Page:The dream, or, The true history of Deacon Giles's distillery, and Deacon Jones's brewery.djvu/10

 personal violence attack an unarmed citizen as they did in the street, the sentence which may be declared will go far to determine. I know not by what rule of justice the latter criminals, with proof clear, full, and conclusive against them, were suffered to depart triumphant in their violation of the law, while the former alleged offence has been prosecuted with such undeviating fixedness of purpose. It seems to me a singularly unjust proceeding.

"I solicit the favor of thy court upon manly grounds. I ask for an acquittal, because I am guiltless of the crime for which I am arraigned before you. I have assaulted no man's character—I have injured no man's family—I have committed no offence against the laws of my country. For the sake of freedom in the proclamation of truth. I am unwilling that an unrighteous and oppressive verdict should be sustained and sanctioned by the decision of this court. For the sake of justice, I am unwilling to be punished for a crime which I have never committed. For the sake of temperance. I am unwilling that the distillery interest, productive in this legion of such incalculable misery, should here find a shield.

"Could the amount of misery, in time and eternity, which any one distillery in Salem has occasioned, be portrayed before your honor, I should feel no solicitude for the result. Let mothers who have been broken-hearted, the wives that have been made widows, the children that have been made fatherless, the parents borne down with a bereavement worse than death, in the vices of their children, be arrayed in your presence: let the families reduced to penury, disgraced with crime, and consumed with anguish, that the owners of one distillery might accumulate their wealth be gathered before you. Let the prosecutor in this suit go to the grave-yards, and summon those whose bodies have been laid in the grave from that one distillery: let him call up, if he could, the souls that have been shut out from heaven and prepared for hell, through the instrumentality of the liquor manufactured there: and let them ask what, is their verdict. Need I suppose the judgment? Surely it would be said. Let the defendant be shielded. Even if he has overstepped the limits of exact prudence, in his efforts to portray the evils of intemperance, in the name of mercy, let the great object of the effort shield him, and let the law be turned against that dreadful business whose nature he has aimed to delineate."

Such, however, was the state of the public mind that he was condemned, and, on making his defence, he submitted meekly to the sentence of the Court. But the whole procedure gave wings to the production of his genius, and caused it to become one of the great instruments of opening the eyes of a suffering community to the true character of distillation.

The history of this transaction forms a part of the history of the Temperance Reformation. While it presents to posterity one of those signal incidents by which the mighty enginery of drunkenness has been nearly overthrown, it reflects nothing upon those who then felt themselves injured, both in their good name and worldly prosperity. The darkness that overshadowed them and the community in which they dwelt, is the apology for their faults. Haply it may be, that they are now foremost in the condemnation of the business whose character was exposed. The old distillery has long since been abandoned, and the building, now converted to useful purposes, was recently the scene of a joyful Temperance tea party.