If the duty be raised to the height proposed, it must be allowed to be repaid for all that shall be exported; otherwise foreign nations will deprive us of this part of our trade; and it has been already shown, that by mock exportations the duty may be frequently evaded.

Thus, my lords, there will be difficulties on either hand; if a duty so high be paid, the manufacturer will be ruined; if it be evaded, the consumption will be lessened.

One inconvenience will easily be discovered to be the necessary consequence of any considerable advance of the price.  We may be certain that an act of the senate will not moderate the passions, or alter the appetites of the people; and that they will not be less desirous of their usual gratifications, because they are denied them.  The poor may, indeed, yield to necessity, unless they find themselves able to resist the law, or to evade it; but those who can afford to please their taste, or exalt their spirits at a greater expense, will still riot as before, but with this difference, that their excesses will produce no advantage to the publick.

If an additional duty of three shillings be laid upon every gallon of distilled liquors, the product of our own distillery will be dearer than those liquors which are imported from foreign parts; and, therefore, it cannot but be expected that the money which now circulates amongst us, will in a short time be clandestinely carried into other countries.

Such, my lords, will be the effect of those taxes which are so strongly recommended; and, therefore, they ought not to be imposed till all other methods of proceeding have been found ineffectual.

It is possible, indeed, that the regulation specified in this bill may not produce any beneficial effect, and that the present practice of debauchery may still continue among the people; but it is likewise possible that this tax may, by increasing the price, augment the revenue at the same time that it lessens the consumption.

This proposal has, by some lords, been treated as a paradox; but they certainly suspected it of falsehood, only for want of patience to form the calculations necessary in such disquisitions.  The tax of the last year amounted to one hundred and seventy thousand pounds; this tax is now doubled, so that the same quantity will produce three hundred and forty thousand; but if one third less should be consumed, the present tax will amount to no more than two hundred and twenty thousand pounds; and when fifty thousand licenses are added, the revenue will gain an hundred thousand pounds, though one third part of the consumption should be hindered.

But, my lords, supposing no part of the consumption hindered, I cannot think that bill should be rejected, which, in a time of danger like the present, shall add to the publick revenue an annual income of more than two hundred thousand pounds, without lessening any manufacture, without burdening any useful or virtuous part of the nation, and without giving the least occasion to any murmurs among the people.