For it is not to be imagined, that any
law will immediately reclaim the dispositions, or reform the appetites
of the people. They are well known to have drank spirits before they
were made in our country, and to indulge themselves at present in many
kinds of luxury which are yet loaded with a very high tax. It is not,
therefore, probable, that upon the imposition of a high duty they will
immediately desist from drinking spirits; they will, indeed, as now,
drink those which can be most easily procured; and if, by a high tax
suddenly imposed, foreign spirits be made cheaper than our own,
foreign spirits will only be used, our distillery will be destroyed,
and our people will yet not be reformed.
That heavy taxes will not deter the people from any favourite
enjoyment, has been already shown by the unsuccessfulness of the last
attempt to restrain them from the use of spirits, and may be every day
discovered from the use of tobacco, which is universally taken by the
common people, though a very high duty is laid upon it, and though a
king thought it so pernicious that he employed his pen against it. The
commons, therefore, prudently forbore to use violent measures, which
might disgust the people, but which they had no reason to believe
sufficient to reform them, and thought it more expedient to proceed by
more gentle methods, which might operate by imperceptible degrees, and
which might be made more forcible and compulsive, if they should be
found ineffectual.
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