h them in
their schemes for raising money; and that they think all opposition to
these schemes, which are calculated for the support of the government,
the effect of a criminal disaffection; that they always think it a
sufficient vindication of any law, that it will bring in very large
sums; and that they think no measures pernicious, nor laws dangerous,
by which the revenue is not impaired.

If government was instituted only to raise money, these ministerial
schemes of policy would be without exception; nor could it be denied,
that the present ministers show themselves, by this expedient,
uncommon masters of their profession. But the end of government is
only to promote virtue, of which happiness is the consequence; and,
therefore, to support government by propagating vice, is to support it
by means which destroy the end for which it was originally
established, and for which its continuance is to be desired.

If money, therefore, cannot be raised but by this bill, if the
expenses of the government cannot be defrayed but by corrupting the
morals of the people, I shall without scruple declare, that money
ought not to be raised, nor the designs of the government supported,
because the people can suffer nothing from the failure of publick
measures, or even from the dissolution of the government itself, which
will be equally to be dreaded or avoided with an universal depravity
of morals, and a general decay of corporeal vigour. Even the insolence
of a foreign conqueror can inflict nothing more severe than the
diseases which debauchery produces; nor can any thing be feared from
the disorders of anarchy more dangerous or more calamitous, than the
madness of sedition, or the miseries which must ensue to each
individual from universal wickedness.

Such, my lords, is the expedient by which we are now about to raise
the supplies for the present year; and such is the new method of
taxation which the sagacity of our ministers has luckily discovered. A
foreign war is to be supported by the destruction of our people at
home, and the revenue of the government to be improved by the decay of
our manufactures. We are to owe henceforward our power to epidemical
diseases, our wealth to the declension of our commerce, and our
security to riot and to tumult.

There is yet another consideration, my lords, which ought well to be
regarded, before we suffer this bill to pass. Many laws are merely
experimental, and have been made, not becaus