every moral sense murderers, and you are within the spirit, if not the letter, guilty of manslaughter; for the law says that whoever accelerates the death of a human being unlawfully is guilty of the crime. Your bloated victims upon the witness stand, and who undoubtedly committed perjury to screen you from the law, not only abundantly testify that you are accelerating death, but that you are inducing men to commit still greater crimes than your own.
"You are still in living idleness and eating the bread of orphans watered with widow's tears. You are stealthily killing your victims and murdering the peace and industry of the community, and thereby converting happy, industrious homes into misery, thriftless poverty and rags. You are sowing the seeds of ignorance, idleness and among the generations to come.
"Anxious wives and mothers watch and pray in tears nightly, with desolate hearts, for the coming home of their victims, whom you are luring the smiles of the devil into midnight debauchery.
"You are persistent, defiant law-breakers, and shamefully boast that in defiance of the law and moral sense of the community you will continue in your wicked and criminal practice.
"And finally, let me entreat you, if you are not lost to sentiment of humanity, to desist from your criminal, vagabond traffic, and betake yourselves to some honest calling for a livelihood, and you may yet become virtuous, useful citizens, and entitled to the respect of a Christian community: while if you persist in this way your own ruin is certain, and you will receive, as you deserve, the execration of mankind.
"You may think that the sentence of the court is harsh and unjustly severe, but the court assures you that, compared with your crimes and the desolation you have already brought the community, it is mild in the extreme."—(1875.)
OFFICERS' TEMPERANCE LEAGUE-ORGANIZED BY THE PRESIDENT.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 20.—General SHERMAN has issued a general order from the headquarters of the army, in which he says: "The President is much concerned to find before him for action the proceedings of the courts martial in several cases where officers have been tried for violation of the thirty-eighth article of war, which provides that any officer found drunk on duty shall be dismissed from the service. The President desires it to be known to the army that he cannot be led to underrate the magnitude of the evil of which the crime alluded to is likely to produce in the public service. No person addicted to it can expect to be entrusted with any responsible duty, and a person who cannot be trusted had better not be continued in office. It must therefore be understood that any clemency which may have been heretofore extended by the mitigation or commutation of the sentence cannot hereafter be relied upon as a basis of hope for a like favorable action. After this sol-