Sermon V. The Sins And Miseries Of The Dram-seller.

Habacuc II. 15. "Woe to him that giveth drink to his friend, and presenteth his gall, and maketh him drunk."

I once made a journey to a strange country; and so utterly at variance did all the social customs and personal lives of its inhabitants seem to be with the ordinary habits of people of this world, that I thought for a moment I must have stumbled upon beings who had been transplanted from some other planet.

Among other remarkable features in their character, I noticed that, instead of being as ambitious of obtaining a high reputation amongst their neighbors as men generally are, the inhabitants of that country were striving, as it appeared to me, during every leisure hour they could spare from their daily labor, to lower themselves in the estimation of others and become degraded. Instead of riches, they sought poverty; instead of learning, ignorance; instead of health, disease; and a premature death rather than a long life.

The means to which they resorted to bring this about seemed equally strange. By a sort of general consent, a certain number of them were chosen to absorb all the respectability, property, and comfort of the rest. These individuals distributed themselves about in different quarters of the towns, and you could easily have recognized their habitations from the rest for being the finer buildings, which increased in size as the surrounding dwellings of their neighbors became the more squalid, desolate, and uninhabitable. They, with their wives and children, also added the more to their comfort and luxury as the families about them became the nakeder and the hungrier. So far was all this carried, that, I observed, not a few, after having given up all their own, would often go and steal from others, and carry not only money, but even articles of furniture and clothing, to these men, who seemed also to be very popular persons and great favorites, if I might judge of the number of their clients and the pleasure apparently derived from long visits to them, to the loss of the company of their friends and families, and of their natural rest after wearisome days of toil.

I wondered greatly at all this, and asked my guide to explain it to me. "Do you not see," said he, "that these rich and powerful persons are in possession of a wonderful elixir? It is said to produce happiness for those who may obtain a little of it, and these people are so anxious to be happy that they eagerly give up all they have, and all they hope for in this world and the next, in order to get some of it." "I do not see," I said, "that it makes those who use it happy; on the contrary, they seem to me to be really bartering all their means of happiness away, and getting nothing but misery in exchange." "You need only look around you upon those comfortless homes and diseased men and women, and glance at their daily lives, to confirm the truth of your observation," he replied. "Then these poor, misguided souls are only grasping at shadows of happiness, and losing the reality in the meanwhile?" "You have spoken the truth," said he; "and you need not be surprised at it, for the country you are in is called the Land of the Shadow of Happiness." "I will tarry no longer here," said I, "for the sight sickens me. I will return quickly to my own country." "So you may," said my guide; "but the seller of the shadow of happiness lives and thrives with you also." "Does he?" I asked. "And what may he be called?"

"The Dram-seller."

I awoke from my reverie, and found myself standing, not in a strange land, but in the streets of my own city, before a fine brick building, ornamented with cut stone, proudly rearing its showy front, and looking down with contempt upon the humble homes of the poor that surrounded it; and glittering in the sunshine shone the gilded sign-board over its doors, "IMPORTED WINES AND LIQUORS."

Yes, the dram-seller lives and thrives with us, too—the vender of the shadow of happiness, and dealer in ignorance, disease, degradation, poverty, ruined reputations, strifes, jealousies, insanity, delirium tremens, and dishonored and early graves. The drunkards whom he makes are wretched enough, and commit, through their intemperance, the most grievous of crimes; but I know not if the sins and miseries of the dram-seller be not worse and far more hopeless of reparation than theirs. For in one it is often the result of weak and uneducated minds, unable to use God's gifts in moderation, or to bear up against the trials and temptations of this life; but the other must be a cold, heartless, calculating, money-worshipping soul, who can thus fatten himself upon the sinful appetites of others, and from year to year defraud his neighbor by the sale of his vile, adulterated trash, and take the hard-earned dollars of his customers in exchange for it without a blush.

The dram-seller and his traffic is a well-known and prominent rock of scandal in the community, whether it be the secret sale from one barrel of beer or liquor in the earth-floored shanty, or the flourishing business of a well-stocked and gilded saloon.

What are the sins of the dram-seller? He sins against justice and against charity.

He sins against justice. To all who have examined the matter, it is a well-established fact that in every case this business is necessarily connected with the sale of false, adulterated articles, and with an unreasonable, unrighteous, and usurious profit. And the only excuse any one connected with it has ever been able to offer is, that they are obliged, if they sell at all, to keep cheap liquors for poor people, or that, if the article is adulterated, it is none of their business, for they sell it, either just as they purchase it from large dealers, or, at the worst, only add a certain modicum of water, as they say the raw spirit might do the poor people harm!

But they know the fact as well as I know it, that scarcely one drop is dealt out by them that is not more or less adulterated; that their so-called wines never saw the juice of the grape; that their brandies, and rums, and cordials are all composed of proof spirit, coloring matter, drugs of the most poisonous character and deadly strength, and water. I am in possession of a document circulated privately among these manufacturers of "imported wines and liquors," which purports to give recipes for making any kind of wine, liquor, or cordial you can name, with the address of certain houses where the drugs I have alluded to may be obtained.

A friend was invited by a dram-seller to visit his vaults. Taking out the bung of a large hogshead, he drew up from the liquor by a cord a gauze bag of very small dimensions, and, with a peculiar wink of his eye, remarked, "You see, that's the way we manage it." "Oh! that's the way you manage it, is it?" the friend replied. "I am very glad to know it."

The cheap materials from which the drink ordinarily sold is manufactured, and the large adulteration with water made on their own premises by the retailers, enables them to make the most exorbitant, usurious profits. The popular wonder is, how so many can carry on the business and make money by it. That is the reason.

If the character of the drink sold, or the adulteration of it, were always harmless to the consumer, there might be a semblance of palliation to this iniquity, though no just excuse even then; for in such a case the consumer does not get either what he supposes or the worth of his money. But when we see the dreadful effects produced by these liquors, the morbid cravings which they engender in those who partake of them, the extra-ordinary prostration of mind and body caused by a fit of intoxication on them, the physical and moral degradation resulting from their constant use, there can be no excuse for the dispensing of such noxious articles, and he who practises it is guilty of a fraud—a fraud of the basest and most criminal character upon the people, and makes himself a fit object for the scorn and righteous indignation of a just community.

Am I not right in saying that the dram-seller sins against justice?

2. The dram-seller sins against charity. He sins against himself, his spiritual and temporal good, and that of his family.

The business is a proximate occasion of sin, and good morals can never allow one to remain in that state. In the first place, it is a proximate occasion of the sin of drunkenness for himself and for the members of his household. The necessity of pleasing and attracting his customers obliges him often to treat and be treated during the day. The effect of this constant tippling is very visible in the persons of those who have been some time in the business, and the number of those who fall into the sin of drunkenness from the proximity of the occasion furnished by the sale is very great. It is not an unfrequent occurrence for them to take the pledge, in order to prevent themselves from drinking with their customers. Their wives, children, and clerks are exposed to the same occasion of sin. The language and character of the frequenters of the dram-shop are demoralizing to the last degree, not only to the man, but to the wife and children, and pave the way to every conceivable crime.

How many a young man has engaged in this vile traffic, who commenced it sober and virtuous, but who, by the occasions it presented, soon became a degraded and irreclaimable sot! And when he first thought of going into it, how his conscience reproved him, how often he reflected that this was not a fit thing for a good Catholic and practical Christian. When he met the priest in the street the day or so after the opening of his store or saloon, how he reddened up to the eyes, and was glad if he perchance passed him without observing him his pastor, whose nod, and smile, and shake of the hand, and cheery "God bless you!" he used to be so anxious and happy to have from the hour of childhood. But now his uneasy conscience keeps him away altogether from the Sacraments, and often from Mass. If people enquire what has become of him lately, or wonder that he is seen no longer at the altar, the answer that he "has opened a liquor store" is deemed a sufficient one. And knowing the wrongs from it, I thank God that there is such a sense of Christian propriety and rectitude in the public conscience left amongst us, that will deem such, a response a sufficient one.

I know that, as time goes on, and the greed of gain takes possession of them, the conscience gets less clamorous: but it is scarcely ever completely blunted. They are always rather ashamed of the business, and never mention the fact of their being engaged in it in an open, frank manner. A person, whom I did not know, called upon me once to consult me upon an affair, and I had occasion to ask him his profession. He replied, evasively, "I am a member of the ---- Convention." "But your business is--" "Oh!--ah! (hesitating) a grocery and liquor store."

But the sin which adds the last and most grievous stain upon the dram-seller and his traffic is the heinous breach of Christian charity against his neighbor. He wrongs his neighbor in his property, his person, his soul, his family, and in all his social relations. He makes bad husbands, bad wives, immoral children. And all good citizens and practical Catholics will bear me out in the assertion that the dram-shop is the gulf which swallows the hard earnings of the laboring classes; the health, property, happiness, life, and well-being of thousands of the community; and is the responsible first cause of the increase of pauperism, and crime, and the consequent burden of taxation upon the State. Recent statistics show that, in the cities of New York and Boston, there is a dram-shop for every one hundred inhabitants; and that, in Boston alone, the arrests for public drunkenness in one year were equal to one in ten of the entire population. This is a horrible state of things. As a contrast, I remember preaching a mission in a certain town where, by the exertions of the parish priest, all Catholics, save one, had given up the traffic. We found the sin of drunkenness in that place comparatively rare. No one who has examined the matter will pretend to dispute the fact that drunkenness increases in the same ratio with the multiplication of the dram shop. It is therefore a public nuisance, a crying scandal amongst us, a proximate occasion of sin, an iniquitous trade in which no good Christian can engage without putting the salvation of his soul in peril.

Such or such a man and his family whom you could name were happy enough before he got enticed into the dram-shop. It was a sight to make the angels smile to witness the clean, bright home that man found on his return from business. Every thing was there to cheer him. The wife welcomed him with an unclouded brow. The children dropped their playthings to run and embrace him. If he had not luxury about him, he had plenty and comfort. Plenty of furniture, plenty of clothes for his work, and a new suit for the Sunday morning. The table wanted nothing but the blessing upon the food whenever the meal time came. The doctor's bill never came so very heavy, and, if one of the family happened to be ill a little longer than common, he felt a worthy pride in being able to go and pay the doctor at his office, and exchange thanks. His name was good in the bank whenever he wanted money; and, as year by year rolled by, he was getting up in the world. Men talked of his "good luck," as they called it. Friends whispered, about election times, that he would make a capital fellow for this or that vacant office in his township. No family stood higher in respect, if they did in wealth, at the parish church than his. Happy and beloved at home in the bosom of his family; honored and respected abroad; at peace with God and man; what fiend will dare bring his foul presence within the circle of so much joy? Alas! for the dark day that he was bidden by the dram-seller to "be neighborly and come in and take a friendly glass." Alas! for the fatal hour when the tempter invited him to "come round of an evening, and be sociable, and not to be such a man-baby tied to his wife's apron-strings." Now it begins the oft-told, woeful tale. A hurried supper, and out for the evening. Later and later he returns, with the signs of liquor on him. He used to try to hide it at first by washing his mouth with water and taking a smart walk. But he takes too much now to care for Appearances; nor is he able for the walk.

In order to smooth over matters, he takes an opportunity on his wife's birthday, and brings out the bottle and proposes her health, and makes her drink with him; and then a little taste of the sugared drops at the bottom of the glass for the children. It is brought out every day now; and when the night comes, the wife sits up late, goes often to the window, watching his return, and there's a heavy weight at her heart that forces from her eyes many a bitter tear. The plague marches fast. He is drunk every Saturday night, and seldom goes to Mass. Work or business is neglected, and the time spent at the bar-room. The money leaks away extraordinarily fast. Articles of furniture are pawned—first for food, soon for drink. The wife helps on destruction by trying to drown her sorrow in a glass of liquor now and then. The best Sunday suit and the new bonnet and shawl are no longer in the wardrobe. The children's bare feet peep out of old shoes, and a strange sadness and silence has come over the once merry little group. They seem to be getting old-fashioned in their ways, and less like children. Is that the reason, I wonder, why there are no new toys and presents now at Christmas or at Easter, as in the days gone by? Soon comes debt. He had to go in debt to procure the necessaries of life, but spared a little of the borrowed money to get his daily drams at the grog-shop. But debt must be paid, and, as he has nothing to discharge it with, a few days of delay, and there is a sheriff's execution in the house. All the furniture swept, away! From bad to worse, from one step to an other: down goes the family to beggary and vice. Frequent quarrels, blows, and curses pass between husband and wife, the children and their parents. He gets an odd job to do now and then, for he is turned out of his regular situation, and drinks a part of the wages, not at his old friend's, but at a low beer-shop; for one night, after the sale of his house and lot, he demanded trust for liquor; but, as he had spent his last dollar, his friend, the dram-seller, told him, "he kept a decent place, and wouldn't have any drunkards around him," and kicked him out of doors, bidding him go home and take care of his wife and family! The wife begs around for broken victuals, with a downcast face, and her old hood pulled far over her forehead to hide a black eye and her untidy hair.

The boy, his eldest boy, that was to be sent to college, was sent up last week to prison for shoplifting; and the girl—where is she gone? Answer me, dram-shop, where is the girl gone? And now I have more to ask of you, O mouth of hell! Where is the house and lot gone to? Where is the furniture gone to? Where now are the good husband, the happy father, the thrifty wife, the faithful mother, the innocent children, the food on the table, the fire on the hearth, the comfort and joy and good name and trust and neighborly confidence, and the good Christians, the pious Catholics, that used to be at Mass every Sunday morning in their places? Answer me. Do you not hear a righteous God, your judge, demanding in tones of wrath, "Dram-shop, where are my children? You—you have robbed me of my beautiful flock!" O cruel dram-seller! O dram-shop! scandal of our times, look upon the ruin you have wrought! See the black cloud which hangs over your dwelling. It is a threatening mass of darkness and woe, made up of heavy curses, of sighs from broken hearts, the gloom of grievous bitterness of spirit; and that cloud is pregnant with hidden lightnings and thunders of the wrath of God descending upon you. "Woe to him that giveth drink to his friend, and presenteth his gall, and maketh him drunk, that he may behold him stripped and naked. Thou art filled with shame instead of glory; drink thou also, and fall fast asleep; the cup of the right hand of the Lord shall compass thee, and shameful vomiting shall be on thy glory." [Footnote 15]

Your sin is the sin of Ephraim, whom the prophet reproved. You make to yourself an idol of gain. "And Ephraim said, But yet I am become rich. I have found me an idol: all my labors shall not find me the iniquity that I have committed." [Footnote 16] To that idol you have sacrificed men, women, and children, and brought upon many a wretched soul temporal and eternal ruin—robbing heaven of saints, and filling up the caverns of hell.

Hear what God answers to Ephraim: "I will meet them as a bear that is robbed of her whelps; I will rend the inner parts of their bodies, and I will devour them as a lion; the beast of the field shall tear them." [Footnote 17]

Your very daily walks must be misery to you, one would suppose. For how can you put on those fine clothes, and see your children clad in warm coats and caps and shoes, and your wife parading that beautiful new silk dress and expensive jewelry, when you know that they were bought with money that ought to have been used to clothe a family that goes about our streets in destitution and nakedness so pitiable that it makes the heart ache? How can you sit down and ask God's blessing upon your plentifully supplied table, if you ever do it now, when the hand that gave you the money to purchase all these luxuries snatched the piece of bread from the mouths of his starving, hungry children? How can you dare go to sleep in your soft, warm bed, listening to that cutting winter's blast as it goes howling past your windows down the street, and forces its way in the open crevices of the drunkard's shanty, freezing the half-clad forms of his neglected little ones, huddled in the corner upon a filthy wisp of straw? Have you a human heart yet left beating in your bosom? Do you know anything of a husband's affection or of a father's love? Oh! then you must be a miserable man. How do your neighbors speak of you? "Oh! he's a rum-seller." And the tone in which it is spoken is a plain index of the contempt they attach to the name. Your wife is designated as "a rum-seller's wife," and of your children it is remarked, "Their father sells liquor." And it is a common reply of many of the most degraded drunkards, that "although they have drunk pretty hard, they thank God they never sold liquor."

Can I ask you to quit it? Yes, I can demand of you to quit it. You admit, and the common sense of the entire community admits, that those low groggeries, in which drunken bacchanalian orgies are of daily and nightly occurrence, ought to be stopped, and that no man who keeps such a place is fit for absolution—that is, none such can claim the right to the sacraments of the Church, living or dying; in a word, cannot save his soul if he be not ready to abandon it. But you tell me that your establishment is not of such a character; you keep a decent house. I would like you to bring me one single liquor-seller who does not say the very same. The business is notoriously vicious and hurtful, and success in it is dependent upon an increase of sin and misery among the people. It is a stumbling-block in the way of the salvation of men addicted to drink, and woe be to that man who dares assume the responsibility for the loss of a soul!

I have a right, then, in the name of the general well-being of the community, in the name of Christian charity, by virtue of the warning of our Lord Jesus Christ, that it were "better for a man to have a mill-stone hanged about his neck, and he be cast into the depth of the sea, rather than scandalize one of the children of God," [Footnote 18] to demand of every man who aids, abets, or by his own act takes part in this abominable scandal, to quit it on peril of damnation.

I tell you, moreover, that the holy Catholic Church, which some of you pretend to belong to and to obey, has solemnly declared, in the twenty-second canon of the Third Council of Lateran, that all priests are absolutely forbidden to give absolution to those who remain in any employment, profession, or business which they cannot pursue without sin, because they remain in the occasions of sin. But you insist that such is your business, bad as it is, and you have been brought up to that. Yes, I know it is a bad business, and will be your destruction. And I wish to know if a man must remain a thief because he has been brought up a thief, and never learned an honest trade?

"But the loss, father; I cannot afford it." Do you not hear the words of Jesus Christ thundering in your ears: "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out. If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off. For it were better for thee to enter lame and blind into life everlasting, than, having two hands or two eyes, to be cast into hell-fire"? [Footnote 19] Where is your Christian faith and trust in God? "Seek first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things will be added unto you." [Footnote 20]

No, no, there is not a single excuse which will avail you. I wish I could find one. Many and many a time I have wished I could frame an excuse for it, when the fact has been thrown into my face that so many of our people are engaged in this diabolical, unchristian traffic, and, as a consequence, have propagated amongst us the vice and miseries of drunkenness.

Do you love your good name as a citizen? Have you any manly pride left? Do you love your religion? Would you shrink from being the instrument of damnation to your neighbor's soul, or of tying the hands of the priest and preventing the spread of the true faith in our country? Do you love your own immortal soul? Do you hope for heaven? Would you like to hear the approval of your Divine Lord and Master on the Last Great Day of Account? Oh! rise up to the dignity of the Christian vocation to which you are called. Stir up within your hearts that fire of generosity which is never totally extinguished in the Catholic breast, and learn to sacrifice something for the love of God and for the salvation of your neighbor's soul.

Believe me, brethren, I have drawn no exaggerated picture of this evil, nor deduced any unwarrantable conclusions. So lamentably true is it all, that, were I to preach this sermon in almost any town or city in the country, there would be found among my hearers some who might imagine I was describing the character and life of their own brother or father, near relation or intimate acquaintance.

I appeal to you, therefore, loyal Catholics, to set your faces against the traffic; to aid the priesthood, in company with all who love God and have the social advancement of our people at heart, in denouncing and laboring to extirpate this scandal from our midst.

To you who have hitherto been engaged in it, from whatsoever motive, I appeal; and beseech of you, with all the fatherly affection of a Christian priest, and with the supplicating tears and sighs of many a broken heart, for God's sake, for the Church's sake, for your soul's sake, to resolve now, and make that resolution good, that hence forth no man shall point the finger of scorn at you and say: "Woe to him that giveth drink to his friend, and presenteth his gall, and maketh him drunk."