Much has been said and written about the grossness of this vice, its baneful effects and consequences, to which it were useless here to refer.  Suffice it to say there is nothing that besots a man more completely and lowers him more ignobly to the level of the brute.  He falls below, for the most stupid of brutes, the ass, knows when it has enough; and the drunkard does not.  It requires small wit indeed to understand that there is no sin in the catalogue of crime that a person in this state is not capable of committing.  He will do things the very brute would blush to do; and then he will say it was one of the devil’s jokes.  The effects on individuals, families and generations, born and unborn, cannot be exaggerated; and the drunkard is a tempter of God and the curse of society.

Temperance is a moderate use of strong drink; teetotalism is absolute abstention therefrom.  A man may be temperate without being a teetotaler; all teetotalers are temperate, at least as far as alcohol is concerned, although they are sometimes, some of them, accused of using temperance as a cloak for much intemperance of speech.  If this be true—­and there are cranks in all causes—­then temperance is itself the greatest sufferer.  Exaggeration is a mistake; it repels right-thinking men and never served any purpose.  We believe it has done the cause of teetotalism a world of harm.  But it is poor logic that will identify with so holy a cause the rabid rantings of a few irresponsible fools.

The cause of total abstinence is a holy and righteous cause.  It takes its stand against one of the greatest evils, moral and social, of the day.  It seeks to redeem the fallen, and to save the young and inexperienced.  Its means are organization and the mighty weapon of good example.  It attracts those who need it and those who do not need it; the former, to save them; the latter, to help save others.  And there is no banner under which Catholic youth could more honorably be enrolled than the banner of total abstinence.  The man who condemns or decries such a cause either does not know what he is attacking or his mouthings are not worth the attention of those who esteem honesty and hate hypocrisy.  It is not necessary to be able to practice virtue in order to esteem its worth.  And it does not make a fellow appear any better even to himself to condemn a cause that condemns his faults.

Saloon-keepers are engaged in an enterprise which in itself is lawful; the same can be said of those who buy and sell poisons and dynamite and fire-arms.  The nature of his merchandise differentiates his business from all other kinds of business, and his responsibilities are of the heaviest.  It may, and often does, happen that this business is criminal; and in this matter the civil law may be silent, but the moral law is not.  For many a one such a place is an occasion of sin, often a near occasion.  It is not comforting to kneel in prayer to God with the thought in one’s mind that one is helping many to damnation, and that the curses of drunkards’ wives and mothers and children are being piled upon one’s head.  How far the average liquor seller is guilty, God only knows; but a man with a deep concern for his soul’s salvation, it seems would not like to take the risk.