George Barrell Cheever: Deacon Giles' distillery (1844)

DEACON JONES' BREWERY

As the wickedness of distillation was exposed, good men throughout the country who were engaged in it, were driven to abandon it—and scarce a report came in from a town in New York, or Pennsylvania, and also many other States, that did not report one or more distilleries abandoned. But the pledge of those days put the ban only upon ardent spirits. Wine, ale, beer, cider and other fermented drinks were considered consistent with true temperance. The consequence was, that as distilleries went down, breweries went up to supply their place. And it was said that some good men easily satisfied their consciences, in shifting from the one business to the other. To show the weakness and folly of this, Mr. Cheever again put his pen to the work and produced the following counter story; which has not been without its influence in checking the abominable system of drugging then practised.

Deacon Jones, from early life, had been a distiller of New England rum. He entered on the business when everybody thought it was a calling as honest as the miller's, and he grew rich by it. But the nature of his occupation, and the wealth he was gaining, sadly seared his conscience. Of seven promising sons, three had died drunkards, two were lost at sea, in a vessel whose cargo was rum from the Deacon's own distilleryjfand two were living at home, idle and dissipated. Yet it never occurred to the father that he himself had been the cause of all this misery to'his own family; he was even wont to converse with great resignation on the subject of his trials, declaring that he found comfort in the passage that reads that "whom the Lord, loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." His business was very extensive, and he plied the trade of death with unremitting assiduity.

When the Temperance Reformation commenced, Deacon Jones took ground against it. He declared it was a great piece of fanaticism. He was once heard to say, that if the bones of his ancestors could rattle in their graves, it would be to hear the business of distilling denounced as productive of death to men's bodies and damnation to their souls. The progress of the reformation was so rapid, that at length he began to see that it must, in the end, greatly injure his business, and curtail his profits. Moreover, he did not feel easy on the score of conscience, and when the members of the Church proceeded to excommunicate a dramseller, who kept his grog-shop open on the Sabbath, and had been in the habit of procuring all of his supplies at the deacon's distillery, he trembled lest his brethren should take it into their heads that the business of distilling was the foundation of the whole evil. It was. said that he was much disturbed by an article in the newspaper, which came strongly under his notice, descriptive of the immorality of the business of the distiller, and ending with these words: "J think I see hell and damnation, and he the proprietor." For a long time the deacon could not enter his distillery, without thinking of those dreadful words; he considered them so profane, that he thought the article ought to be presented as a nuisance by the Grand Jury.