EXTRAORDINARY SPEECH.

Manawatu Times, Volume III, Issue 23, 5 January 1878, Page 3

EXTRAORDINARY SPEECH.

y. (From the -'Watchword.") One of the most extraordinary speeches ever delivered m the Massachusetts House of Representatives was made some years ago by the Hon. J. T. Stevenson of Boston, on the Bill to enact the prohibitory liquor law. The following is an extract :— " Portray the evils of intemperance, did I. say P He does nptlh'e that can tell the whole* story of its woes. Exaggeration there is impossible. The fatigued fancy falters on its flight before it comes up to the' fact. The mind's eve cannot take jn the countless miseries of its motley train. No human heart can, put into that picture shades darker than the truth. Put into such a picture every conceivable thing that is terrible or revolting; paint health m ruins, hope destroyed, affections crashed, prayers silenced ; paint the chosen seats of paternal care, of filial piety, of brotherly love, of maternal devotion, all, all vacant ; paint all crimes of every, hue, '■'. from murder standing aghast over a grave which it hasyno' means to cover,, down to the . meanest deception still confident of success ; paint home a. desert and shame a' tyrant, and poverty the legitimate child of vice m this community, and not its prolific mother ; paint the dark valley of the shadow of death, peopled with living slaves : paint J a landcape | with trees whose fruit is poison and whose shade is death, with mountain torrents tributary to,an ocean whose very waves are fire ; pit m the mpst distant back-ground the vanishing vision of pleasant past and into the foreground the terrible certainty of an accursed future; paint prisons with doors that open only inward ; people the scene with men whose shattered forms are tenanted " by. tormented souls; with children upon whose lips no smile canever , plfy* andr with womenaUito. whose*; cheeks fui'iowsf h#ve been by y

tears wrung with anguish from break» ing hearts — paint such a picture, and when you are ready to show it, do not let m the rays of the Heaven above, but illuminate it with the glare of the infernal fires, and th?n the horrible picture falls short of the truth. *