destroy the traffic, to prevent the manufacture of whiskey. Can
they do this as long as the Government collects ninety million
dollars per annum from that one source? If there is anything
whatever in this argument, is it not that the traffic pays a bribe
of ninety million dollars a year for its life? Will not the farmers
say to the temperance men: "The distilleries pay the taxes, the
distilleries raise the price of corn; is it not better for the
General Government to look to another direction for its revenues
and leave the States to deal as they may see proper with this
question?"

With me, it makes no difference what is done with the liquor--
whether it is used in the arts or not--it is a question of policy.
There is no moral principle involved on our side of the question,
to say the least of it. If it is a crime to make and sell intoxicating
liquors, the Government, by licensing persons to make and sell,
becomes a party to the crime. If one man poisons another, no matter
how much the poison costs, the crime is the same; and if the person
from whom the poison was purchased knew how it was to be used, he
is also a murderer.

There have been many reformers in this world, and they have seemed
to imagine that people will do as they say. They think that you
can use people as you do bricks or stones; that you can lay them
up in walls and they will remain where they are placed; but the
truth is, you cannot do this. The bricks are not satisfied with
each other--they go away in the night--in the morning there is no
wall. Most of these reformers go up what you might call the Mount
Sinai of their own egotism, and there, surrounded by the clouds of
their own ignorance, they meditate upon the follies and the frailties
of their fellow-men and then come down with ten commandments for
their neighbors.

All this talk about the Republican platform being in favor of
intemperance, so far as the Democratic party is concerned, is pure,
unadulterated hypocrisy--nothing more, nothing less. So far as
the Prohibitionists are concerned, they may be perfectly honest,
but, if they will think a moment, they will see how perfectly
illogical they are. No one can help sympathizing with any effort
honestly made to do away with the evil of intemperance. I know
that many believe that these evils can be done away with by
legislation. While I sympathize with the objects that these people
wish to attain, I do not believe in the means they