the memory is perplexed, the
imagination crowded, and utterance overburdened. Before any one of its
pernicious effects is fully dilated a thousand others appear; the
hydra still shoots out new heads, and every head vomits out new poison
to infect society, and lay the nation desolate.

I am, therefore, at a loss, my lords, not how to raise arguments
against this bill, which cannot be read or mentioned without,
furnishing them by thousands; but how to methodise those that occur to
me, and under what heads to range my thoughts, that I may pursue my
design without confusion, that I may understand myself, and be
understood by your lordships.

A multitude of considerations are obvious, all of importance
sufficient to claim attention, and to outweigh the advantages proposed
by this hateful bill, but which cannot all be mentioned, or at least
not with that exactness which they deserve; I shall, therefore,
confine myself at present to three considerations, and shall entreat
the attention of your lordships, while I examine the bill now before
us, with regard to its influence on the health and morals of the
people, the arguments by which it has been hitherto supported, and the
effects which it will have on the sinking fund.

The first head, my lords, is so copious, that I find myself very
little relieved by the division which I have made. The moral
arguments, though separated from those which are either political or
temporary, are sufficient to overpower the strongest reason, and
overflow the most extensive comprehension.

It is not necessary, I suppose, to show that health of body is a
blessing, that the duties of life in which the greatest part of the
world is employed, require vigour and activity, and that to want
strength of limbs, and to want the necessary supports of nature, are
to the lower classes of mankind the same. I need not observe to your
lordships, whose legislative character obliges you to consider the
general concatenation of society, that all the advantages which high
stations or large possessions can confer, are derived from the labours
of the poor; that to the plough and the anvil, the loom and the
quarry, pride is indebted for its magnificence, luxury for its
dainties, and delicacy for its ease. A very little consideration will
be sufficient to show, that the lowest orders of mankind supply
commerce with manufacturers, navigation with mariners, and war with
soldiers; that they constitute the strength and