But a new law in favour of spirits will
produce a general inclination, and a kind of emulation will incite
every one to take a license for the retail of this new liquor; and so
every part of the kingdom will be equally debauched, and no place will
be without a vender of statutable poison. The luxury of the vulgar,
for luxury, in my opinion, it may very properly be called, will still
increase, and vices and diseases will increase with it.
There is at least one part of the nation yet untainted, a part which
deserves the utmost care of the legislature, and which must be
endangered by a law like this before us. The children, my lords, to
whom the affairs of the present generation must be transferred, and by
whom the nation must be continued, are surely no ignoble part of the
publick. They are yet innocent, and it is our province to take care
that they may in time be virtuous; we ought, therefore, to remove from
before them those examples that may infect, and those temptations that
may corrupt them. We ought to reform their parents, lest they should
imitate them; and to destroy those provocatives to vice, by which the
present generation has been intoxicated, lest they should with equal
force operate upon the next.
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