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 wherever a Briton is destroyed,
they are freed from an enemy; they have, therefore, opened the
floodgates 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
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 politicks; 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.
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