This bill, my lords, is, however, the first proof that our new ministers have given of their capacity for the task which they have undertaken; this is a specimen of their sagacity, and is designed by them as an instance of the gentle methods by which the expenses of the government are hereafter to be levied upon the people. The nation shall no longer see its manufactures subjected to imposts, nor the fruits of industry taken from the laborious artificer; but drunkenness shall hereafter supply what has hitherto been paid by diligence and traffick; the restraints of vice shall be taken away, the barriers of virtue and religion broken, and an universal licentiousness shall overspread the land, that the schemes of the ministry may be executed.
What are the projects, my lords, that are to be pursued by such means, it is not my present purpose to inquire: it is not necessary to add any aggravations to the present charge, or to examine what has been the former conduct, or what will be the future actions of men who lie open by their present proposal to the most atrocious accusations; who are publickly endeavouring the propagation of the most pernicious of all vices, who are laying poison in the way of their countrymen, poison by which not only the body, but the mind is contaminated; who are attempting to establish by a law a practice productive of all the miseries to which human nature is incident; a practice which will at once disperse diseases and sedition, and promote beggary and rebellion.
This, my lords, is the expedient by which the acuteness of our ministry proposes to raise the supplies of the present year, and by this they hope to convince the nation that they are qualified for the high trusts to which they are advanced; and that they owe their exaltation only to the superiority of their abilities, the extent of their knowledge, and the maturity of their experience: by this masterstroke of policy they hope to lay for their authority a firm and durable foundation, and to possess themselves, by this happy contrivance, at once of the confidence of the crown, and the affections of the people.
But, my lords, I am so little convinced of their abilities, that amidst all the exultation which this new scheme produces, I will venture to predict the decline of their influence, and to fix the period of their greatness; for I am persuaded, that notwithstanding the readiness with which they have hitherto sacrificed the interest of their country, notwithstanding the desperate precipitation with which they have blindly engaged in the most dangerous measures, they will not be able to continue a year in their present stations.
The bill now under our consideration, my lords, will undoubtedly make all those their enemies whom it does not corrupt; for what can be expected from it, but universal disorder and boundless wickedness? wickedness made insolent by the protection of the law, and disorder promoted by all those whose wealth is increased by the increase of the revenues of the government.
Had it been urged, my lords, in defence of this bill, that it was necessary to raise money, and that money could only be raised by increasing the consumption of distilled spirits, it would have been apparent that it was well calculated to promote the purposes intended; but, surely, to assert that it will obstruct the use of these liquors, is to discover a degree either of ignorance, of effrontery, or of folly, by which few statesmen have been, hitherto, distinguished.
If we receive, without examination, the estimates which have been laid down, and allow the duty to rise as high as those by whom it is projected have ventured to assert, the price of these liquors can be raised but a halfpenny a pint; and there are few, even among the lowest of those who indulge themselves in this fatal luxury, whom the want of a single halfpenny can often debar from it.
And though these accurate calculators should insist that men may sometimes be compelled to sobriety by this addition to the expense of being drunk, yet how far will this restraint be found from being equivalent to the new temptation, which will be thrown into the way of thousands, yet uncorrupted by the multitude of new shops that will be opened for the distribution of poison, 'and the security which debauchery will obtain from the countenance of the legislature.
What will be the consequences of any encouragement given to a vice already almost irresistibly prevalent, I cannot determine; but surely nothing is too dismal to be expected from universal drunkenness, from a general depravity of all the most useful part of mankind, from an epidemical fury of debauchery, and an unbounded exemption from restraint.
How little any encouragement is wanting to promote the consumption of those execrable liquors, how much it concerns every man who has been informed of their quality, and who has seen their consequences, to oppose the use of them with his utmost influence, appears from the enormous quantity which the stills of this nation annually produce.