any
kinds of luxury which are yet loaded with a very high tax. It is not,
therefore, probable, that upon the imposition of a high duty they will
immediately desist from drinking spirits; they will, indeed, as now,
drink those which can be most easily procured; and if, by a high tax
suddenly imposed, foreign spirits be made cheaper than our own,
foreign spirits will only be used, our distillery will be destroyed,
and our people will yet not be reformed.

That heavy taxes will not deter the people from any favourite
enjoyment, has been already shown by the unsuccessfulness of the last
attempt to restrain them from the use of spirits, and may be every day
discovered from the use of tobacco, which is universally taken by the
common people, though a very high duty is laid upon it, and though a
king thought it so pernicious that he employed his pen against it. The
commons, therefore, prudently forbore to use violent measures, which
might disgust the people, but which they had no reason to believe
sufficient to reform them, and thought it more expedient to proceed by
more gentle methods, which might operate by imperceptible degrees, and
which might be made more forcible and compulsive, if they should be
found ineffectual.

Another evil will by this method, likewise, be avoided, which is the
certain consequence of high duties; this tax will produce no
clandestine frauds nor rebellious defiance of the legislature; the
distillers will not be tempted to evade this impost by perjuries, too
often practised where the profit of them is great, nor smugglers to
assemble in numerous troops with arms in their hands, and carry
imported liquors through the country by force, in opposition to the
officers of the customs, and the laws of the nation. That this,
likewise, is practised upon other occasions to escape heavy taxes, all
the weekly papers inform us; nor are there many months in which some
of the king's officers are not maimed or murdered doing of their duty.

All these evils, my lords, and a thousand others, will be avoided by
an easy tax; in favour of which I cannot but wonder, that it should be
necessary to plead so long, since every nation, which has any
pretension to civility or a regular government, will agree, that heavy
imposts are not to be wantonly inflicted, and that severity is never
to be practised till lenity has failed.

It, therefore, appears to me, my lords, that justice, reason, and
experience, unite in favour of