No sooner, therefore, did the magistrates discover the inflexible resolution of the people, their furious persecution of informers, and their declared hatred of all those who concurred in depriving them of this dangerous pleasure, than they were induced, by regard to their own safety, to relax that severity which was enjoined, and were contented to purchase safety by gratifying, or, at least, by not opposing those passions of the multitude, which they could not hope to control; the practice of drinking spirits continued, and the consumption was every year greater than the former.

This, my lords, is the present state of the nation; a state sufficiently deplorable, and which all the laws of humanity and justice command us to alter.  This is the universal declaration.  We all agree, that the people grow every day more corrupt, and that this corruption ought to be stopped; but by what means is yet undecided.

Violent methods and extremity of rigour have been already tried, and totally defeated; it is, therefore, proposed to try more easy and gentle regulations, that shall produce, by slow degrees, the reformation which cannot be effected by open force; these new regulations appear to many lords not sufficiently coercive, and are imagined still less likely to reform a vice so inveterate, and so firmly established.

These opinions I cannot flatter myself with the hope of reconciling; but must yet observe, that the consumption of these liquors, as of all other commodities, can only be lessened by proper duties, and that every additional imposition has a tendency to lessen them; and since, so far as it extends, it can produce no ill effects, deserves the approbation of those who sincerely desire to suppress this odious vice that has so much prevailed, and been so widely diffused.

It is, indeed, possible, that the duties now proposed may be found not sufficient; but for this defect there is an easy remedy.  The duty, if it be found, by the experience of a single year, to be too small, may, in the next, be easily augmented, and swelled, by annual increases, even to the height which is now proposed, if no remedy more easy can be found.

It may be objected, that this fund will be mortgaged for the payment of the sums employed in the service of the war; and that, therefore, the state of the duty cannot afterwards be altered without injustice to the publick creditors, and a manifest violation of the faith of the senate; but, my lords, though in the hurry of providing for a pressing and important war, the commons could not find any other method so easy of raising money, it cannot be doubted but that when they consider the state of the nation at leisure, they will easily redeem this tax, if it shall appear inconvenient, and substitute some other, less injurious to the happiness of the publick.

It was not impossible for them to have done this in the beginning of this session; nor can it be supposed, that men so long versed in publick affairs, could not easily have proposed many other imposts; but it may be imagined, that they chose this out of many, without suspecting that it would be opposed; and believed, that they were at once raising supplies, and protecting the virtue of the people.