Drunkenness, my lords, is universally and in all circumstances an evil, and, therefore, ought not to be taxed, but punished; and the means of it not to be made easy by a slight impost, which none can feel, but to be removed out of the reach of the people, and secured by the heaviest taxes, levied with the utmost rigour.  I hope those to whose care the religion of the nation is particularly consigned, will unanimously join with me in maintaining the necessity, not of taxing vice, but suppressing it; and unite for the rejection of a bill, by which the future as well as present happiness of thousands must be destroyed.

Lord LONSDALE spoke as follows:—­My lords, the bill now before us, has, from its first appearance in the other house, seemed to me of such importance as to deserve the greatest attention, and to demand the most diligent inquiry; and I have, therefore, considered it with uncommon care, and pursued all those inquiries from which I could expect any assistance for discovering its tendency and its consequences, with the nicest and most anxious vigilance.

That my attention and diligence may not wholly terminate in the gratification of idle and useless curiosity, it is proper to inform your lordships of their result; by which I hope to convince you, as I am myself convinced, that this bill cannot become a law, without endangering the lives of thousands, without dispersing diseases over the nation, or without multiplying crimes beyond the possibility of restraint or punishment; that it will fill the land with confusion for a time, by infatuating the people, and afterwards lay it desolate by destroying them.

All my inquiries, my lords, have had one constant and uniform Effect.  On what side soever I have turned my speculations, I have found new arguments against this bill, and have discovered new mischiefs comprised in it; mischiefs which, however some may endeavour to overlook them, and others to despise them, will be found in a short time too general to be concealed, and too formidable to be neglected.

The first consideration, in which the necessity of deliberating on this bill engaged me, related to the quality of the liquors which are mentioned in it.  With regard to this question, my lords, there was no possibility of long suspense; for the pernicious effects of spirits were confessed equally by all those who countenanced and opposed this new project; nor could any man take a survey of this city without meeting in his way such objects as might make all farther inquiry superfluous.  The idleness, the insolence, the debauchery of the common people, and their natural and certain consequences, poverty, diseases, misery, and wickedness, are to be observed without any intention of indulging such disagreeable speculations; in every part of this great metropolis, whoever shall pass along the streets, will find wretches stretched upon the pavement, insensible and motionless, and only removed by the charity of passengers from the danger