It is not improbable, my lords, that in a short time all the
provisions which have been made by the wisdom of our ancestors for the
support of the woollen manufacture, will be transferred for the
encouragement of the distillery, which appears to be at present the
reigning favourite; for it is evident, that both manufactures cannot
subsist together, and that either must be continued by the ruin of the
other.
Of these rivals, which is doomed to fall we may conjecture from the
encomium just now bestowed upon the prudence of the commons, by whom
the darling distillery has been so tenderly treated; yet that the
trade, in which the bounty of nature has enabled us to excel all other
nations of the world, may not be suffered to perish in silence, I will
take this opportunity to declare, that this boasted prudence can, in
my opinion, produce no other effects than poverty and ruin, private
calamities, and general wickedness; that by encouraging drunkenness at
the expense of trade, it will stop all the currents by which the gold
of foreign nations has flowed upon us, and expose us to conquest and
to slavery.
[Thus ended this memorable debate. The question being put, was
determined in favour of the bill by 57 against 38.
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