emperate habits.

Again, we will battle this evil at the ballot-box. How many men are
there who can rise above the feelings of partisanship, and demand that
our officials shall be sober men?

I maintain that the question of sobriety is higher than the question
of availability; and that however eminent a man's services may be, if
he have habits of intoxication, he is unfit for any office in the gift
of a Christian people. Our laws will be no better than the men who
make them.

Spend a few days at Harrisburg, or Albany, or Washington, and you will
find out why, upon these subjects, it is impossible to get righteous
enactments.

Again, we will war upon this evil by organized societies. The
friends of the rum traffic have banded together; annually issue their
circulars; raise fabulous sums of money to advance their interests;
and by grips, pass-words, signs, and stratagems set at defiance public
morals. Let us confront them with organizations just as secret,
and, if need be, with grips, and pass-words, and signs maintain our
position. There is no need that our philanthropic societies tell all
their plans.

I am in favor of all lawful strategy in the carrying on of this
conflict. I wish to God we could lay under the wine-casks a train,
which, once ignited, would shake the earth with the explosion of this
monstrous iniquity.

Again: we will try the power of the pledge. There are thousands of men
who have been saved by putting their names to such a document. I know
it is laughed at; but there are men who, having once promised a thing,
do it. "Some have broken the pledge." Yes; they were liars. But all
men are not liars. I do not say that it is the duty of all persons
to make such signature; but I do say that it will be the salvation of
many of you.

The glorious work of Theobald Mathew can never be estimated. At
his hand four millions of people took the pledge, including eight
prelates, and seven hundred of the Roman Catholic clergy. A multitude
of them were faithful.

Dr. Justin Edwards said that ten thousand drunkards had been
permanently reformed in five years.

Through the great Washingtonian movement in Ohio, sixty thousand took
the pledge. In Pennsylvania, twenty-nine thousand. In Kentucky, thirty
thousand, and multitudes in all parts of the land. Many of these had
been habitual drunkards. One hundred and fifty thousand of them, it is
estimated, were permanently reclaimed. Two of these men became foreign
mi