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.

The number of gallons which appears from the accounts on the table to have been consumed last year, is seven millions; ’a quantity sufficient to-destroy the health, interrupt the labour, and deprave the morals of a very great part of the nation; a quantity which, if it be suffered to continue undiminished, will, even without any legal encouragement of its use, in a short time destroy the happiness of the publick; and by impairing the strength, and lessening the number of manufacturers and labourers, introduce poverty and famine.