harging their proposals with absurdity, than by extenuating the ill
consequence of their own scheme.

Their principal charge is, that those who oppose the bill recommend a
total prohibition of all spirits. This assertion gives them an
opportunity of abandoning their own cause, to expatiate upon the
innocent uses of spirits, of their efficacy in medicine, and their
convenience in domestick business, and to advance a multitude of
positions which they know will not be denied, but which may be at once
made useless to them, by assuring them, that no man desires to destroy
the distillery for the pleasure of destroying it, or intends any thing
more than some provisions which may hinder distilled spirits from
being drunk by common people upon common occasions.

Having thus obviated the only answer that has hitherto been made to
the strong arguments which have been offered against the bill, I must
declare, that I have heard nothing else that deserves an answer, or
that can possibly make any impression in favour of the bill; a bill,
my lords, teeming with sedition and idleness, diseases and robberies;
a bill that will enfeeble the body, corrupt the mind, and turn the
cities of this populous kingdom into prisons for villains, or
hospitals for cripples; and which I think it, therefore, our duty to
reject.

Lord LONSDALE next spoke to the effect following:--My lords, the
bill, on which we are now finally to determine, is of such a tendency,
that it cannot be made a law, without an open and avowed disregard of
all the rules which it has been hitherto thought the general interest
of human nature to preserve inviolable. It is opposite at once to the
precepts of the wise, and the practice of the good, to the original
principles of virtue and the established maxims of policy.

I shall, however, only consider it with relation to policy, because
the other considerations will naturally coincide; for policy is only
the connexion of prudence with goodness, and directs only what virtue
each particular occurrence requires to be immediately practised.

The first principle of policy, my lords, teaches us, that the power
and greatness of a state arises from the number of its people;
uninhabited dominions are an empty show, and serve only to encumber
the nation to which they belong; they are a kind of pompous ornaments,
which must be thrown away in time of danger, and equally unfit for
resistance and retreat.

In the present war, my lords, i