Let us, therefore, calmly consider, my lords, what can in this
exigence be done; that the people should be allowed to poison
themselves and their posterity without restraint, is certainly not the
intent of any good man; and therefore we are now to consider how it
may be prevented. That the people are infected with the vice of
drunkenness, that they debauch themselves chiefly with spirituous
liquors, and that those liquors are in a high degree pernicious, is
confessed both by those who oppose the bill, and those who defend it;
but with this advantage on the part of those that defend it, that they
only propose a probable method of reforming the abuses which they
deplore. I know that the warm resentment which some lords have on
former occasions expressed against the disorders which distilled
liquors are supposed to produce, may naturally incline them to wish
that they were totally prohibited, and that this _liquid fire_, as it
has been termed, were to be extinguished for ever.
Whether such wishes are not more ardent than rational; whether their
zeal against the abuse of things, indifferent in themselves, has not,
as has often happened in other cases, hurried them into an indiscreet
censure of the lawful use, I shall not now inquire; because it is
superfluous to dispute about the propriety of measures, of which the
possibility may be justly questioned.
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