The welfare of the publick, my lords, has always been allowed the
supreme law; and when any governours sacrifice the general good either
to private views, or temporary convenience, they deviate at once from
integrity and policy, they betray their trust, and neglect their
interest.
The prohibition of those commodities which are instrumental to vice,
is not only dictated by policy but nature; nor does it, indeed,
require much sagacity, when the evil is known, to find the proper
remedy; for even the Indians, who have not yet reduced the art of
government to a science, nor learned to make long harangues upon the
different interests of foreign powers, the necessity of raising
supplies or the importance and extent of manufactures, have yet been
able to discover, that distilled spirits are pernicious to society,
and that the use of them can only be hindered by prohibiting the sale.
For this reason, my lords, they have petitioned, that none of this
delicious poison should be imported from. Britain; they have desired
us to confine this fountain of wickedness and misery to stream in our
own country, without pouring upon them those inundations of
debauchery, by which we are ourselves overflowed.
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