is an object of contempt, and a sight which is but very seldom witnessed.  This sobriety, therefore, can only be the consequence of a steady, equable supply, which induces moderate enjoyment, without holding out any temptation to excessive indulgence.  And however strange or unaccountable this fact may at first appear, the reason of it may be traced to the nature of man, the same inconsistent creature in all ages and in all countries.  Intervening obstacles to enjoyment, far from repressing his desires, serve but to stimulate and inflame them; and so perverse and capricious is he in his conduct, that he despises, or at best holds in but secondary estimation, the real substantial good that is within his grasp; while remote or unattainable objects fire his ambition, and swell into fanciful and preposterous proportions the treacherous illusions of a fertile imagination, which possession alone can dissipate and reduce to their proper standard and value.  It is thus that lofty mountains seem to connect themselves with the heavens by enveloping clouds; but stripped of their deceptious covering, they stand reduced to their primitive dimensions, the blue vault towers far above their heads, and the eye sees and defines their just limits and magnitude.

There can be but one objection urged against the establishment of colonial distilleries; that it will deprive the resident merchants in India, from whence by far the greater proportion of spirits is at present imported into the colony, of this branch of commerce.  The trade, however, of that country is on too extensive a scale, to be perceptibly affected by so trifling a restriction, which, in fact, has always existed till within the last five years; as the importation of spirits, till that period, was always subject to limitation, and only permitted by express licence.  But were the case otherwise, what right has one portion of the empire to look for aggrandisement at the expense of another?  Ought the welfare and happiness of twenty thousand persons to be sacrificed, in order to promote the views of a few interested individuals?  If it were politic in his majesty’s government to concede any superiority of privilege to any one body of the king’s subjects over another, surely a colony composed entirely of Englishmen has reason to expect that such a concession should be made in its favour, and not to its prejudice in favour of a country acquired and in some measure maintained by force, and connected with the parent country by no ties of common origin and affinity, by no congeniality of habit, by no similarity of religion.  But the colonists neither expect nor desire any such concessions:  they seek the possession and enjoyment of their own indubitable rights; they would not curtail those of others:  they neither want to render other colonies tributary to their prosperity, nor to continue, as they have hitherto been, tributary to that of others.