If it be urged, that the present law does in reality impose no restraint, the intended act will make no alteration.  There is no real prohibition now, there will be no nominal prohibition hereafter; and, therefore, the law will only produce what its advocates expect from it, a yearly addition to the revenue of the government.  But, my lords, let us at last inquire to what it is to be imputed, that the present law swells the statute book to no purpose? and why this pernicious trade is carried on with confidence and security, in opposition to the law?  It will not surely be confessed, that the government has wanted authority to execute its own laws; that the legislature has been awed by the populace, by the dregs of the populace, the drunkards and the beggars!  Yet when the provisions made for the execution of a law so salutary, so just, and so necessary, were found defective, why were not others substituted of greater efficacy?  Why, when one informer was torn in pieces, were there not new securities proposed to protect those who should by the same offence displease the people afterwards?

The law, my lords, has failed of a great part of its effect; but it has failed by cowardice on one part, and negligence on another; and though the duty, as it was laid, was in itself somewhat invidious, it would, however, have been enforced, could the revenue have gained as much by the punishment as was gained by the toleration of debauchery.  It has, however, some effect; it may be imagined, that no man can be trusted where he is not known, and that some men are known too well to be trusted; and, therefore, many must be occasionally hindered from drinking spirits, while the law remains in its present state; who, when houses are set open by license, will never want an opportunity of complying with their appetites, but may at any time enter confidently, and call for poison, and mingle with numerous assemblies met only to provoke each other to intemperance by a kind of brutal emulation and obstreperous merriment.

This bill, therefore, my lords, is, as it has been termed, only an experiment; an experiment, my lords, of a very daring kind, which none would hazard but empirical politicians.  It is an experiment to discover how far the vices of the populace may be made useful to the government, what taxes may be raised upon poison, and how much the court may be enriched by the destruction of the subjects.

The tendency of this bill is so evident, that those who appeared as its advocates have rather endeavoured to defeat their opponents by charging their proposals with absurdity, than by extenuating the ill consequence of their own scheme.

Their principal charge is, that those who oppose the bill recommend a total prohibition of all spirits.  This assertion gives them an opportunity of abandoning their own cause, to expatiate upon the innocent uses of spirits, of their efficacy in medicine, and their convenience in domestick business, and to advance a multitude of positions which they know will not be denied, but which may be at once made useless to them, by assuring them, that no man desires to destroy the distillery for the pleasure of destroying it, or intends any thing more than some provisions which may hinder distilled spirits from being drunk by common people upon common occasions.