the effect of a thousand dollar slave upon the conscience of South Carolina and a thousand dollar saloon upon the conscience of Massachusetts.  The South paid the penalty of her mistaken policy; the North will reap its reward in retribution, if it persists in making the price of a saloon in the North the same as the price of a slave in the South.  When the value of a world is profitless compared with the worth of a soul then even if every saloon were a Klondyke of gold this republic could not afford to legalize the liquor business for revenue.

I believe my northern friends will permit me to press home a little further the lesson of southern slavery.  The phase I would impress is that any question that has a great moral principle involved is never settled until it is settled right.  We tried to regulate slavery but it wouldn’t regulate.  First it was decided that the importation of slaves should cease in twenty years.  Did that settle it?  Next came the Missouri compromise, “Thus far shalt thou go and no farther.”  Politicians said:  “Now it’s settled.”  But a fanatic in Boston name Garrison said:  “It is not settled.”  Daniel Webster, as intellectual as some of our high license advocates of today said to Lloyd Garrison:  “Stop the agitation of this question or you will bring trouble on the country; the compromise is made and the question is settled.”  Lloyd Garrison replied:  “I don’t care what compromise you’ve made; you may pull down my office, pitch my type into the sea, and hound me through the streets of Boston, but you will never settle the slavery question until you settle it right.”

It kept breaking out despite all legislative restrictions.  At last Columbia with one hand on her head, and the other on her heart, began to reel on her throne, and Abraham Lincoln seized his pen and signed the proclamation, “Universal Emancipation.”  Then the whole world said:  “It’s forever settled.”  So the liquor question will be settled as was the slavery question, by the universal, everlasting abolition of the manufacture, sale and importation of intoxicating liquor in this country.

High license is another Missouri Compromise.  If you have the drink you’ll have the drunkenness.  If you have the cause you will have the effect.  If you have the positive you will have the superlative:  Positive drink, comparative drinking, superlative drunkenness.  You may try high-tax and low-tax but all the time you will have sin-tax and more sin than tax.

You do not change the nature of the drink by the price of a license, the kind of a place in which it is sold or the character of the man who sells it.  Put a pig in a parlor; feed him on the best the marflet affords, give him a feather bed in which to sleep, keep him there till he’s grown and he’ll be a hog.  You don’t change the nature of the pig by the elegant surroundings; you may change the condition of the parlor.

There is but one solution of the liquor problem and that is a nation-wide prohibitory law and behind the law a political power in sympathy with the law and pledged to its enforcement.