Social happiness destroyed...

Social happiness destroyed, domestic broils and bickering engendered, social ties severed, homes made desolate, families scattered, heart-rending partings, sin, crime and untold sorrow, not even hope left, but every-thing lost, an everlasting farewell to all true happiness, and to all the nobler aspirations, rightfully belonging to every true and virtuous human being. The train of evils which marks the progress of intemperance is too obvious to require comment.

It brings with it degradation of character, impairs the moral and physical energies, wastes the health, increases the number of paupers and criminals, undermines the morals and sinks its victims to the lowest depths of vice and profligacy. It is still the prolific source of diseases, misery, pauperism, vice and crime.

Its power to weaken, corrupt, debauch and slay human character and human life is not destroyed or impaired because it may be susceptible of some innocent uses, There is no statistically or economically better established proposition, nor one to which a more general assent is given by reading and intelligent minds, than this : That the use of intoxicating liquors as drink is the cause of more want, pauperism, suffering, crimes and public expense than any other cause-and perhaps it should be said-than all other causes combined.

Every state applies the most stringent legal power to lotteries, gambling, keeping gambling houses, and implements, and to debauchery and obscenity, and no one questions the right and justice of it, and yet how small is the weight of woe produced by all these united, when compared with that which is created by the use of intoxicating drink alone.

The evils that result from the use of intoxicating liquors, generally occur at the place where they are consumed, and tendency to crime and pauperism follow in that place. By the general concurrence of opinion of every civilized community, there are few sources of crime and misery to Society equal to the dram shop, where intoxicating liquors in small quantities to be drunk at the time, are sold indiscriminately to all parties applying.

The statistics of every state show a greater amount of crime and misery attributable to the use of ardent spirits obtained at these retail liquor saloons, than to any other source. These are only a fee of the pronouncements of judgements of the highest courts of the United states of America.