Nor, my lords, will the nation only suffer by the deduction of such numbers from useful employments, but by the addition of great multitudes to those who must be supported by the charity of the publick.  The manufacturer, who by the use of spirituous liquors weakens his limbs or destroys his health, at once, takes from the community to which he belongs, a member by which the common stock was increased, and by leaving a helpless family behind him, increases the burden which the common stock must necessarily support.  And the trader or husbandman is obliged to pay more towards the maintenance of the poor, by the same accident which diminishes his trade or his harvest, which takes away part of the assistance which he received, and raises the price of the rest.

That these liquors, my lords, liquors of which the strength is heightened by distillation, have a natural tendency to inflame the blood, to consume the vital juices, destroy the force of the vessels, contract the nerves, and weaken the sinews, that they not only disorder the mind for a time, but by a frequent use precipitate old age, exasperate diseases, and multiply and increase all the infirmities to which the body of man is liable, is generally known to all whose regard to their own health, or study to preserve that of others, has at any time engaged them in such inquiries, and would have been more clearly explained to your lordships, had the learned physicians been suffered to have given their opinions on this subject, as was yesterday proposed.

Why that proposal was rejected, my lords; for what reason, in the discussion of so important a question, any kind of evidence was refused, posterity will find it difficult to explain, without imputing to your lordships such motives as, I hope, will never operate in this assembly.  It will be, perhaps, thought that the danger was generally known, though not acknowledged; and that those who resolved to pass the bill, had no other care than to obstruct such information as might prove to mankind, that they were incited by other designs than that of promoting the publick good.

It is not, however, necessary that any very curious inquiries should be made for the discovery of that which, indeed, cannot be concealed, and which every man has an opportunity of remarking that passes through the streets.

So publick, so enormous, and so pernicious has been this dreadful method of debauchery, that it has excited and baffled the diligence of the magistrates, who have endeavoured to stop its progress or hinder its effects.  They found their efforts ineffectual, and their diligence not only not useful to the publick, but dangerous to themselves.  They quickly experienced, my lords, the folly of those laws which punish crimes instead of preventing them; they found that legal authority had little influence, when opposed to the madness of multitudes intoxicated with spirits, and that the voice of justice was but very little heard amidst the clamours of riot and drunkenness.