion. The label has been affixed to the wrong goods, and the unsuspecting purchaser has not noticed the fact. So potent has been this deception that I undertake to say that there are thousands of worthy citizens who have no other idea of the word "temperance" than that it means the total abstinence from all that can intoxicate. With such we have to begin with first principles. We have to show them that the Latin temperantia signifies the moral quality of moderation or discreetness, and that the English word "temperance," as used in all good standard English works, means precisely the same thing. We have to show them that the temperate zone does not mean a zone which totally abstains from cold or heat, but a zone that is moderate in both; that a temperate behavior is not a behavior that totally abstains from severity, but one that is steady and reasonable in its course; as Cicero says ("Fam.," 12, 27): "Est autem ita temperatis moderatisque moribus ut summa severitas summâ cum humanitate jungatur." And while quoting Cicero I may quote his definitions of temperance as given in his "De Finibus "—first, "Temperantia est moderatio cupiditatum, rationi obediens" (2, 19, 60); and, secondly, แ Temperantia est quæ, in rebus aut expetendis aut fugien dis, rationem ut sequamur monet" (1, 14, 47). Now, what a fearful prostitution of a noble word is seen in the popular use of the word "temperance" to-day! And this prostitution is a work wrought within the last fifty years. From its high position as signifying a grand moral subjection of the whole man to the sway of reason it is degraded to the maimed and mutilated function of representing a legalism that prohibits man from any drink that can intoxicate. To what base uses has it come at last! This false use of a word has had special influence upon that portion of the unthinking public who rightly reverence the Scriptures. They see that temperance is put in the list of Christian virtues; and as temperance now means total abstinence, what can they do, as loyal believers in the Scriptures, but sign the pledge, and, furthermore, count all who do not as aliens from God's truth? They are as honest and as enlightened as the good Presbyterian woman who only needed to see the words "general assembly" in the Bible to know she was right and everybody else wrong. Now, the use of a false argument always reacts against the user, and, while the ignorant and semi-ignorant multitude will be deceived, the thinking classes of society will shun a cause that rests on misrepresentation. The word "temperance," as seized and appropriated by radical and intemperate souls, is a false flag, and, as a false flag, will disgust and alienate true and enlightened souls. Especially will this be the case when it is found to be only one of many false lights held out to attract the masses. Another of these deceptions (of course I do not say these are wilful deceptions by all that use them; I am only speaking of their absolute character) another of these deceptions is the circulated theory of an unfermented, unintoxicating wine. There is not a chemist nor a classical scholar in the world who would dare risk his reputation on the assertion that there was ever an unfermented wine in common use, knowing well that must preserved from fermentation is called wine only by a kind of courtesy (as the lump of unbaked dough might be called "bread "), and that this could in the nature of things never be a common drink. Cato ("De Re Rusticâ," 120) shows |