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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

To the people of the town of Smithfield : Peterboro, March 15, 1843.

Smith, Gerrit, 1797-1874.

Digital Edition.

This digitization project was supported by Regional Bibliographic Databases and Interlibrary Resources Sharing Program funds, awarded by the New York State Library.

Call number: Smith 421

PETERBORO, March 15, 1843.

To the People of the Town of Smithfield:

AT the recent Town Meeting, you again refused to elect men for Commissioners of Excise, who are willing to license dram-selling. You did right. Oceans of tears; deep groans, that freight every wind; graves in every cemetery; and the most wretched and loathsome beings in every neighborhood; - testify that dram-drinking is morally wrong. But, if dram-drinking is morally wrong, so must be dram-selling; and if that, so must be the licensing of dram-selling; and if that, so must be the selection of men for our agents, who, in their agency, will license it. It is plain, that we have no more moral right to choose for a Commissioner of Excise a man who, we have reason to believe, is willing to license dram-selling, than we have to elect a man to office who will, probably, wield his official power for the continuance of slave laws - for the continuance of the most stupendous of all frauds, the most atrocious of all piracies, on human rights. If it be true, and it is, that the man does thereby make himself guilty of the sin of slaveholding who votes, as in the one case of the supposition just made; so is it also true, that the man who votes, as in the other case, does thereby render himself guilty of the sin of drunkenness. Many, who dwell on the duty of comprising our efforts for temperance within the limits of moral suasion, allow themselves to vote against it. But, whenever they vote against temperance - that is, whenever they vote for men who, they have a right to expect, will license dram-selling - they upset their dish of moral suasion as completely as those sham abolitionists do theirs, who are no less diligent to improve their opportunities to cast votes which, however intended, will tell for slavery, than they are to improve their opportunities to talk and pray against the abomination. When will men cease from the absurd attempt of drawing a line between their politics and their religion? When will they come to believe, that a man's politics are a part of his religion, and that hence his politics can be no better than his religion? When will they see how vain is the hope, that they can be giving their worship to God, at the same time that they are giving their politics to the Devil?

I referred to your recent refusal to grant dram-selling licenses. But, notwithstanding this repeated refusal, dram-selling is continued in your town. There are men amongst us so greedy of gain, so unscrupulous as to the means of acquiring it, and withal so lawless, as to perpetrate this transgression of both human and divine laws. And, because there are such men, the remark is not unfrequently made, that you might about as well license as refuse to license dram-selling. This is, however, a very unwise remark. I can infinitely better afford to have a hundred men in my house cursing and swearing without my consent, than one cursing and swearing with it. So too you can infinitely better afford to have a hundred men of your town selling drams without your consent, than one doing so with it. And I add, that the harm he does, who sells drams against your will, is not a hundredth part as great as it would be if he had the concurrence of your will. As to the argument, that our own treasury would be benefitted by granting licenses to sell drams - I can only say, that I would as soon see in that treasury the thirty pieces of silver which rewarded Judas, as the tears-stained and blood-stained dollars of the dram-seller.

The strong arm of the law has been invoked to restrain our lawless townsmen, who are guilty of the crime of dram-selling. Why that arm has thus far proved impotent, and why it is like to continue to do so, is a question involving too many considerations to admit of an easy decision. I advert to what I deem the most important of these considerations, when I say, that there is a common impression that there should be no laws to restrain the traffic in intoxicating liquors. Such laws are very extensively regarded as an impertinent interference with the natural right of men to buy and sell property. This is one reason, if not indeed the principal reason, why the enforcement of them against our offending townsmen has been unavailing. That enforcement being looked upon as an invasion of their natural rights, has accomplished little else than to present these townsmen in the light of persecuted men, and to enkindle the public sympathy for them. For this reason, not a few of us, who are decidedly hostile to dram-selling, no longer show any favor toward the attempt to restrain by legal force the selfish, lawless men, who are guilty of this crime: - and, without presuming to condemn this application of force, we nevertheless venture to declare that, in our judgment, there is "a more excellent way." This "more excellent way" is to make an experiment on the power of unaided simple moral suasion to put an end to dram-selling in our town.

Great honor is accorded to our town for having led the way, ten years ago, in the reformation of drunkards by the simple and sole means of kind moral influence. Let us trust to this influence for reforming the dram-seller also. I admit that we have already tried it on him. But we have not tried it to the extent of its power; and we have combined legal force with it. Let us now drop the force, and confine our efforts within the limits of persuasion.

Shall we succeed, if we adopt the proposed change? The answer to this question turns on the answer to the question, whether we shall prove ourselves to be well indoctrinated and hearty in the cause of temperance. If our concern for this cause is not enough to induce us to plead earnestly and frequently with the dram-seller to relinquish an occupation which beggars families and breaks hearts, and kills bodies and kills souls - he will be like to continue in that occupation of blood-red-guiltiness. And frequent and seemingly earnest as may be these pleadings, if they are not sustained by a corresponding life, they will fail of a good effect. Let no man flatter himself that he is contributing to break up dram-shops, if he spends his leisure hours in them; or if indeed he give to them the sanction of his unnecessary presence for a single moment. Let no man think that his influence is against the continuance of dram-shops, if he cannot respond to the remark of the celebrated Judge Daggett of Connecticut, that they deserve to be classed with "the depositories of stolen goods," and to have inscribed in great capitals, over their doors: "The way to Hell, going down to the chambers of death." Let no man think that he is exerting an influence against dram-shops, if his temperance feeling be so shallow as to be offended by the memorable prediction of our Chancellor Walworth, that "the time will come, when reflecting men will no more think of making and vending ardent spirits, than they would now think of poisoning the well from which a neighbor obtains water for his family, or of

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arming a maniac to destroy his own life or the lives of those around him." Let me add, that if the farmers of Smithfield would make the evidences of their heartfelt temperance irresistible to the dram-seller - as irresistible as the rays of a Summer's sun to the ice on which they fall - let them, as not only their duty but their interest dictates, separate themselves, wholly and forever, from the manufacture of the body and soul-destroying poison. They are, thank Heaven, impressed with the horrors of Southern slavery: so much so, that they would not, for the world, contribute one link to the chain which should bind the most despised of all its victims. Why then should they consent to have a share, however small, in binding the victims of intemperance - the victims of a slavery which is a thousand fold more dreadful than that of the South?

I referred to the interest of our farmers. How strange, that any of them should think it to be for their interest - their pecuniary interest - to sustain a manufacture, whence flows a National impoverishment, rivalled only by that which flows from Southern slavery! Were the hundreds of thousands in this land who, because of the vice of intemperance, are, along with their dependant and far more numerous kindred, but half-fed and half-clothed - were they to come under the renovating power of the Temperance Reformation, a new demand for the productions and for the farms of our farmers, such as no tariff nor other legislative device could make any approach to, would thereby be created. The spring which this transformation of character would give to our agricultural, manufacturing and commercial prosperity, would be as if a new nation were called into being upon our shores. From what immense burdens of rum-engendered poverty and rum-engendered crime would our farmers be released, were this manufacture of liquid fire for a beverage to cease!

There is no danger that brothels and gambling-houses will be openly set up in Peterboro or Siloam. Why? Because it is well known that they would not be able to endure the frowns of the public countenance. But, let that countenance be clothed with such withering frowns toward our dram shops, and they would quickly die. Oxygen is not more essential to animal life, than a favoring public opinion to dram-shops. One of the Hebrew definitions of a lie is, "a body without legs." But a greater lie there is not in all the world, than that a dram-shop is needful: and just so soon, therefore, as respectable people refuse to furnish it legs, it will cease to go.

Let us then, at least for a year or two, try the power of simple moral influence against dram. selling. Let us, with hearts of love and pity for him and his wronged and perilled family, beseech the dram-seller to abandon his guilty occupation. With such hearts toward the poor drunkards who frequent his house of death, and toward our beloved youth who are endangered by its attractions, let us plead for this abandonment. And, above all, let the proofs which our actions afford of our deep and abiding abhorrence of his occupation be such, that he cannot doubt the sincerity and earnestness with which our lips testify against it.

May the love of God and the love of man so prevail in our hearts over the love of gain and of popularity and of sensual indulgence, as to prompt us to array the whole influence of our example, and the effective and triumphant, because the whole influence of our example, against the body and soul-destroying occupation of the dram-seller.

Very respectfully, your friend,

GERRIT SMITH.