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WHISKY REVENUE

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Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 1, 1881

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 7, No. 33.

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WHISKY REVENUE.

By Editor

SOME papers, and one in Oakland, strongly intimate that the country is largely dependent on the liquor traffic for its revenue. They overlook, however, the fact that government expenses are very largely increased by this accursed traffic. The N. Y. Independent contains the following item which is more than suggestive:—
"The whole amount of tax on spirits and liquors collected in the country is over $63,000,000 per annum, an average to each person of over $1.50. In New Jersey the average is $2.00; in Maine the average is three cents."
Happy New Jersey! collecting a tax on liquors to the amount of two dollars for each inhabitant; and poor Maine! collecting only three cents for each person. It must be a wonder to these revenue pleaders how the State of Maine succeeds in running its government with so small a whisky revenue. Let them visit that State, as we have done, and take observations. If they stay long enough to get cured of "liquor on the brain," so that they can see and reason clearly, they will find a happy state of things where liquor is not made to curse the many in order to fill the pockets of the few.
But suppose their argument were truth—that it was a material profit to the government, which it is not—would that be a just reason for licensing the traffic, knowing that it causes the ruin of tens of thousands of strong men? that it brings untold suffering to multitudes of helpless women and children? Can a government afford to derive its revenue from the heart's blood of its people, and build its prisons on the tears and groans of widows and orphans? "Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people."
"A liquor seller sold a pint of rum according to law, and made a few cents profit. The drinker, while under its influence, shot his son-in-law, and his arrest, imprisonment, trial, and execution cost the county more than $1,000; and yet people say, 'What shall we do without the revenue?'"