was made which we are now persuaded to repeal, by the execution of
which, however feeble and irresolute, the number was reduced in the
first year afterwards to three millions, and might, perhaps, by steady
perseverance have been every year lessened; but in a short time the
people prevailed in the contest with the legislators, they intimidated
information, and wearied prosecution; and were at length allowed to
indulge themselves in the enjoyment of their favourite vice without
any farther molestation.

The effects of this indulgence, my lords, have been very remarkable;
nor can it be denied, that the government betrayed great weakness in
suffering the laws to be overruled by drunkenness, and the meanest and
most profligate of the people to set the statutes at defiance; for the
vice which had been so feebly opposed spread wider and wider, and
every year added regularly another million of gallons to the quantity
of spirits distilled, till in the last year they rose to seven
millions and one hundred thousand gallons.

Such, my lords, is at present the state of the nation; twelve millions
of gallons of these poisonous liquors are every year swallowed by the
inhabitants of this kingdom; and this quantity, enormous as it is,
will probably every year increase, till the number of the people shall
be sensibly diminished by the diseases which it must produce; nor
shall we find any decay of this pernicious trade, but by the general
mortality that will overspread the kingdom.

At least, if this vice should be suppressed, it must be suppressed by
some supernatural interposition of providence; for nothing is more
absurd, than to imagine, that the bill now before us can produce any
such effect. For what, my lords, encourages any man to a crime but
security from punishment, or what tempts him to the commission of it
but frequent opportunity? We are, however, about to reform the
practice of drinking spirits, by making spirits more easy to be
procured; we are about to hinder them from being bought, by exempting
the vender from all fear of punishment.

It has, indeed, been asserted, that the tax now to be laid upon these
liquors will have such wonderful effects, that those who are at
present drunk twice a-day, will not be henceforward able to commit the
same crime twice a-week; an assertion which I could not hear without
wondering at the new discoveries which ministerial sagacity can
sometimes make. In deliberations on a subject of su