If I, my lords, might presume to recommend to our ministers the most probable method of raising a large sum for the payment of the troops of the electorate, I should, instead of the tax and lottery now proposed, advise them to establish a certain number of licensed wheelbarrows, on which the laudable trade of thimble and button might be carried on for the support of the war, and shoeboys might contribute to the defence of the house of Austria, by raffling for apples.

Having now, my lords, examined with the utmost candour, all the reasons which have been offered in defence of the bill, I cannot conceal the result of my inquiry.  The arguments have had so little effect upon my understanding, that as every man judges of others by himself, I cannot believe that they have any influence, even upon those that offer them; and, therefore, I am convinced, that this bill must be the result of considerations which have been hitherto concealed, and is intended to promote designs which are never to be discovered by the authors before their execution.

With regard to these motives and designs, however artfully concealed, every lord in this assembly is yet at liberty to offer his conjectures; and therefore I shall venture to lay before you what has arisen in my mind, without pretending to have discovered absolute certainty, what such accomplished politicians have endeavoured to conceal.

When I consider, my lords, the tendency of this bill, I find it calculated only for the propagation of diseases, the suppression of industry, and the destruction of mankind; I find it the most fatal engine that ever was pointed at a people, an engine by which those who are not killed will be disabled, and those who preserve their limbs, will be deprived of their senses.

This bill, therefore, appears to be designed only to thin the ranks of mankind, and to disburden the world of the multitudes that inhabit it; and is, perhaps, the strongest proof of political sagacity that our new ministers have yet exhibited.  They well know, my lords, that they are universally detested, and that wherever a Briton is destroyed, they are freed from an enemy; they have, therefore, opened the floodgates of gin upon the nation, that when it is less numerous, it may be more easily governed.

Other ministers, my lords, who had not attained to so great a knowledge in the art of making war upon their country, when they found their enemies clamorous and bold, used to awe them with prosecutions and penalties, or destroy them like burglars, with prisons and gibbets.  But every age, my lords, produces some improvement, and every nation, however degenerate, gives birth at some happy period of time to men of great and enterprising genius.  It is our fortune to be witnesses of a new discovery in politicks; we may congratulate ourselves upon being contemporaries with those men who have shown that hangmen and halters are unnecessary in a state, and that ministers may escape the reproach of destroying their enemies, by inciting them to destroy themselves.