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LINCOLN'S TEMPERANCE SPEECH.

Originally Printed as "An Address by Abraham Lincoln, Esq."

[Delivered before the Springfield Washingtonian Temperance Society, at the Second Presbyterian Church, on the 22nd day.of February, 1842,

Although the temperance cause has been in progress for nearly twenty years, it is apparent to all that it is just now beiug crowned with a degree of success hitherto unparalleled.

The list of its friends is daily swelled by the additions of fifties, hundreds and thousands. The cause itself seems suddenly transformed from a cold, abstract theory to a living, breathing, active and powerful chieftain, going forth conquering and to conquer." The citadels of his great adversary are daily being stormed and dismantled: his temples and his altars, where the rites of his idolatrous worship have long been performed, and where human sacrifices have long been wont to be made, are daily desecrated and deserted. The tramp of the conqueror's fame is sounding from hill to hill, from sea to sea, and from land to land, and calling millions to his sta ndard at a blast.

For this new and splendid success we heartily rejoice. T nat that success is so much greater now, than hereto

fore, is doubtless owing to rational causes; and if we would have it continue, we shall do well to inquire what those causes are.

The warfare heretofore waged against the demon intemperance has, somehow or other, been erroneous. Either the champions engaged or the tactics they adopted have not been the most proper. These champions, for the most part, have been preachers, lawyers and hired agents; between these and the mass of mankind, there is a want of approachability, if the term be admissable, partial at least, fatal to their success. They are supposed to have no sympathy of feeling or interest with those very persons whom it is their object to convince and persuade.

And again, it is so easy and so common to ascribe motives to men of these classes other than those they profess to act upon. The preacher, it is said, advocates temperance because he is a fanatic; and desires a union of the Church and State; the lawyer from his pride and vanity of hearing himself speak; and the hired agent for his salary.

But when one who has long been known as a victim of intemperance bursts the fetters that have bound him, and appears before his neighbors "clothed in his right mind," a redeemed specimen of long-lost humanity, and stands up with tears of joy trembling in his eyes to tell of the miseries once endured, now to be endured no more forever; of his once naked and starving children, now fed and clad comfortably; of a wife long weighed down with woe, weeping and a broken heart, now restored to health, happiness, and a renewed affection, and how

easily it is all done, once resolved to be done; how simple his language; there is a logic and an eloquence in it that few with human feelings can resist.

They cannot say that he desires a union with Church and State, for he is not a church member; they cannot say he is vain of hearing himself speak, for his whole demeanor shows he would gladly avoid speaking at all; they cannot say he speaks for pay, for he receives none. Nor can his sincerity in any way be doubted, or his sympathy for those he would persuade to imitate his example be denied.

In my judgment it is to the battles of this new class of champions that our late success is greatly, perhaps chiefly, owing. But had the old school champions themselves been of the most wise selecting? Was their system of tactics the most judicious? It seems to me it was

not.

Too much denunciation against dram-sellers and dramdrinkers was indulged in. This, I think, was both impolitic, and unjust: It was impolitic, because it is not much in the nature of man to be driven to any thing, still less to be driven about that which is exclusively his own business; and least of all, where such driving is to be submitted to at the expense of pecuniary interest, or burning appetite.

When the dram-seller and drinker were incessanlty told, not in the accents of entreaty and persuasion, diffidently addressed by erring man to an erring brother, but in the thundering tones of anathema and denunciation, with which the lordly judge often groups together all the crimes of the felon's life and thrusts them in his face just

ere he passes sentence of death upon him, that they were the authors of all the vice and misery and crime in the land; that they were the manufacturers and material of all the thieves and robbers and murderers that infest the earth; that their houses were the workshops of the devil, and that their persons should be shunned by all the good and virtuous as moral pestilences.

I say, when they were told all this, and in this way, it is not wonderful that they were slow, very slow, to acknowledge the truth of such denunciations, and to join the ranks of their denouncers in a hue and cry against themselves.

To have expected them to do otherwise than they did -to have expected them not to meet denunciation with denunciation, crimination with crimination, and anathema with anathema-was to expect a reversal of human nature, which is God's decree, and can never reversed.

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When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, "that a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.' So with men.

If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart; which, say what he will, is the great high road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if, indeed, that cause really be a jnst one. On the contrary, assume to dictate to his judgment, or to command his action, or to