The consumption will, for a time, be the same in both cases, but with this important difference, that wickedness would only be continued, not promoted; and as the poison would rid the land by degrees of the present race of profligates, it might be hoped, that our posterity would be uninfected.

But under the present scheme of regulations, my lords, vice will be propagated under the countenance of the legislature; and that kind of wickedness by which the nation is so infatuated that it has increased yearly, in opposition to a penal law, will now not only be suffered, but encouraged, and enjoy not impunity only, but protection.

Thus, if we pass the bill, we shall not even be able to boast the petty merit of leaving the nation in its present state; we shall take away the present restraints of vice, without substituting any in their place; we shall, perhaps, deprive a few hardened drunkards of a small part of the liquor which they now swallow, but shall open, according to the expectation of the noble lord, fifty thousand houses of licensed debauchery for the ruin of millions yet untainted.

To leave the nation in its present state, which is allowed on all hands to be a state of corruption, seems to be the utmost ambition of one of the noble lords, who has pleaded with the greatest warmth for this bill; for he concluded, with an air of triumph, by asking, how we can be censured for only suffering the nation to continue in its former state?

We may be, in my opinion, my lords, censured as traitors to our trust, and enemies to our country, if we permit any vice to prevail, when it is in our power to suppress it.  We may be cursed, with justice, by posterity, as the abettors of that debauchery by which poverty and disease shall be entailed upon them, contemned in the present as the flatterers of those appetites which we ought to regulate, and insulted by that populace whom we dare not oppose.

Had none of our predecessors endeavoured the reformation of the people, had they contented themselves always to leave the nation as they found it, there had been long ago an end of all the order and security of society; for the natural depravity of human nature has always a tendency from less to greater evil; and the same causes which had made us thus wicked, will, if not obviated, make us worse.

Since the noble lord thinks it not necessary to attempt the reformation of the people, he might have spared the elaborate calculation by which he has proved, that a large sum wilt be gained by the government, though one third part of the consumption be prevented; for it is of very little importance to discuss the consequences of an event which will never happen.  He should first have proved, that a third part of the consumption will in reality be prevented, and then he might very properly have consoled the ministry, by showing how much they would gain from the residue.