O Genius of malt liquor! that Geneva
Debilitates the limbs and health impairs
And mind enervates. Men for learning famed
And skill in medicine prescribed it then
Frequent in recipe, nor did it want
Success to recommend its virtues vast
To late posterity.”
In 1736 Lord Hervey, describing the state of England, says: The drunkenness of the common people was so universal by the retailing a liquor called Gin, with which they could get drunk for a groat, that the whole town of London and many towns in the country swarmed with drunken people from morning till night, and were more like a scene of a Bacchanal than the residence of a civil society.
Retailers exhibited placards in their windows, intimating that people might get drunk for the sum of 1d. and that clean straw would be provided for customers in the most comfortable of cellars.
On Feb. 20, 1736, in the ninth year of George II., a petition of the Justices of the Peace for Middlesex against the excessive use of spirituous liquors was presented to the House of Commons, setting forth: That the drinking of Geneva and other distilled spirituous liquors had greatly increased, especially among the people of inferior rank, that the constant and excessive use thereof had destroyed thousands of his Majesty’s subjects, debauching their morals, etc., that the “pernicious liquor” was then sold not only by the distillers and Geneva shops, but many other persons of inferior trades, “by which means journeymen, apprentices and servants were drawn in to taste, and by degrees to like, approve, and immoderately to drink thereof,” and that the petitioners therefore prayed that the House would take the premises into their serious consideration, etc. The House having resolved itself into a committee on Feb. 23, Sir Joseph Jekyll moved the following resolutions: (1) That the low price of spirituous liquors is the principal inducement to the excessive and pernicious use thereof. (2) That a discouragement should be given to their use by a duty. (3) That the vending, etc., of such liquors be restrained to persons keeping public brandy-shops, victualling houses, coffee houses, ale houses and inn-holders, and to such apothecaries and surgeons as should make use of the same by way of medicine only; and, (4) That no person keeping a public brandy-shop, etc., should be permitted to vend, etc., such liquors, but by licence with duty payable thereon. These Resolutions were agreed on without debate.