, that
amidst all the exultation which this new scheme produces, I will
venture to predict the decline of their influence, and to fix the
period of their greatness; for I am persuaded, that notwithstanding
the readiness with which they have hitherto sacrificed the interest of
their country, notwithstanding the desperate precipitation with which
they have blindly engaged in the most dangerous measures, they will
not be able to continue a year in their present stations.

The bill now under our consideration, my lords, will undoubtedly make
all those their enemies whom it does not corrupt; for what can be
expected from it, but universal disorder and boundless wickedness?
wickedness made insolent by the protection of the law, and disorder
promoted by all those whose wealth is increased by the increase of the
revenues of the government.

Had it been urged, my lords, in defence of this bill, that it was
necessary to raise money, and that money could only be raised by
increasing the consumption of distilled spirits, it would have been
apparent that it was well calculated to promote the purposes intended;
but, surely, to assert that it will obstruct the use of these liquors,
is to discover a degree either of ignorance, of effrontery, or of
folly, by which few statesmen have been, hitherto, distinguished.

If we receive, without examination, the estimates which have been laid
down, and allow the duty to rise as high as those by whom it is
projected have ventured to assert, the price of these liquors can be
raised but a halfpenny a pint; and there are few, even among the
lowest of those who indulge themselves in this fatal luxury, whom the
want of a single halfpenny can often debar from it.

And though these accurate calculators should insist that men may
sometimes be compelled to sobriety by this addition to the expense of
being drunk, yet how far will this restraint be found from being
equivalent to the new temptation, which will be thrown into the way of
thousands, yet uncorrupted by the multitude of new shops that will be
opened for the distribution of poison, 'and the security which
debauchery will obtain from the countenance of the legislature.

What will be the consequences of any encouragement given to a vice
already almost irresistibly prevalent, I cannot determine; but surely
nothing is too dismal to be expected from universal drunkenness, from
a general depravity of all the most useful part of mankind, from an
ep