same confidence.  I hope that zeal for the promotion of virtue, and that regard to publick happiness, which has on all occasions distinguished this illustrious assembly, will operate now with uncommon energy, and prevent the approbation of a bill, by which vice is to be made legal, by which the fences of subordination are to be thrown down, and all the order of society, and decency of regular establishments be obliterated by universal licentiousness, and lost in the wild confusions of debauchery; of debauchery encouraged by law, and promoted for the support of measures expensive, ridiculous, and unnecessary.

A law of so pernicious a tendency shall, at least, not pass through this house without opposition; nor shall drunkenness be established among us without the endeavour of one voice, at least, to withhold its progress; for I now declare that I oppose the commitment of this bill, and that I am determined to continue my opposition to it in all the steps by which the forms of our house make it necessary that it should pass before it can become a law.

Nor do I speak, my lords, on this occasion, with that distrust and mental hesitation which are both natural and decent, when questions are dubious, when probability seems to be almost equally divided, when truth appears to hover between two parties, and by turns to favour every speaker; when specious arguments are urged on both sides, and the number of circumstances to be collected, and of relations to be adjusted, is so great, that an exact and indubitable decision is scarcely to be attained by human reason.  I do not, my lords, now speak with the diffidence of inquiry, or the uncertainty of conjecture, nor imagine that I am now examining a political expedient, of which the success can only be perfectly known by experience, and of which, therefore, no man can absolutely determine, whether it will be useful or pernicious, or a metaphysical difficulty, which may be discussed for ever without being decided.

In considering this bill, my lords, I proceed upon stated and invariable principles.  I have no facts to examine but such as, to the last degree, are notorious, such as have been experienced every hour, since the existence of society; and shall appeal, not to transitory opinions, or casual assertions, but to the laws of all civilized nations, and to the determinations of every man whose wisdom or virtue have given him a claim to regard.

All the decrees of all the legislators of the earth, or the declarations of wise men, all the observations which nature furnishes, and all the examples which history affords, concur in condemning this bill before us, as a bill injurious to society, destructive of private virtue, and, by consequence, of publick happiness, detrimental to the human species, and, therefore, such as ought to be rejected in that assembly to which the care of the nation is committed; that assembly which ought to meet only for the benefit of mankind, and of which the resolutions ought to have no other end, than the suppression of those vices by which the happiness of life is obstructed or impaired.