The Weekly Comet

The Weekly Comet
GEORGE A. PIKE
EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR
The Official Journal of the Parish of East Baton Rouge. Also of the Grosse Tete and Baton Rouge. and of the Baton Rouge and Clinton Plank Road Companies.

Intemperance vs. Temperance
Now and then, the world will fall into an intemperate fever about some speculation, or subject of reform. The passions, prejudices and pecuniary benefit of a great many persons, is always involved: and such a war rages, as is naturally expected when two individuals fall out and bite their fingers, and make mouths at each other. In the days of old, factions generally had the head of some noblemen to direct them--sometimes a king or a prince--a crafty monk, or priest, led on to battle. The houses of York and Lancaster--the war of the Cockades--and the Crusade of Peter the Hermit, are all illustrious examples. But now it is different: there are so many charitable men, moral reform societies, Holy leagues, and hallowed benevolent associations, that they are at war amongst themselves, who shall take the ignorant mass of mortality by the nose and whip them into some path of rectitude painted by themselves, all of which inevitably leads to happiness here, and Heaven hereafter. This is intemperance--the very worst species of intemperance that can exist, and it is this that we raise our arm against, and call the people to the rescue. The crazy example of what is denominated "Maine Temperance" must be forced down the throats of the people of Louisiana, if a majority of the people say it must be so.--We ask special attention to this plank, from the platform, of what is called the "State Temperance Convention?"
Resolved, That, to this end, the Legislature of this State should be urged to take immediate steps to ascertain, by a general vote, the wishes and will of the people of Louisiana on this important subject and that so soon as their voice shall have been pronounced in favor of prohibition, a "Louisiana Liquor law" should be passed, to suppress the common manufacture and sale of intoxicating drinks, and regulate the mode in which liquors may be obtained for mechanical, medicinal and sacramental purposes.
Is it to be said, that Louisiana must fall into the transcendent-super-human-coersive-straight-jacket-morality of Maine? And that sensible, and (we believe) sane and temperate people shall be forced by legislative acts, to conduct their household affairs, and their own habits, so as to conform to the platform of the "State Temperance Convention?" Never! We will battle against it, as long as there is any strength in us.
Our people must not forget, that there are certain "inalienable rights of man"--that the Constitution of the Federal Union, secures them to each citizen of the Republic. That the line of demarcation between individual rights and what belongs to society, is very plain; notwithstanding the effort to confound them. That liberty of conscience, and the right of property must not be invaded: when it is, the compact is at an end. That the spirit of the government is above the officer; designed for his government, as well as for the governed. "That the Legislature and the State Temperance Convention, and the Moral Reform society, all combined, have no right to mortgage the one, or restrain the other, the right of conscience and property, is sacred and inviolable. We shall endeavor to bring these facts "before the people," and repel as far as in us lays any attempt on the part of the Temperance, or any other society to interfere with them.
We like the Temperance society, in some of its features; others are extremely odious. The rule for instance, that requires each member to act as an informer or spy on the other. Any great moral reform, must be silent and unseen, like the spirit of the "true religion" when it comes into the political arena to excite the prejudices of the people, it loses its power, and sooner or later must come to an end. We say the State Temperance Convention has no more right to ask the Legislature to take the sense of the people on the subject of prohibitory laws, in reference to liquor, than we have, to ask that every man be forced to do as we do, walk as we do, think as we do, and be baptised in the river Jordan, and be saved as we do.
A great many of the warmest advocates of the Temperance question throughout the Union, are "reformed drunkards," who are noted for nothing more in many instances, than for being reformed drunkards. It is made a kind of boast for a man to be able to say "I am a reformed drunkard. I hav'nt drank anything for the last three weeks--behold how pleasant it is to walk uprightly--do as I do---don't drink at all, and you will never get drunk."
Delightful logic! A man whose mind has been obscured and besotted half his life, with the fumes of alcohol comes reeling out of a pestiferous grocery with the fumes of liquor upon him, to tell people who never were drunk, that Brandy is poison; that delectable Port, is claret colored death, and cherries--"excellent cherries," is an invention of man--the garter snake in the garden of Eden, the cause of all sin and misery, producing certain damnation if not death, to permit the nasal organs only to inhale the sweet savor thereof. Enough, we get prosey on the subject, and tremble in the fear of what we have said, for it will not only call down the vengeance of the State Temperance Convention, but Capitol Division, and the National Grand Division, and the Pearl, the Pelican, the Washington and the super-annuated Old Woman's Division: all will unite their Divisions upon us.