The author of another religion, a religion founded, indeed, on
superstition and credulity, but which prevails over a very great part
of the earth, has laid his followers under restraints still more
severe; he has forbidden them to dispel their cares, or exalt their
pleasures, with wine, has banished from their banquets that useful
opponent of troublesome reflection, and doomed all those who receive
his law, not to sobriety only, but to abstinence.
The authority of this man, my lords, cannot indeed be urged as
unexceptionable and decisive; but the reception of his imposture shows
at least, that he was not unacquainted with human nature, and that he
knew how to adapt his forgeries to the nations among which he vented
them; nor can it be denied, but the prohibition of wine was found
generally useful, since it obtained so ready a compliance.
All nations in the world, my lords, in every age of which there remain
any historical accounts, have agreed in the necessity of laying
restraint upon appetite, and setting bounds to the wantonness of
luxury; every legislature has claimed and practised the right of
withholding those pleasures which the people have appeared inclined to
use to excess, and preferring the safety of multitudes whom liberty
would destroy, to the convenience of those who would have enjoyed it
within the limits of reason and of virtue.
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