How far is such restraint from being equivalent to the corruption of
one mind, yet pure and undebauched! to the seduction of one heart from
virtue, and a new addition to the interest and prevalence of
wickedness! If it be necessary that the supplies should be raised for
the government by the use of this pernicious liquor, it is desirable
that it should be confined to few, and that it should rather be
swallowed in large quantities by hopeless drunkards, than offered
everywhere to the taste of innocence and youth, in licensed houses of
wickedness.
The consumption will, for a time, be the same in both cases, but with
this important difference, that wickedness would only be continued,
not promoted; and as the poison would rid the land by degrees of the
present race of profligates, it might be hoped, that our posterity
would be uninfected.
But under the present scheme of regulations, my lords, vice will be
propagated under the countenance of the legislature; and that kind of
wickedness by which the nation is so infatuated that it has increased
yearly, in opposition to a penal law, will now not only be suffered,
but encouraged, and enjoy not impunity only, but protection.
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