That the license of drunkenness, and the unlimited consumption of
spirituous liquors, will fill the whole kingdom with idleness,
diseases, riots, and confusion, cannot be doubted; nor can it be
questioned, but that in a very short time the senate will be crowded
with petitions from all the trading bodies in the kingdom, for the
regulation of the workmen and servants, for the extinction of
turbulence and riot, and for the removal of irresistible temptations
to idleness and fraud. These representations may be for a time
neglected, but must soon or late be heard; the ministers will be
obliged to repeal this law, for the same reason that induced them to
propose it. Idleness and sickness will impair our manufactures, and
the diminution of our trade will lessen the revenue.
They will then, my lords, find that their scheme, with whatever
prospects of profit it may now flatter them, was formed with no
extensive views; and that it was only the expedient of political
avarice, which sacrificed a greater distant advantage to the immediate
satisfaction of present gain. They will find, that they have corrupted
the people without obtaining any advantage by their crime, and that
they must have recourse to some new contrivance by which their own
errours may be retrieved.
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