ood wrote the immortal Thirteenth Amendment to the American
Constitution: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime, whereof the person shall have been duly convicted,
shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their
jurisdiction." When we wanted to increase our territory in 1803, and in
1845, and in 1867, how did we go about it? The representatives of the
people, the lawmakers of the land, voted to make the purchases, and
they were made. When a Territory is organized, or a State comes into the
Union, what is done? The representatives of the people, the lawmakers
of the land, vote upon it, and it is done. When treaties are to be
made with foreign countries; when immigration of foreigners is to be
regulated; when money is to be borrowed or coined; when post-offices and
post-roads are to be established; when counterfeiting is to be punished,
and public abuses are to be reformed, whose business is it? The
Constitution of the United States says the representatives of the
people, the lawmakers of the land, have this power. When will the drink
evil cease in our country? When our representatives in Congress, or
lawmakers, stand for the abolition of the American saloon, and vote it
out of existence; then, and not until then, will drunkenness cease. When
will we have representatives in Congress, lawmakers who will stand for
the abolition of the saloon, and who will vote it out of existence? Not
until you and I have select them, and place them there with our vote.
To expect Christian temperance in our country from any other source is
absolute folly.

The abolition of drunkenness by local option is selfish, unpractical,
and unscriptural. You vote the liquor-traffic out of your town; we vote
it in ours. Remember every saloon exists only by vote of the people.
Your young people come over to our town for drink. We have the curse of
God upon us. "Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink." (Hab. Ii,
15.) It is unpractical, for so long as intoxicants are made they will
be sold. It is selfish, for to vote against the saloon in your town
election, and to vote for it in your State or National election, is to
drive the mad-dog on past your door to the door of your neighbor, when
you might have killed him.

The abolition of drunkenness by regulating the traffic through license
is the most gigantic delusion that Satan ever worked upon an intelligent
people. It is a well-known truth tha