Chapter 42

I propose, therefore, that instead of wasting that time, of which the exigencies of the publick now require an uncommon frugality, in useless rhetorick, and untimely vehemence, we should proceed to examine in order the distinct paragraphs of this bill, by which it may more easily appear, whether it ought to be rejected or approved.

It cannot, indeed, be proposed, that any of the clauses shall be amended in this committee; for the claims of the commons, and the obstinacy with which they have always adhered to them, on whatever they are founded, is well known. I am old enough to remember the animosities which have arisen between the two houses, from attempts to adjust this part of their pretensions; animosities which at this time may be not only dangerous to ourselves, but fatal to a great part of mankind, and which it ought, therefore, to be our utmost care not to excite.

Lord AYLESFORD:--My lords, though the consideration of the distinct paragraphs of the bill be, as the noble lord has very justly observed, the proper business of the committee; yet since, as he has likewise observed, the present state of our affairs requires unusual expedition, I think we may very properly spare ourselves the trouble of considering paragraphs which we cannot amend; and which are in themselves so clear and so obvious, that they may be understood in their full extent upon a cursory perusal.

But, my lords, though I think it not proper to follow our usual method of considering the paragraphs distinctly, which can only drive the bill forward towards the third reading, as it has already been forced into the committee; yet I think it not necessary to irritate the other house, alarm our allies, or encourage our enemies, by rejecting that bill by which it is intended that the supplies shall be raised. There is an easy and moderate method, by which the same end may be attained without any disturbance of the publick, any impediment of the schemes of the government, or any just offence to the commons.

Instead of passing or rejecting this bill, of which the first is absolutely criminal, and the second perhaps improper, let us only delay it, by which we shall give the commons time to reflect upon it, to reexamine it, and discover, what they, perhaps, have not hitherto suspected, its destructive tendency. Nor can it be doubted, but the observations which will arise from the necessity of inquiring into the reasons of our conduct, will soon induce them to form another bill, not liable to the same objections; I, therefore, second the noble lord's motion to resume the house.

Lord ISLAY:--My lords, if we consider the pretensions of the commons, and the stubbornness with which they have hitherto adhered to them, we shall easily find the impropriety of the noble lord's motion, and foresee the inefficacy of the methods which he so warmly recommends.

The alarm which he supposes us to give the commons by postponing the bill before us, the observations which they will make upon our conduct, the new informations which they will receive, and the new bill which they will send, are merely imaginary. They will not consider themselves as concerned in the delay or expedition of our procedure, but will suppose us to act upon our own reasons, which it is not necessary for them to examine, and will by no means send another bill for supplies, till they are informed that this is rejected.

Thus, my lords, we shall only retard the supplies, without altering, or being able to alter, the method of raising them; and at last pass that bill, without examination, which we now neglect to examine, lest we should pass it; or, perhaps, irritate the commons by the novelty of our conduct, which, if they should resolve to consider it, they will probably consider only to censure.

Lord AYLESPORD:--My lords, I am no stranger to the claims of the commons to the sole and independent right of forming money bills, nor to the heat with which that claim has been asserted, or the firmness with which it has always been maintained in late senates. Nor am I ignorant, that by contesting this claim, we have sometimes excited disputes, which nothing but a prorogation of the senate could appease.

I know, my lords, and allow, that by acting in any unusual manner with regard to bills of this kind, we may excite the resentment of the commons, and that some interruption of the publick business may, for want of candour and moderation, possibly ensue.

But, my lords, I cannot think the possibility of an ill consequence an argument sufficient to show the unreasonableness of my proposal; for the inconveniencies that may arise from postponing the bill, are only possible, but the calamities that we shall bring upon our country by passing it are certain.

But we are likewise to consider, my lords, that these events, of which it can only be said that they may happen, may also not happen. When I reflect that the house of commons is an assembly of reasonable beings, that it is filled by the representatives of the British people, by men who will share the calamities of the publick, and whose interest it is, equally with ours, to prevent the destruction of our commerce, the decay of our manufactures, the corruption of the present age, and the ruin of posterity, I cannot but hope that they will apply themselves to a candid review of the bill which they have sent, and without heat, jealousy, or disputes, explain it as they may do by another, which will be no deviation from the rules which they have established for themselves, and by which they may secure the happiness of their country without receding from their own pretensions.

The duke of BEDFORD:--My lords, the proposal made by the noble lord appears to me so prudent and equitable, so moderate and so seasonable, and, in my opinion, suggests so easy a method of reconciling the pretensions of the commons with the necessity of amending the bill, that I cannot but think it worthy of the unanimous approbation of your lordships.

I am very far from conceiving the commons to be an assembly of men deaf to reason, or imagining them so void of all regard for the happiness of the publick, as that they will sacrifice it to an obstinate adherence to claims which they cannot but know to be in themselves disputable, and of which they must at least allow that they are only so far just as they contribute to the great end of government, the general good.

But lest they should, by any perverse and unseasonable obstinacy, attend more to the preservation of their own power than to the promotion of the happiness of their constituents, a method is now proposed, by which the errours of this bill may be corrected, without any concession of either house. The commons may easily be informed of the dangers which are justly dreaded from this bill; and may, therefore, prepare another, by which a tax of the same kind may be laid, without a general license of drunkenness; or if a method of laying a duty upon these liquors, which may at once hinder their excessive use, and increase the revenue of the government, cannot be discovered, they may raise the supplies for the year by some other scheme.

Lord CARTERET:--My lords, as the expedient proposed by these noble lords, however it may be recommended, as being at once moderate and efficacious, has, in reality, no other tendency than to procure an absolute rejection of this bill, it is proper to consider the consequences which may be reasonably expected from the measures which they have hitherto proposed.

In order to the effectual restraint of the common people from the use of these pernicious liquors, they assert the necessity of imposing a very large duty to be paid by the distiller, which might, indeed, produce, in some degree, the effect which they expect from it, but would produce it by giving rise to innumerable frauds and inconveniencies.

The immediate consequence of a heavy duty would be the ruin of our distillery, which is now a very extensive and profitable trade, in which great multitudes are employed, who must instantly, upon the cessation of it, sink into poverty. Our stills, my lords, not only supply our natives with liquors, which they used formerly to purchase from foreign countries, and therefore increase, or at least preserve the wealth of our country; but they likewise furnish large quantities for exportation to Guernsey, Jersey, and other places. But no sooner will the duty proposed to be laid upon this liquor take place, than all this trade will be at an end, and those who now follow it will be reduced to support themselves by other employments; and those countries in which our spirits are now drank will be soon supplied from other nations with liquors at once cheaper and more pleasant.

It may be proposed, as an expedient for the preservation of our foreign trade, that the duty shall be repaid upon exportation; but the event of this provision, my lords, will be, that great quantities will be sent to sea for the sake of obtaining a repayment of the duty, which, instead of being sold to foreigners, will be privately landed again upon our own coasts.

Thus, my lords, will the duty be collected, and afterwards repaid; and the government will suffer the odium of imposing a severe tax, and incur the expense of employing a great number of officers, without any advantage to the publick. Spirits will, in many parts of the kingdom, be very little dearer than at present, and drunkenness and debauchery will still prevail.

That these arts, and a thousand others, will be practised by the people to obtain this infatuating liquor, cannot be doubted. It cannot be imagined that they will forbear frauds, who have had recourse to violence, or that those will not endeavour to elude the government, who have already defied it.

Every rigorous law will be either secretly evaded, or openly violated; every severe restraint will be shaken off, either by artifice or vice; nor can this vice, however dangerous or prevalent, be corrected but by slow degrees, by straitening the reins of government imperceptibly, and by superadding a second slight restraint, after the nation has been for some time habituated to the first.

That the government proceeds by these easy and gentle methods of reformation, ought not to be imputed to negligence, but necessity; for so far has the government been from any connivance at this vice, that an armed force was necessary to support the laws which were made to restrain it, and secure the chief persons of the state from the insults of the populace, whom they had only provoked by denying them this pernicious liquor.

Since, therefore, my lords, all opposition to this predominant inclination has appeared without effect, since the government evidently wants power to conquer the united and incessant struggles for the liberty of drunkenness, what remains but that this vice should produce some advantage to the publick, in return for the innumerable evils which arise from it, and that the government should snatch the first opportunity of taxing that vice which cannot be reformed?

This duty arises, indeed, from a concurrence of different causes, of just designs in the government, and of bad inclinations in the people. The tax is just, and well meant; but it can be made sufficient to support the expenses to which it is appropriated, only by the resolution of the populace to continue, in some degree, their usual luxury.

I am far, my lords, from thinking this method of raising money eligible for its own sake, or justifiable by any other plea than that of necessity. If it were possible at once to extinguish the thirst of spirits, no man who had any regard for virtue, or for happiness, would propose to augment the revenue by a tax upon them.

But, my lords, rigour has been already tried, and found to be vain; it has been found equally fruitless to forbid the people to use spirits, as to forbid a man in a dropsy to drink. The force of appetite long indulged, and by indulgence made superiour to the control of reason, is not to be overcome at once; it cannot be subdued by a single effort, but may be weakened; new habits of a more innocent kind may in time be superinduced, and one desire may counterbalance another.

We must endeavour, my lords, by just degrees, to withdraw their affections from this pernicious enjoyment, by making the attainment of it every year somewhat more difficult: but we must not quicken their wishes, and exasperate their resentment, by depriving them at once of their whole felicity. By this method, my lords, I doubt not but we shall obtain what we have hitherto endeavoured with so little success; and I believe that though, in open defiance of a severe law, spirits are now sold in every street of this city, a gentle restraint will, in a short time, divert the minds of the people to other entertainments, and the vice of drinking spirits will be forgotten among us.

Lord HERVEY then rose up again, and spoke to the effect following:--My lords, though I have always considered this bill as at once wicked and absurd, I imagined till now that the projectors of it would have been able to have argued, at least, speciously, though not solidly, in defence of it; nor did I imagine it to have been wholly indefensible, till I discovered how little the extensive knowledge, the long experience, and the penetrating foresight of the noble lord who spoke last, enabled him to produce in vindication of it.

His lordship's argument is reducible to this single assertion, that the drinking distilled liquors cannot be prevented; and from thence he drew this inference, that since it is a point of wisdom to turn misfortunes to advantage, we ought to contrive methods by which the debauchery of the people may enrich the government.

Though we should suppose the assertion true in any sense below that of absolute physical impossibility, the inference is by no means just; since it is the duty of governours to struggle against vice, and promote virtue with incessant assiduity, notwithstanding the difficulties that may for a time hinder the wisest and most rigorous measures from success. That governour who desists from his endeavours of reformation, because they have been once baffled, in reality abandons his station and deserts his charge, nor deserves any other character than that of laziness, negligence, or cowardice.

The preservation of virtue where it subsists, and the recovery of it where it is lost, are the only valuable purposes of government. Laws which do not promote these ends are useless, and those that obviate them are pernicious. The government that takes advantage of wicked inclinations, by accident predominant in the people, and, for any temporary convenience, instead of leading them back to virtue, plunges them deeper into vice, is no longer a sacred institution, because it is no longer a benefit to society. It is from that time a system of wickedness, in which bad ends are promoted by bad means, and one crime operates in subordination to another.

But, my lords, it is not necessary to show the unreasonableness of the inference, because the assertion from which it is deduced cannot be proved. That the excessive use of distilled liquors cannot be prevented, is a very daring paradox, not only contrary to the experience of all past times, but of the present; for the law which is now to be repealed, did in a great degree produce the effects desired from it, till the execution of it was suspended, not by the inability of the magistrates, or obstinacy of the people, but by the artifice of ministers, who promoted the sale of spirits secretly, for the same reason which incites our present more daring politicians to establish the use of them by a law.

The defects of this law, for that it was defective cannot be denied, were in the manner of levying the duty; for had half the duty that was demanded from the unlicensed retailers, been required from the distiller, there had been no need of informations; nor had we been stunned with the dismal accounts of the rage and cruelty of the people, or the violent deaths of those who endeavoured to grow rich by commencing prosecutions. The duty had been regularly paid, the liquors had been made too dear for common use, and the name of spirits had been in a short time forgotten amongst us.

From this defect, my lords, arose all the difficulties and inconveniencies that have impeded the execution of the law, and prevented the effects that were expected from it, and by one amendment they might be all removed.

But instead of endeavouring to improve the efficacy of the remedy which was before proposed for this universal malady, we are now told, that it was too forcible to take effect, and that it only failed by the vigour of its operation. We are informed, that the work of reformation ought not to be despatched with too much expedition, that mankind cannot possibly be made virtuous at once, and that they must be drawn off from their habits by just degrees, without the violence of a sudden change.

What degrees the noble lord proposes to recommend, or what advantage he expects from allowing the people a longer time to confirm their habits, I am not able to discover. He appears to me rather to propose an experiment than a law, and rather to intend the improvement of policy, than the safety of the people.

This experiment is, indeed, of a very daring kind, in which not only the money but the lives of the people are hazarded: their money has, indeed, in all ages been subject to the caprices of statesmen, but their lives ought to be exempt from such dangerous practices, because, when once lost, they can never be recovered. By this bill, however, it is contrived to lay poison in the way of the people, poison which we know will be eagerly devoured by a fourth part of the nation, and will prove fatal to a great number of those that taste it; nor of this project is any defence made, but, that since the people love to swallow poison, it may be of advantage to the government to sell it.

It might not be improper, my lords, to publish to the people, by a formal proclamation, the benevolent intentions of their governours; and inform them, that licensed murderers are to be appointed, at whose shops they may infallibly be destroyed, without any danger of legal censures, provided they take care to use the poison prescribed by the government, and increase, by their death, the publick revenue.

That money only is desired from this bill, is not only obvious from the first perusal of it, but confessed even by those who defend it; but not one has continued to assert, that it will produce a reformation of manners, or recommended it otherwise than as an experiment.

For this reason, my lords, I still think my motion for postponing the bill very reasonable, nor do I make any scruple to confess that I propose, by postponing, only a more gentle and inoffensive method of dropping it, that some other way of raising the supplies may be attempted, or that the duty may be raised to three shillings a gallon; the lowest tax that can be laid with a design of reformation.

This method, my lords, or any other by which another bill may be procured, should be pursued; for whatever schemes the commons may substitute, the nation can suffer nothing by the change, they cannot raise money in any other manner, but with less injury to the publick; since the greatest calamity which wrong measures can possibly produce, is the propagation of wickedness, and the establishment of debauchery.

Lord BATH then spoke, in substance as follows:--My lords, that this bill is, with great propriety, called an experiment, I am ready to allow, but do not think the justness of that expression any forcible argument against it; because I know not any law that can be proposed for the same end, without equally deserving the same appellation.

All the schemes of government, my lords, have been perfected by slow degrees, and the defects of every regulation supplied by the wisdom of successive generations. No man has yet been found, whose discernment, however penetrating, has enabled him to discover all the consequences of a new law, nor to perceive all the fallacies that it includes, or all the inconveniencies that it may produce; the first essay of a new regulation is, therefore, only an experiment made, in some degree, at random, and to be rectified by subsequent observations; in making which, the most prudent conduct is only to take care that it may produce no ill consequences of great importance, before there may be an opportunity of reviewing it.

This maxim, my lords, is, in my opinion, strictly regarded in the present attempt, which in itself is an affair of very great perplexity. The health and virtue of the people are to be regarded on one part, and the continuance of a very gainful and extensive manufacture on the other; a manufacture by which only, or chiefly, the produce of our own nation is employed; and on which, therefore, the value of lands must very much depend.

Manufactures of this kind, my lords, ought never to be violently or suddenly suppressed. If they are pernicious to the nation in general, they are, at least, useful to a very great part, and to some, who have no other employment, necessary; and in the design of putting a stop to any detrimental trade, care is always to be taken that the inconvenience exceed not the benefit, and time be allowed for those that are engaged in it to withdraw to some other business, and for the commodities that are consumed by it, to be introduced at some other market, or directed to some other use.

These cautions are in this bill very judiciously observed. The trade, which all allow to administer supplies to debauchery, and fuel to diseases, will, by the provisions in this bill, sink away by degrees, and the health and virtue of the people will be preserved or restored without murmurs or commotions.

We must consider, likewise, my lords, the necessity of raising supplies, and the success with which they have hitherto been raised upon the scheme which is now under your consideration.

In examining the necessity of procuring supplies, I shall not expatiate upon the present danger of the liberties of all this part of the world; upon the distress of the house of Austria, the necessity of preserving the balance of power, or the apparent designs of the ancient and incessant disturbers of mankind, topicks which have been on former occasions sufficiently explained.

It is now only necessary to observe, that the state of our affairs requires expedition, and that a happy peace can only be expected from a successful war, and that war can only be made successful by vigour and despatch.

If by liberal grants of money, and ready concurrence in all necessary measures, we enable his majesty to raise a powerful army, there is no reason to doubt that a single campaign may procure peace, that it may establish the liberties of Europe, and raise our allies, who were so lately distressed, to their former greatness.

These supplies, my lords, which are so evidently necessary, may, by the method now proposed, be easily, speedily, and cheaply raised. Upon the security which this act will afford, large sums are already offered to the government at the low interest of three for a hundred, by those who, if the conditions of the loan are changed, will, perhaps, demand four in a few days, or raise money by a combination to the rate of five or six for a hundred; of which I would not remark how much it will embarrass the publick measures, or how much it will encourage our enemies to an obstinate resistance.