They have, therefore, my lords, wisely contrived a necessity of continuing this law, whatever may be its consequences, and how fatal soever its abuses; for they not only mortgage the duties upon spirits for the present supply, but substitute them in the place of another security given to the bank by the pot act; and, therefore, since it will not be easy to form another tax of equal produce, we can have very little hope that this will be remitted.

There will be, indeed, only one method of setting the nation free from the calamities which this law will bring upon it; and as I doubt not but that method will at last be followed, it will certainly deserve the attention of your lordships, as the third consideration to which, in our debates on this bill, particular regard ought to be paid.

That the license of drunkenness, and the unlimited consumption of spirituous liquors, will fill the whole kingdom with idleness, diseases, riots, and confusion, cannot be doubted; nor can it be questioned, but that in a very short time the senate will be crowded with petitions from all the trading bodies in the kingdom, for the regulation of the workmen and servants, for the extinction of turbulence and riot, and for the removal of irresistible temptations to idleness and fraud.  These representations may be for a time neglected, but must soon or late be heard; the ministers will be obliged to repeal this law, for the same reason that induced them to propose it.  Idleness and sickness will impair our manufactures, and the diminution of our trade will lessen the revenue.

They will then, my lords, find that their scheme, with whatever prospects of profit it may now flatter them, was formed with no extensive views; and that it was only the expedient of political avarice, which sacrificed a greater distant advantage to the immediate satisfaction of present gain.  They will find, that they have corrupted the people without obtaining any advantage by their crime, and that they must have recourse to some new contrivance by which their own errours may be retrieved.

In this distress, my lords, they can only do what indeed they now seem to design; they can only repeal this act by charging the debt, which it has enabled them to contract, upon the sinking fund, upon that sacred deposit which was for a time supposed unalienable, and from which arose all the hopes that were sometimes formed by the nation, of being delivered from that load of imposts, which it cannot much longer support.  They can only give security for this new debt, by disabling us for ever from paying the former.

The bill now before us, my lords, will, therefore, be equally pernicious in its immediate and remoter consequences; it will first corrupt the people, and destroy our trade, and afterwards intercept that fund which is appropriated to the most useful and desirable of all political purposes, the gradual alleviation of the publick debt.