Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1861 edition. Excerpt: ...But the same thing is there in both, rum, poison-drink. Many of these latter are kept by poor men, and the spider's web of the law now and then catches one of them, though latterly but seldom here. Rev. John Pierpont. Sometimes they are kept, and, perhaps, generallyowned, by rich men who drive through the net. I know how hard it is to see through a dollar, though misery stand behind it, if the dollar be your own, and the misery belong to your brother. I feel pity for the man who helps ruin his race, who scatters firebrands and death throughout society, scathing the heads of rich and poor, and old and young. I would speak charitably of such an one as of a fellowsinner. How he can excuse it to his own conscience is his affair, not mine. I speak only of the fact. For a poor man there may be some excuse; he has no other calling whereby to gain his bread; he would not see his own children beg, nor starve, nor steal To see his neighbor go to ruin and drag thither his children and wife, was not so hard. But it is not the shops of the poor men that do most harm Had there been none but these, they had long ago been shut, and intemperance done with. It is not poor men that manufacture this poison; nor they who import it, or sell by the wholesale. If there were no rich men in this trade there would soon be no poor ones But how does the rich man reconcile it to his conscience? I cannot answer that. It is difficult to find out the number of drink-shops in the city. The assessors say there are eight hundred and fifty; another authority makes the number twelve hundred. Let us suppose there are but one thousand. I think that much below the real number, for the assistant assessors found three hundred in a single ward These shops are open morning and night....