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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

Address of the Convention of the New York anti-dramshop party : held in the city of Syracuse, August 17th, 1870.

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 554

[THIS PAPER, REPORTED BY GERRIT SMITH, WAS UNANIMOUSLY ADOPTED BY THE CONVENTION.]

ADDRESS OF THE CONVENTION OF THE NEW YORK ANTI-DRAMSHOP PARTY,

Held in the City of Syracuse, August 17th 1870,

TO THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.

More than thirty years ago, a political party was organized against American Slavery. The movement was very generally condemned. They, who found no other fault with it, still thought it to be too early. The old political parties were especially unprepared to welcome its disturbing influence. Nevertheless, it was, afterwards, most abundantly and painfully seen, that the movement, instead of having been at all too early, was far and fatally too late. Slavery had grown to be so great, and its ubiquitous power had become so all controlling, that the voters could not be rallied to put it to a peaceful death. It had to go out in blood.

So, too, is our organizing to suppress dramselling said to be too early. It is before the Republican and Democratic parties are ready for it. Nevertheless, there is much reason to fear that here, also, is an instance in which a great and vital reform has been undertaken too late. When we see how successful the dramshop parties are in holding back their members from coming to us, we feel bow great was the mistake to delay this undertaking so long. When we see that the drunkards of our nation have increased to the frightful number of a million; that fifty thousand of our youth join them yearly; that dramshops are rapidly multiplying; and that in the cities of New York and Brooklyn alone, where a dramshop murder occurs as often, on an average, as every day, there are already as many as twelve or fifteen thousand of these manufactories of madmen, murderers, incendiaries and paupers: when our eyes look upon all this, we fear, not that we are too early, but too late, in organizing a political party to shut up these horrible hells. When we see that in a single city hundreds of millions are invested in the liquor traffic, and that the liquor dealers' leagues extend all over the country, and bind their members to do their utmost, and at whatever expenditure of time and money, to keep out of civil office every person, "who is," to use their precise language, "in any way disposed toward the total abstinence cause"; and "every person, who does not declare himself openly against this temperance movement"; "to patronize only such business men as will join hand in hand with us"; and, in still other of their numerous like words "to deprive the political and puritanical temperance men of the power they have so long exercised in the councils of the political parties of this country"; and when we further see that the frequenters of dramshops have become so numerous, as to make it the interest of demagogues to adapt the type of their politics and candidates to the taste and character of this the most vicious and dangerous element in our voting population; and that, in this wise, the dramshops of our drunken cities have already come to rule the politics not only of the cities, but also of the States of whose populations the cities already comprise such dangerously disproportionate and dominant shares; and when we still further see that the people and even the churches are, as a general thing, fast asleep over this rapid working of the political and moral, material and spiritual ruin of our country, we confess our fears run high that we are too late in our attempt to stem this ever swelling torrent and to counterwork and overcome these mighty agencies of evil. Well may we fear that the dramshop, with its numerous and powerful interests and auxiliaries, has become too strong for us. Highest of all do our fears run when we see that even the temperance societies are all, more or less, soundly asleep over this swift-advancing destruction. Surely, surely, no temperance men are awake to it, who can still consent to remain in their dramshop party, be it the Republican or the Democratic. The idea of remaining inside these parties and yet being able to work against the dramshop is nonsensical to the last degree. It is not less absurd than would be the idea of going into hell to work for heaven. Both of these parties license the dramshop, and neither of them has ever proposed to dispense with it. Both of them believe that they have their life in the dramshop. "Nevertheless, only a few weeks ago, it was held in a Meeting of the New York State Temperance Society, which Society, by the way, is little else than a branch of the Republican party, that this party would, at its approaching N.Y. State

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Nominating Convention, take ground acceptable to temperance men. Acceptable it might be to sham temperance men - but most certainly not to real temperance men. What, however, if it should, by an infinitely strange possibility, be the true ground - in other words, be opposition to the dramshop ? - to whom would belong the credit for the party's taking it ? - to the but nominal temperance men, who have no principle against remaining in a dramshop party and therefore no power against the dramshop, or to the earnest temperance men, who stand outside of it and press it with the claims of truth and righteousness ? We do not deny that the Convention in question may speak some temperance words. But if it shall, it will be only to gull credulous temperance men. In pursuing this cunning policy the Republican party would but prove itself to be the legitimate successor of the old Whig party, whose practice was to speak hollow abolition words for the sake of catching solid abolition votes. The Republican party will not come out against the dramshop. The Whig party refused to become an Anti-Slavery party. It broke up, and most of its members went into the Anti-Slavery party - for such, though not fully so, the Republican party was. This party now refuses to become an Anti-Dramshop party. It will, however, break up, and most of its members will come out against the dramshop. The danger is that it will delay this high duty until the dramshop demoralization and destruction of our country shall be irretrievable. The Whig party did not break up soon enough to save the country from the last and worst blows of slavery:- and it is to be feared that the Republican party will not break up in time to save the country from sinking into the final and fatal depths and miseries of drunkenness. Republicans are continually accusing the Democratic party of having the larger share of the drunkards : - and yet they are so blind, as not to see that the only way to kill that party is to kill the dramshop.

In the light of the fact that even temperance men are so deluded, as to remain in dramshop parties, and hope for the conversion of them into anti-dramshop parties, is it not entirely reasonable to fear that our ballot-box war upon the dramshop comes too late to be successful? Their voting against it, whilst yet talking for it, made a large proportion of the professed friends of the abolition cause its worst enemies. In this wise, and to no less extent, does the temperance cause suffer. A foe in a friend is the worst of all foes.

Many professed temperance men, who eschew our anti-dramsbop party and cling to their dramshop party, propose to have Government leave it optional with each town or county, whether there shall or shall not be dramshops in it. This shows that they have not yet come to see the deep and destructive wickedness of dramselling, and that it should be numbered with crimes, if not, indeed, with the highest crimes. They would have no such option allowed in the case of theft, forgery or perjury, though these crimes, in the comparison of their effects with the effects of dramselling, shrink into mere peccadilloes. Why then would they not have Government forbid unconditionally, everywhere within its jurisdiction, dramselling also ? They, who deny that the protection of person and property is the sole office of Government, do, nevertheless, admit that such protection is its chief office: - and where is there a right-minded man, who does not admit that the dramshop, more than all things else put together, perils person and property ? Moreover, in this admitted fact, the justification, nay the absolute necessity, for organizing the Anti-dramshop party is seen. It was not organized on the false ground, that Government is bound to espouse moral and religious reforms, but solely on the true ground, that it is bound to protect person and property.

We lament that the friends of temperance cannot agree to limit their political war upon intoxicating drinks to the retailing of them. We would exert our moral influence against families' making even currant or elderberry wine, and against their drinking even small beer. But a law to this end or even to the restraining of them from more fiery drinks we, certainly, could not advise any more than we

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could advise the Governmental regulation of their meats and clothes. No such sumptuary enactment would be, or should be endured.

We admit that boundless evils have come from the manufacture and importation of alcohol; - evils, by the way, that would have been comparatively small, had there been no dramshops. But for these outlets, both the manufacture and the importation would have been little compared with what they have been. The motive to pour into the fountain-head becomes small when the chief streams from it are closed. It will doubtless, however, be a very long time ere the manufacture of alcohol, either in the family or upon a larger scale, will be surrendered or interdicted. Its use as a beverage out of the question, there still remain various and vast uses for it, some of which all admit to be innocent and indispensable. Very long, too, will it be before the General Government will resist the pleas for permitting the continued importation of alcoholic liquors, especially such liquors as are held to be highly beneficial in cases of sickness and infirmity. Possibly, there may be no valuable medicinal properties in port wine. Nevertheless, another century will hardly see the end of importing it or what passes for it.

Let us not embarrass our young and, therefore, feeble enterprise by attempting too much, and, hence, making it but too probable that we accomplish nothing. Above all, let us not, at this stage, attack any thing, which can, in any of its aspects, be reasonably or even plausibly defended. For the dramshop no argument nor even semblance of argument can be offered. Moreover, all the candid confess that the dramshop is the great evil, and that it is this which makes the vast majority of the drunkards.

Many however contend that, were the dramshop suppressed, other ways for creating and supplying the drunkard's appetite would take its place. They reason very badly, who say that to go no farther than to stop public dramselling would be to leave private homes to be turned into private dramshops. The far better reasoning is that such an improvement in the sentiments and habits of the people; as shall close the dramshop, will operate not to the increase but to the diminution of liquor-drinking in families and everywhere else. Much more of this perilous and sinful drinking usage is there in a neighborhood of dramshops than in a neighborhood purged of them. Our Anti-dramshop party, as its name so clearly and happily imports, attacks the great evil and that only. It will, certainly, conquer it, if the temperance men will, instead of hindering us with their criticisms and cavils, give us their generous and hearty help. Let them join the party, and scores of thousands of persons, who are still foolish enough to drink liquor, but who are not willing to have their sons brought up under the influence of the dramshop and who do not like the riots and murders, which so naturally result from the dramshop, will also join it. We pass on to ask if when the dramshop is closed, and there shall seem further need of wielding our political power against alcohol, such wielding will be made more difficult by the fact that the dramshop is out of the way ? Do not all see that it will be made much more easy and much more probably successful ?

The question as to what drinks we make political war upon continues to be asked. Our reply, as ever before, is intoxicating or crazing drinks, and such only. The drinks, which craze or madden make the dramshop sale of them too great a peril to person and property for Government to permit. Drinks, which but dull or stupefy, Government has no more right to prohibit than the gluttony, which has this effect. We add, that in every prosecution for dramselling, it should be left to the jury to decide whether the drinks in question were such as have power to craze or madden.

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Not a few complain of our making the anti-dramshop reform the first in the order of time. Women say that the first grievances to be redressed are theirs. Laboring men are insisting that the first thing needed is the Governmental protection of their interests. Tariff men, anti-tariff men, &c. &c., are strenuous that the first changes for Government to make are in matters in which they are especially interested. We reply that the first need of the nation is to get the nation sober, or, at least, so far sober, as it would become by shutting up the dramshop. A drunken people are not cleareyed enough to see what reforms they need. Let every advocate of a truly good cause console himself with the reflection that the less a people are blinded by drunkenness, the more they will appreciate the merits of such a cause. Is woman pleading for what is hers, and the laboring man for what is his ? Then is there nothing so much in the way of their success as the darkening influence of the dramshop ; and nothing so essential to such success as the light, which comes from sobriety and from the virtues attendant upon sobriety. How foolish in woman and in laboring man to leave the dramshops to be multiplying until woman and the laboring man shall get their rights! The more these hinderances to all good are multiplied, the more distant, manifestly, is the obtainment of these rights. Let then the advocates of all good reforms continue to labor for them. But, by all means, they should labor simultaneously for the overthrow of the dramshop - in other words, for the removal of the greatest obstacle in the way of those reforms. The overthrow of the dramshop should be regarded as preliminary to every other good work; and therefore all workers for good should unite to accomplish it.

It is time to draw our address to a close. Dark as are our skies, the little light that is in them, is sufficient to sustain our hopes. Although this great delay in organizing a political party against dramselling has given time to the matchless and hoary evil to strike its roots so deep and wide, as to embolden it to defy extirpation, we nevertheless do not des pair of success. Painful as it is to see so great numbers of the professed friends of temperance prefer remaining in their dramshop parties to uniting with us against the dramshop, we, nevertheless, do not allow the shameless inconsistency to discourage us. Knowing as we do, and as do all right-minded men, that the cause in which we are engaged is the cause of truth, of humanity and heaven, and that the salvation of our country turns upon its success, we shall, with the Divine help, continue to serve it fearlessly, faithfully and hopefully, however false to this dear cause thousands and ten thousands of its professed friends may prove, and however determined and devilish may be its foes.

We have put in nomination the following persons - viz:

MYRON H. CLARK, of Ontario, FOR GOVERNOR.
CHARLES C. LEIGH, of New York, "LIEUT. GOVERNOR.
JAMES H. BRONSON, of Montgomery, "COMPTROLLER.
H. WILCOX, of Tompkins, "INSP. OF STATE PRISONS
JOHN B. EDWARDS, of Oswego, "CANAL COMMISSIONER.
W. W. DOWD, of Washington, "CANAL COMMISSIONER.

If some of our candidates are not amongst the conspicuous men of the State, they are, notwithstanding, all men of sound sense and undoubted integrity. We do not expect that they will be elected - for, yet awhile, the dramshop will continue to be in the ascendant. We would, however, that no one shall, for this reason, forbear giving his vote to our candidates. Never so much as in its early days, does a good cause need help. A vote for it in its despised feeble infancy is worth much more than a vote for it when it has grown into strength and into the public favor. Let no friend of our Anti-dramshop Party think that be shall be expressing too much interest in it, if he walks half a dozen miles to cast his vote for it.