But, my lords, the ministers themselves have sufficiently declared their opinion of the state of the national wealth, by the method which they have taken to raise those supplies of which they boast with how great facility they are raised.
When they found that new expenses required new taxes, it was necessary to examine what could be taxed, or upon which part of the nation any other burdens could be laid without immediate ruin. They turned over the catalogue of all our manufactures, and found, that scarcely any of the conveniencies, or even the necessaries of life, were without an impost. They examined all the classes of our traders, and readily discovered, that the greatest number of those who endeavoured to support themselves by honest industry, were struggling with poverty, and scarcely able to provide to-day what would be necessary to-morrow. They saw our prisons crowded with debtors, and our papers filled with the names of bankrupts, of whom many may be supposed to have miscarried without idleness, extravagance, or folly.
They saw, therefore, my lords, that industry must sink under any addition to its load, a consideration which could afford no proof of the abundance of our wealth. They saw that our commodities would be no longer manufactured, if their taxes were increased; and, therefore, it was necessary to raise money by some other method, since all those which have been hitherto practised were precluded.
This, my lords, was no easy task; but however difficult, it has been accomplished; and to those great politicians must posterity be indebted for a new scheme of supplying the expenses of a war.
In the time of the late ministry it had been observed, that drunkenness was become a vice almost universal among the common people; and that as the liquor which they generally drank was such that they could destroy their reason by a small quantity, and at a small expense, the consequence of general drunkenness was general idleness; since no man would work any longer than was necessary to lay him asleep for the remaining part of the day. They remarked, likewise, that the liquor which they generally drank was to the last degree pernicious to health, and destructive of that corporeal vigour by which the business of life is to be carried on; and a law was therefore made, by which it was intended that this species of debauchery, so peculiarly fatal, should be prevented.
Against the end of this law no man has hitherto made the least objection; no one has dared to signalize himself as an open advocate for vice, or attempted to prove that drunkenness was not injurious to society, and contrary to the true ends of human being. The encouragement of wickedness of this shameful kind, wickedness equally contemptible and hateful, was reserved for the present ministry, who are now about to supply those funds which they have exhausted by idle projects and romantick expeditions, at the expense of health and virtue; who have discovered a method of recruiting armies by the destruction of their fellow-subjects; and while they boast themselves the assertors of liberty, are endeavouring to enslave us by the introduction of those vices, which in all countries, and in every age, have made way for despotick power.
Even this expedient, my lords, must in a short time fail them; the products of vice as well as of commerce must in time be exhausted; and what will then remain? The honest and industrious must feel the weight of some new imposition, which the sagacity of experienced oppression may find means to lay upon them; they will then first find the benefit of this new law, since they may, by the use of those liquors which are indulged them, put a speedy end to that life which they made unable to support.
The means by which the expenses of our present designs are to be supported, such means, my lords, as were never yet practised by any state, however exhausted, or however endangered, means which a wise nation would scarcely use to repel an invader from the capital, or to raise works to keep off a general inundation, raise yet stronger motions of indignation, when it is considered for what designs these expenses are required.
We are now, my lords, raising armies, and hiring auxiliaries, for an expedition of which no necessity can be discovered, and from which neither honour nor advantage can be expected; we are about to force from the people the last remains of their property, and to harass with exactions those who are already languishing with poverty; not for the preservation of our liberty, or the defence of our country, but for the support of the Pragmatick sanction, for the execution of a very unjust scheme formed by the late king, to which he purchased at different times, on different emergencies, the concurrence of other powers; but to which he failed to put the last seal of confirmation, perhaps in hopes of a male heir, and left the design, which he had so long and so industriously laboured, to be at last completed by the kindness of his allies; having, by an unsuccessful war against the Turks, exhausted his treasure, and weakened his troops.
Whether we shall now engage in this design; whether we shall, for the defence of the Pragmatick sanction, begin another war on the continent, of which the duration cannot be determined, the expense estimated, or the event foreseen; whether we shall contend at once with all the princes of the house of Bourbon, and entangle ourselves in a labyrinth of different schemes; whether we shall provoke France to interrupt our commerce, and invade our colonies, and stand without the assistance of a single ally, against those powers that lately set almost all Europe at defiance, is now to be determined by your lordships.