uld rid the land by degrees of the
present race of profligates, it might be hoped, that our posterity
would be uninfected.

But under the present scheme of regulations, my lords, vice will be
propagated under the countenance of the legislature; and that kind of
wickedness by which the nation is so infatuated that it has increased
yearly, in opposition to a penal law, will now not only be suffered,
but encouraged, and enjoy not impunity only, but protection.

Thus, if we pass the bill, we shall not even be able to boast the
petty merit of leaving the nation in its present state; we shall take
away the present restraints of vice, without substituting any in their
place; we shall, perhaps, deprive a few hardened drunkards of a small
part of the liquor which they now swallow, but shall open, according
to the expectation of the noble lord, fifty thousand houses of
licensed debauchery for the ruin of millions yet untainted.

To leave the nation in its present state, which is allowed on all
hands to be a state of corruption, seems to be the utmost ambition of
one of the noble lords, who has pleaded with the greatest warmth for
this bill; for he concluded, with an air of triumph, by asking, how we
can be censured for only suffering the nation to continue in its
former state?

We may be, in my opinion, my lords, censured as traitors to our trust,
and enemies to our country, if we permit any vice to prevail, when it
is in our power to suppress it. We may be cursed, with justice, by
posterity, as the abettors of that debauchery by which poverty and
disease shall be entailed upon them, contemned in the present as the
flatterers of those appetites which we ought to regulate, and insulted
by that populace whom we dare not oppose.

Had none of our predecessors endeavoured the reformation of the
people, had they contented themselves always to leave the nation as
they found it, there had been long ago an end of all the order and
security of society; for the natural depravity of human nature has
always a tendency from less to greater evil; and the same causes which
had made us thus wicked, will, if not obviated, make us worse.

Since the noble lord thinks it not necessary to attempt the
reformation of the people, he might have spared the elaborate
calculation by which he has proved, that a large sum wilt be gained by
the government, though one third part of the consumption be prevented;
for it is of very little importance to discu