it be
questioned, but that in a very short time the senate will be crowded
with petitions from all the trading bodies in the kingdom, for the
regulation of the workmen and servants, for the extinction of
turbulence and riot, and for the removal of irresistible temptations
to idleness and fraud. These representations may be for a time
neglected, but must soon or late be heard; the ministers will be
obliged to repeal this law, for the same reason that induced them to
propose it. Idleness and sickness will impair our manufactures, and
the diminution of our trade will lessen the revenue.

They will then, my lords, find that their scheme, with whatever
prospects of profit it may now flatter them, was formed with no
extensive views; and that it was only the expedient of political
avarice, which sacrificed a greater distant advantage to the immediate
satisfaction of present gain. They will find, that they have corrupted
the people without obtaining any advantage by their crime, and that
they must have recourse to some new contrivance by which their own
errours may be retrieved.

In this distress, my lords, they can only do what indeed they now seem
to design; they can only repeal this act by charging the debt, which
it has enabled them to contract, upon the sinking fund, upon that
sacred deposit which was for a time supposed unalienable, and from
which arose all the hopes that were sometimes formed by the nation, of
being delivered from that load of imposts, which it cannot much longer
support. They can only give security for this new debt, by disabling
us for ever from paying the former.

The bill now before us, my lords, will, therefore, be equally
pernicious in its immediate and remoter consequences; it will first
corrupt the people, and destroy our trade, and afterwards intercept
that fund which is appropriated to the most useful and desirable of
all political purposes, the gradual alleviation of the publick debt.

I hope, my lords, that a bill of this portentous kind, a bill big with
innumerable mischiefs, and without one beneficial tendency, will be
rejected by this house, without the form of commitment; that it will
not be the subject of a debate amongst us, whether we shall consent to
poison the nation; and that instead of inquiring, whether the measures
which are now pursued by the ministry ought to be supported at the
expense of virtue, tranquillity, and trade, we should examine, whether
they are not such as oug