It is evident, my Lords, from daily observation, and demonstrable from the papers upon the table, that every year, since the enacting of the last law, that vice has increased which it was intended to repress, and that no time has been so favourable to the retailers of spirits as that which has passed since they were prohibited. It may therefore be expected, my Lords, that having agreed with the ministers in their fundamental proposition, I shall concur with them in the consequence which they draw from it; and having allowed that the present law is ineffectual, chould admit that another is necessary. But, my Lords, in order to discover whether this consequence be necessary, it must first be inquired why the present law is of no force. For, my Lords, it will be found, upon reflection, that there are certain degrees of corruption that may hinder the effect of the best laws. The magistrates may be vicious, and forbear to enforce that law by which themselves are condemned; they may be indolent, and inclined rather to connive at wickedness, by which they are not injured themselves, than to repress it by a laborious exertion of their authority; or they may be timorous, and, instead of awing the vicious, may be awed by them. 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 among 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 [a member of the Opposition] 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 essay 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 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 of 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 inferior 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, flow. ing bumper, look down with contempt upon his former companions, now ruthlessly condemned to disconsolate sobriety. But, my Lords, this intention was frustrated, and the project, ingenious as it was, fell to the ground; for, though they had laid a tax, they unhappily forgot this tax would make no addition to the price unless it was paid, and that it would not be paid unless some were empowered to collect it. Here, my Lords, was the difficulty; those who made the law were inclined to lay a tax from which themselves should be exempt, and therefore would not charge the liquor as it issued from the still; and when once it was dispersed in the hands of petty dealers, it was no longer to be found without the assistance of informers, and informers could not carry on the business of prosecution without the consent of the people. It is not necessary to dwell any longer upon the law, the repeal of which is proposed, since it appears already that it failed only from a partiality not easily defended, and from the omission of what we now propose, the collecting the duty from the still-head. If this method be followed, there will be no longer any need of informations or of any rigor. ous or new measures; the same officers that collect a smaller duty may levy a greater; nor can they be easily deceived with regard to the quantities that are made-the deceits, at least, that can be used are in use already; they are frequently detected and suppressed; nor will a larger duty enable the distillers to elude the vigilance of the officers with more success. Against this proposal, therefore, the inefficacy of the present law can be no objection. But it is urged that such duties would destroy the trade of distilling, and a noble lord has been pleased to express great tenderness for a manufacture so beneficial and extensive. That a large duty, levied at the still, would destroy, or very much impair, the trade of distilling, is certainly supposed by those who defend it, for they proposed it only for that end: and what better method can they propose, when they are called to deliberate upon a bill for the prevention of the excessive use of distilled liquors? The noble lord has been pleased kindly to inform us that the trade of distilling is very extensive; that it employs great numbers; and that they have arrived at an exquisite skill, and therefore-note well the consequence-the trade of distilling is not to be discouraged. that we may be more able to proceed with due regard to this valuable manufacture. With regard to the operation of the law, it appears to me that it will only enrich the Government without reforming the people; and I believe there are not many of a different opinion. If any diminution of the sale of spirits be expected from it, it is to be considered that this diminution will, or will not, be such as is desired for the reformation of the people. If it be sufficient, the manufacture is at an end, and all the reasons against a higher duty are of equal force against this; but if it is not sufficient, we have, at least, omitted part of our duty, and have neglected the health and virtue of the people. succeed it. It is true we are at war with two nations, and perhaps with more; but war may be better prosecuted without money than without men. And we but little consult the military glory of our country if we raise supplies for paying our armies by the destruction of those armies that we are contriving to pay. I cannot, my Lords, yet discover why a reprieve is desired for this manufacture-why Once more, my Lords, allow me to wonder at the present year is not equally propitious to the the different conceptions of different understand-reformation of mankind as any will be that may ings. It appears to me that since the spirits which the distillers produce are allowed to enfeeble the limbs and vitiate the blood, to pervert the heart and obscure the intellects, that the number of distillers should be no argument in their favour; for I never heard that a law against theft was repealed or delayed because thieves were numerous. It appears to me, my Lords, that if so formidable a body are confederated against the virtue or the lives of their fellow-citizens, it is time to put an end to the havoc, and to interpose, while it is yet in our power, to stop the destruction. So little, my Lords, am I affected with the merit of the wonderful skill which the distillers are said to have attained, that it is, in my opinion, no faculty of great use to mankind to prepare palatable poison; nor shall I ever contribute my interest for the reprieve of a murderer, because he has, by long practice, obtained great dexterity in his trade. If their liquors are so delicious that the people are tempted to their own destruction, let us at length, my Lords, secure them from these fatal draughts, by bursting the vials that contain them. Let us crush at once these artists in slaughter, who have reconciled their countrymen to sickness and to ruin, and spread over the pitfalls of debauchery such baits as cannot be resisted. The noble lord has, indeed, admitted that this bill may not be found sufficiently coercive, but gives us hopes that it may be improved and enforced another year, and persuades us to endeavour a reformation of drunkenness by degrees, and, above all, to beware at present of hurting the manufacture. I am very far, my Lords, from thinking that there are, this year, any peculiar reasons for tolerating murder; nor can I conceive why the manufacture should be held sacred now, if it be to be destroyed hereafter. We are, indeed, desired to try how far this law will operate, We have heard the necessity of reforming the nation by degrees urged as an argument for imposing first a lighter duty, and afterward a heavier. This complacence for wickedness, my Lords, is not so defensible as that it should be battered by arguments in form, and therefore I shall only relate a reply made by Webb, the noted walker, upon a parallel occasion. This man, who must be remembered by many of your Lordships, was remarkable for vigour, both of mind and body, and lived wholly upon water for his drink, and chiefly upon vegetables for his other sustenance. He was one day recommending his regimen to one of his friends who loved wine, and who perhaps might somewhat contribute to the prosperity of this spirituous manufacture, and urged him, with great earnestness, to quit a course of luxury by which his health and his intellects would equally be destroyed. The gentleman appeared convinced, and told him "that he would conform to his counsel, and thought he could not change his course of life at once, but would leave off strong liquors by degrees." "By degrees!" says the other, with indignation. "If you should unhappily fall into the fire, would you cantion your servants not to pull you out but by degrees?" This answer, my Lords, is applicable to the present case. The nation is sunk into the lowest state of corruption; the people are not only vicious, but insolent beyond example. They not only break the laws, but defy them; and yet some of your Lordships are for reforming them by degrees! I am not so easily persuaded, my Lords, that our ministers really intend to supply the defects that may hereafter be discovered in this bill. It will doubtless produce money, perhaps much more than they appear to expect from it. I doubt not but the licensed retailers will be more than fifty thousand, and the quantity retailed must increase with the number of retailers. the bill will, therefore, answer all the ends intended by it, I do not expect to see it altered; for I have never observed ministers desirous of amending their own errors, unless they are such as have caused a deficiency in the revenue. As Besides, my Lords, it is not certain that when this fund is mortgaged to the public creditors, they can prevail upon the Commons to change the security. They may continue the bill in force for the reasons, whatever they are, for which they have passed it, and the good intentions of our ministers, however sincere, may be defeated, and drunkenness, legal drunkenness, established in the nation. This, my Lords, is very reasonable, and therefore we ought to exert ourselves for the safety of the nation while the power is yet in our own hands, and, without regard to the opinion or proceedings of the other House, show that we are yet the chief guardians of the people. The ready compliance of the Commons with the measures proposed in this bill has been mentioned here, with a view, I suppose, of influencing us, but surely by those who had forgotten our independence, or resigned their own. It is not only the right but the duty of either House to deliberate, without regard to the determinations of the other; for how should the nation receive any benefit from the distinct powers that compose the Legislature unless the determinations are without influence upon each other? If either the example or authority of the Commons can divert us from following our own convictions, we are no longer part of the Legislature; we have given up our honours and our privileges, and what then is our concurrence but slavery, or our suffrage but an echo? The only argument, therefore, that now remains is the expediency of gratifying those by whose ready subscription the exigencies our new statesmen have brought upon us have been supported, and of continuing the security by which they have been encouraged to such liberal contributions. Public credit, my Lords, is indeed of very great importance, but public credit can never be long supported without public virtue; nor, indeed, if the Government could mortgage the morals and health of the people would it be just and rational to confirm the bargain. If the ministry can raise money only by the destruction of their fellow-subjects, they ought to abandon those schemes for which the money is necessary; for what calamity can be equal to unbounded wickedness? But, my Lords, there is no necessity for a choice which may cost our ministers so much regret, for the same subscriptions may be procured by an offer of the same advantages to a fund of any other kind, and the sinking fund will easily supply any deficiency that might be suspected in another scheme. To confess the truth, I should feel very little pain from an account that the nation was for some time determined to be less liberal of their contributions, and that money was withheld till it was known in what expeditions it was to be employed, to what princes subsidies were to be paid, and what advantages were to be purchased by it for our country. I should rejoice, my Lords, to hear that the lottery by which the deficiencies of this duty are to be supplied was not filled, and that the people were grown at last wise enough to discern the fraud and to prefer honest commerce, by which all may be gainers, to a game by which the greatest number must certainly be losers. The lotteries, my Lords, which former ministers have proposed have always been censured by those who saw their nature and their tendency. They have been considered as legal cheats, by which the ignorant and the rash are defrauded, and the subtle and avaricious often enriched; they have been allowed to divert the people from trade, and to alienate them from useful industry. A man who is uneasy in his circumstances and idle in his disposition, collects the remains of his fortune and buys tickets in a lottery, retires from business, indulges himself in laziness, and waits, in some obscure place, the event of his adventure. Another, instead of employing his stock in trade, rents a garret, and makes it his business, by false intelligence and chimerical alarms, to raise and sink the price of tickets alternately, and takes advantage of the lies which he has himself invented. Such, my Lords, is the traffic that is produced by this scheme of getting money; nor were these inconveniences unknown to the present ministers in the time of their predecessors, whom they never ceased to pursue with the loudest clamours whenever the exigencies of the Government reduced them to a lottery. 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 wheel-barrows, on which the laudable trade of thimble and button might be carried on for the support of the war, and shoe-boys 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 can not 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 House is at liberty to offer his conjectures. 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 whenever a Briton is destroyed, they are freed from an enemy; they have therefore opened the flood-gates 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 with 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 politics. 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. This new method may, indeed, have upon different constitutions a different operation; it may destroy the lives of some and the senses of others; but either of these effects will answer the purposes of the ministry, to whom it is indifferent, provided the nation becomes insensible whether pestilence or lunacy prevails among them. Either mad or dead the greatest part of the people must quickly be, or there is no hope of the continuance of the present ministry. For this purpose, my Lords, what could have been invented more efficacious than an establishment of a certain number of shops at which poison may be vended-poison so prepared as to please the palate, while it wastes the strength, and only kills by intoxication? From the first instant that any of the enemies of the ministry shall grow clamorous and turbulent, a crafty hireling may lead him to the ministerial slaughter-house, and ply him with their wonderworking liquor till he is no longer able to speak or think; and, my Lords, no man can be more agreeable to our ministers than he that can neither speak nor think, except those who speak without thinking. But, my Lords, the ministers ought to reflect, that though all the people of the present age are their enemies, yet they have made no trial of the temper and inclinations of posterity. Our successors may be of opinions very different from ours. They may perhaps approve of wars on the Continent, while our plantations are insulted and our trade obstructed; they may think the support of the house of Austria of more importance to us than our own defence; and may perhaps so far differ from their fathers, as to imagine the treasures of Britain very properly employed in supporting the troops, and increasing the splendour, of a foreign Electorate. PHILIP DODDRIDGE. CAPERNAUM.* 1702-1751. AND now, methinks, I am ready to interrupt my discourse, and could rather, were I sure you would attend me in it, sit down and cover my face and weep. For if these are indeed the words of the Son of God, they are big with a terrible tempest; and it hangs over what we call the Christian world; it hangs over this island, which is in many respects the glory of it. And have we no forebodings where the Matt. xi. 23. heaviest part of it might justly fall? Is there no city that rises to our thoughts far superior to Capernaum in its wealth and magnificence, and in some respects more than equal to it in its guilt? O London, London! dear city of my birth and education, seat of so many of my friends, seat of our princes and senators, centre of our commerce, heart of our island, which must feel and languish, must tremble, and, I had almost said, die with thee. How art thou lifted up to heaven. How high do thy glories rise; and how bright do they shine. How great is thy magnificence. How extensive thy commerce. How numerous, how free, how happy thy inhabitants. How happy, above all, in their religious opportunities. In the uncorrupted Gospel, so long, so faithfully preached in thy synagogues, displayed in so many peculiar glories, which were but beginning to dawn when Jesus himself dwelt in Capernaum, and preached repentance there. But while we survey these heights of elevation, must we not tremble, lest thou shouldst fall so much the lower, lest thou shouldst plunge so much the deeper in ruin? My situation, sirs, is not such as to render me most capable of judging concerning the moral character of this our justly-celebrated metropolis. But who can hear what seems the most credible reports of it-yea, I will add, who can walk its streets but for a few days with observation and not take an alarm, and be ready to meditate terror? Whose spirit must not, like that of Paul at Athens, be stirred, when he sees the city so abandoned to profaneness, luxury, and vanity? Is it indeed false all that we hear? Is it indeed accidental all that we see? Is London wronged, when it is said, that great licentiousness reigns amongst most of its inhabitants, and great indolence and indifference to religion, even among those who are not licentious? That assemblies for divine worship are much neglected, or frequented with little appearance of seriousness or solemnity; while assemblies for pleasure are thronged, and attended with such an eagerness, that all the heart and soul seems to be given to them, rather than to God? That most of its families are prayerless, wanting time, it seems, or rather wanting heart, for those social devotions; while many hours of every day can be given to recreations or amusements at home, if by any accident it is impracticable to seek them abroad? That the Sabbath, instead of being religiously observed, is given to jaunts of pleasure into neighbouring villages, or wasted on beds of sloth, or at tables of excess? That not only persons in the highest ranks of life, but that the trading part of its citizens, affect such an excessive gaiety, and grandeur, and delicacy, the very reverse of that frugality of our ancestors, who raised the city to what it is? That men in almost every rank are ambitious of appearing to be something more than those who stand in the next rank above them could conveniently allow themselves to appear; and in consequence of this are grasping at business they cannot manage, entering into engagements for what they cannot answer; and so, after a vain and contemptible blaze, drawing bankruptcy upon themselves and exposing to the danger of it honest, industrious persons, who are won by that suspicious face of plenty to repose a confidence in them, on that very account so much the less reasonable and safe? That the poorer sort of people are so grossly ignorant as to know hardly anything of religion, but the sacred names which they continually profane; so wretchedly depraved, as to consume their time and strength in reaching at those low and pernicious luxuries which they may hope to attain; and so abandoned as to sink unchastised into the most brutal sensualities and impurities; while those who could exert any remarkable zeal to remedy these evils, by introducing a deep and warm sense of religion into the minds of others, are suspected and censured as whimsical and enthusiastical, if not designing men? In a word, that the religion of our Divine Master is, by multitudes, of the great and the vulgar, openly renounced and blasphemed; and by others but coldly defended, as if it were grown a matter of mere indifference, which men might, without any degree of mischief, reject at their pleasure-yea, as if it were a matter of great doubt and uncertainty, whether men's souls were immortal, or whether they were extinguished with so empty and insignificant a life? Men and brethren, are these things indeed to be so? I take not upon me to answer absolutely that they are; but I will venture to say, that if they are indeed thus, London, as rich and grand, and glorious as it is, has reason to tremble, and to tremble so much the more for its abused riches, grandeur, and glory. ON SEEING HIM THAT IS INVISIBLE. Endeavour to get a firm and rational persua sion of the existence, providence, and presence of God. You all allow the thing at first hearing; but have you a firm persuasion of it in your own minds? do you consider how evident, how apparent, how certain it is? look about you, look within you, and reflect seriously. Could these things be without a God? Could I be without Him? Did I call myself into being? Did another creature create me? if he were the means of producing me, how came he by that power? how was he himself produced by another, and another? Still you will come to him who was the son of him, who was the son of God. How were the sun and moon formed, and the host of heaven? who gave to them all their lustre? who fixed them in their orbs? who moves them with that swiftness and steadiness, so that all the process and order of them is the same from generation to generation? look upon the tokens of His goodness, as well as of His power, in the formation of your body and your mind. Thou hast possessed my reins. Thou enterest, as it were, into the most vital parts of my frame, and there Thou dwellest and actest continually; and there Thou, Lord, art doing I know not particularly and assuredly what. But that which, because I know not, it is plain that I do not myself; and yet that which, if it be not done, I must die in a moment, and this poor body sink and drop under its own weight. Look about into the world: wherever you direct your eyes, you may trace the footsteps of Deity, and you must say, I am sure that God has been |