South Carolina Temperance Advocate

The Right View.

We clip from an exchange the following item:

Secretary Guthrie of the Treasury, in a recent circular to the Heads of Bureaus in his department, lays down a six-hour rule, (from 9 till 3) and inculcates industry, order courtesy, and total abstinence. He says "Indulgence in ardent spirits during hours of labor will not be tolerated;" and, "The first offence of this kind will, in every instance, be visited by removal from office When one of his underlings ventured to expostulate with the Hon. Secretary on the severity of the rule, he simply replied that "he was willing to make a distinction between an occasional potation and habitual tippling, but that he could not safely do it and must, therefore, punish the less transgression as a prelude or accompaniment to the greater."

A little liquor is a dangerous thing, and a good deal of it is worse. The best plan is to let it alone, for in no business or situation in life can its habitual use be reconciled with the comfort and benefit of man. How many who have occupied the highest positions in our country have been ruined by its use, and many of the brightest intellects have been quenched in utter darkness by its blighting, withering power-many hurled, by this herculean monster, from their proud stations of honor and usefulness, to the very lowest depths of degradation and ruin. Secretary Guthrie might with equal propriety have added; that the public interest demanded the strictest sobriety in every office in the government service, for the experience of all will bear testimony to the truth, that no man is safe who even indulges in an "occasional potation," not to speak of the increased dangers of those who are addicted to "habitual tippling." The rule is a good one, and we hope it will be made in every case an absolute one, and carried out faithfully without distinction. We shall see then the practical workings of a prohibitory law in operation in our own State-once under way, the people would not be the first to annul it.

We want a prohibitory law in South Carolina.