inquiries, and would have
been more clearly explained to your lordships, had the learned
physicians been suffered to have given their opinions on this subject,
as was yesterday proposed.

Why that proposal was rejected, my lords; for what reason, in the
discussion of so important a question, any kind of evidence was
refused, posterity will find it difficult to explain, without imputing
to your lordships such motives as, I hope, will never operate in this
assembly. It will be, perhaps, thought that the danger was generally
known, though not acknowledged; and that those who resolved to pass
the bill, had no other care than to obstruct such information as might
prove to mankind, that they were incited by other designs than that of
promoting the publick good.

It is not, however, necessary that any very curious inquiries should
be made for the discovery of that which, indeed, cannot be concealed,
and which every man has an opportunity of remarking that passes
through the streets.

So publick, so enormous, and so pernicious has been this dreadful
method of debauchery, that it has excited and baffled the diligence of
the magistrates, who have endeavoured to stop its progress or hinder
its effects. They found their efforts ineffectual, and their diligence
not only not useful to the publick, but dangerous to themselves. They
quickly experienced, my lords, the folly of those laws which punish
crimes instead of preventing them; they found that legal authority had
little influence, when opposed to the madness of multitudes
intoxicated with spirits, and that the voice of justice was but very
little heard amidst the clamours of riot and drunkenness.

We live, my lords, in a nation where the effects of strong liquors
have been for a long time too well known; we know that they produce,
in almost every one, a high opinion of his own merit; that they blow
the latent sparks of pride into flame, and, therefore, destroy all
voluntary submission; they put an end to subordination, and raise
every man to an equality with his master, or his governour. They
repress all that awe by which men are restrained within the limits of
their proper spheres, and incite every man to press upon him that
stands before him, that stands in the place of which that sudden
elevation of heart, which drunkenness bestows, makes him think himself
more worthy.

Pride, my lords, is the parent, and intrepidity the fosterer of
resentment; for this reason, men are