Quarterly Observer Author:Bela Bates Edwards Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: attempt. Which things if you fail to do, and may God avert such an issue, but if you fail to do them, and remain deaf to the monitions of conscience and his word... more », be ready for direr evils and more tremendous visitations upon yourselves, when there shall be a revulsion from your grinding tyranny to fierce insurrection, anarchy, and bloodshed, and the victims of your cruelty shall be upon you in the temper and attitude of mad revenge. Article III. THE ORIGIN, NATURE, PRINCIPLES AND PROSPECTS OP THE TEMPERANCE REFORM. The temperance reform began with a few individuals. They were among the thoughtful, well principled and well educated men of the State of Massachusetts. Intemperance was making progress in our country with a rapidity which exceeded even the increase in our population, and men almost despaired of arresting it. The reformers saw that this vast moral evil could only be cured by a moral remedy. Various other means they knew had been thought of and tried. Legal enactments, excise laws, with penalties for their infringement, were among these. Every thing showed how deplorably they had failed. But for every moral evil God has provided one only and sure remedy, a moral one. This most grateful truth was at length seen in all its relations to the great evil of intemperance, and men looked to it with the full confidence which a great natural principle always excites. The loundations of the undertaking were thus made to rest on an original moral truth. Regard was constantly had, in its earliest movements, to the circumstances of the times in which it was begun, but with this always came the deep conviction of its ultimate success. It was foreseen that it must be vast in its extent, and it was further believed that it was to be permanent in its results.If men could be awake...« less