tponing, only a more gentle and inoffensive method of
dropping it, that some other way of raising the supplies may be
attempted, or that the duty may be raised to three shillings a gallon;
the lowest tax that can be laid with a design of reformation.

This method, my lords, or any other by which another bill may be
procured, should be pursued; for whatever schemes the commons may
substitute, the nation can suffer nothing by the change, they cannot
raise money in any other manner, but with less injury to the publick;
since the greatest calamity which wrong measures can possibly produce,
is the propagation of wickedness, and the establishment of debauchery.

Lord BATH then spoke, in substance as follows:--My lords, that this
bill is, with great propriety, called an experiment, I am ready to
allow, but do not think the justness of that expression any forcible
argument against it; because I know not any law that can be proposed
for the same end, without equally deserving the same appellation.

All the schemes of government, my lords, have been perfected by slow
degrees, and the defects of every regulation supplied by the wisdom of
successive generations. No man has yet been found, whose discernment,
however penetrating, has enabled him to discover all the consequences
of a new law, nor to perceive all the fallacies that it includes, or
all the inconveniencies that it may produce; the first essay of a new
regulation is, therefore, only an experiment made, in some degree, at
random, and to be rectified by subsequent observations; in making
which, the most prudent conduct is only to take care that it may
produce no ill consequences of great importance, before there may be
an opportunity of reviewing it.

This maxim, my lords, is, in my opinion, strictly regarded in the
present attempt, which in itself is an affair of very great
perplexity. The health and virtue of the people are to be regarded on
one part, and the continuance of a very gainful and extensive
manufacture on the other; a manufacture by which only, or chiefly, the
produce of our own nation is employed; and on which, therefore, the
value of lands must very much depend.

Manufactures of this kind, my lords, ought never to be violently or
suddenly suppressed. If they are pernicious to the nation in general,
they are, at least, useful to a very great part, and to some, who have
no other employment, necessary; and in the design of putting a stop to
any detrimental