province to take care
that they may in time be virtuous; we ought, therefore, to remove from
before them those examples that may infect, and those temptations that
may corrupt them. We ought to reform their parents, lest they should
imitate them; and to destroy those provocatives to vice, by which the
present generation has been intoxicated, lest they should with equal
force operate upon the next.

There is, therefore, no occasion, my lords, for any farther
deliberation upon this bill; which, if the nation be yet in any part
untainted, will infect it; and if it be universally corrupted, will
have no tendency to amend it; and which we ought, for these reasons to
reject, that our abhorrence of vice may be publickly known, and that
no part of the calamities which wickedness must produce, may be
imputed to us.

Lord DELAWARE then spoke to the following effect:--My lords, as I am
entirely of opinion that a more accurate examination of this bill will
evince its usefulness and propriety to many of the lords who are now
most ardent in opposing it, I cannot but think it necessary to
consider it in a committee.

It is to be remembered, my lords, that this bill is intended for two
purposes of very great importance to the publick; it is designed that
the liberties of mankind shall be secured by the same provisions by
which the vices of our own people are to be reclaimed, and supplies
for carrying on the war shall be raised by a reformation of the
manners of the people.

This, my lords, is surely a great and generous design; this is a
complication of publick benefits, worthy the most exalted virtue, and
the most refined policy; and though a bill in which views so distant
are to be reconciled, should appear not to be absolutely perfect, it
must yet be allowed to deserve regard; nor ought we to reject, without
very cautious deliberation, any probable method of reforming the
nation, or any easy way of raising supplies.

The encroachment of usurpation without, and the prevalence of vice
within, is a conjunction of circumstances very dangerous; and to
remove both by the same means, is an undertaking that surely cannot
deserve either censure or contempt: if it succeeds, it may demand the
loudest acclamations; and if it fails, must be at least approved.

The use, my lords, of spirituous liquors, though in the excess now so
frequently to be observed, undoubtedly detrimental to multitudes, is
not, in a proper degree, either criminal