In any of these cases, my lords, the law is not to be condemned for its inefficacy, since it only fails by the defect of those who are to direct its operations; the best and most important laws will contribute very little to the security or happiness of a people, if no judges of integrity and spirit can be found amongst them.  Even the most beneficial and useful bill that ministers can possibly imagine, a bill for laying on our estates a tax of the fifth part of their yearly value, would be wholly without effect, if collectors could not be obtained.

I am, therefore, my lords, yet doubtful, whether the inefficacy of the law now subsisting necessarily obliges us to provide another; for those that declared it to be useless, owned at the same time, that no man endeavoured to enforce it; so that, perhaps, its only defect may be, that it will not execute itself.

Nor though I should allow, that the law is at present impeded by difficulties which cannot be broken through, but by men of more spirit and dignity than the ministers may be inclined to trust with commissions of the peace, yet it can only be collected, that another law is necessary, not that the law now proposed will be of any advantage.

Great use has been made of the inefficacy of the present law to decry the proposal made by the noble lord for laying a high duty upon these pernicious liquors.  High duties have already, as we are informed, been tried without advantage; high duties are at this hour imposed upon those spirits which are retailed, yet we see them every day sold in the streets without the payment of the tax required; and, therefore, it will be folly to make a second essay of means which have been found, by the experience of many years, unsuccessful.

It has been granted on all sides in this debate, nor was it ever denied on any other occasion, that the consumption of any commodity is most easily to be hindered by raising its price, and its price is to be raised by the imposition of a duty; this, my lords, which is, I suppose, the opinion of every man, of whatever degree of experience or understanding, appears likewise to have been thought by the authors of the present law; and, therefore, they imagined, that they had effectually provided against the increase of drunkenness, by laying upon that liquor which should be retailed in small quantities, a duty which none of the inferiour classes of drunkards would be able to pay.

Thus, my lords, they conceived that they had reformed the common people, without infringing the pleasures of others, and applauded the happy contrivance by which spirits were to be made dear only to the poor, while every man who could afford to purchase two gallons, was at liberty to riot at his ease, and over a full flowing bumper look down with contempt upon his former companions, now ruthlessly condemned to disconsolate sobriety, or obliged to regale themselves with liquor which did no speedy execution upon their cares, but held them for many tedious hours in a languishing possession of their senses and their limbs.