The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Volume 11

The earl of OXFORD spoke next, to the following effect:—My lords, the necessity of supporting our reputation, and of preserving the confidence of the publick, I am by no means inclined to dispute, being convinced, that from the instant in which we shall lose the credit which our ancestors have delivered down to us, we shall be no longer considered as a part of the legislature, but be treated by the people only as an assembly of hirelings and dependants, convened at the pleasure of the court to ratify its decisions without examination, to extort taxes, promote slavery, and to share with the ministry the crime and the infamy of cruelty and oppression.

For this reason, it is undoubtedly proper, that we avoid not only the crime, but the appearance of dependence; and that every doubtful question should be freely debated, and every pernicious position publickly condemned; and that when our decisions are not agreeable to the opinion or expectations of the people, we should at least show them that they are not the effects of blind compliance with the demands of the ministry, or of an implicit resignation to the direction of a party. We ought to show, that we are unprejudiced, and ready to hear truth; that our determinations are not dictated by any foreign influence, and that it will not be vain to inform us, or useless to petition us.

In these principles I agree with the noble lord who has made the motion; but in the consequences which are on this occasion to be drawn from them, I cannot but differ very widely from him; for, in my opinion, nothing can so much impair our reputation, as an address like that which is proposed; an address not founded either upon facts or arguments, and from which the nation can collect only, that the protection of this house is withdrawn from them, that they are given up to ruin, and that they are to perish as a sacrifice to the interest of Hanover.

Let us consider what we are now invited to assert, and it will easily appear how well this motion is calculated to preserve and to advance the reputation of this house. We are to assert, my lords, the propriety of a new war against the most formidable power of the universe, at a time when we have been defeated and disgraced in our conquests with a kingdom of inferiour force. We are to declare our readiness to pay and to raise new taxes, since no war can be carried on without them, at a time when our commerce, the great source of riches, is obstructed; when the interest of debts contracted during a long war, and a peace almost equally expensive, is preying upon our estates; when the profits of the trade of future ages, and the rents of the inheritances of our latest descendants, are mortgaged; and what ought yet more to affect us, at a time when the outcry of distress is universal, when the miseries of hopeless poverty have sunk the nation into despair, when industry scarcely retains spirit sufficient to continue her labours, and all the lower ranks of mankind are overwhelmed with the general calamity.

There may, perhaps, be some among your lordships who may think this representation of the state of the publick exaggerated beyond the truth. There are many in this house who see no other scenes than the magnificence of feasts, the gaieties of balls, and the splendour of a court; and it is not much to be wondered at, if they do not easily believe what it is often their interest to doubt, that this luxury is supported by the distress of millions, and that this magnificence exposes multitudes to nakedness and famine. It is my custom, when the business of the senate is over, to retire to my estate in the country, where I live without noise, and without riot, and take a calm and deliberate survey of the condition of those that inhabit the towns and villages about me. I mingle in their conversation, and hear their complaints; I enter their houses, and find by their condition that their complaints are just; I discover that they are daily impoverished, and that they are not able to struggle under the enormous burdens of publick payments, of which I am convinced that they cannot be levied another year without exhausting the people, and spreading universal beggary over the nation.

What can be the opinion of the publick, when they see an address of this house, by which new expenses are recommended? Will they not think that their state is desperate, and that they are sold to slavery, from which nothing but insurrections and bloodshed can release them? If they retain any hopes of relief from this house, they must soon be extinguished, when they find in the next clause, that we are sunk to such a degree of servility, as to acknowledge benefits which were never received, and to praise the invisible service of our army in Flanders.

If it be necessary, my lords, to impose upon the publick, let us at least endeavour to do it less grossly; let us not attempt to persuade them that those forces have gained victories who have never seen an enemy, or that we are benefited by the transportation of our money into another country. If it be necessary to censure those noble lords who have supported the former motion, and to punish them for daring to use arguments which could not be confuted; for this is the apparent tendency of the present motion; let us not lose all consideration of ourselves, nor sacrifice the honour of the house to the resentment of the ministry.

For my part, my lords, I shall continue to avow my opinion in defiance of censures, motions and addresses; and as I struggled against the former ministry, not because I envied or hated them, but because I disapproved their conduct; I shall continue to oppose measures equally destructive with equal zeal, by whomsoever they are projected, or by whomsoever patronised.

Lord CARTERET spoke next, to the following purpose:—My lords, after so full a defence of the former motion as the late debate has produced, it is rather with indignation than surprise, that I hear that which is now offered. It has been for a long time the practice of those who are supported only by their numbers, to treat their opponents with contempt, and when they cannot answer to insult them; and motions have been made, not because they were thought right by those who offered them, but because they would certainly be carried, and would, by being carried, mortify their opponents.

This, my lords, is the only intent of the present motion which can promote no useful purpose, and which, though it may flatter the court, must be considered by the people as an insult; and therefore, though I believe all opposition fruitless, I declare that I never will agree to it.

And to show, my lords, that I do not oppose the ministry for the sake of obstructing the publick counsels, or of irritating those whom I despair to defeat; and that I am not afraid of trusting my conduct to the impartial examination of posterity, I shall beg leave to enter, with my protest, the reasons which have influenced me in this day's deliberation, that they be considered when this question shall no longer be a point of interest, and our present jealousies and animosities are forgotten.

[It was carried in the affirmative, by 78 against 35.]

HOUSE OF LORDS, FEBRUARY 21, 1742-3

DEBATE ON SPIRITUOUS LIQUORS

The bill for altering the duties on spirituous liquors, and permitting them again to be sold with less restraint, which was sent up by the commons to the house of lords, produced there very long and serious deliberations, to which the lords had every day each a particular summons, as in cases of the highest concern.

The bill was entitled, An act for repealing certain duties on spirituous liquors, and on licenses for retailing the same, and for laying other duties on spirituous liquors, and on licenses for retailing the said liquors.

The duties which were proposed to be repealed, were those laid by the act 9 Geo. II. which permitted no person to sell spirituous liquors in less quantity than two gallons without a license, for which fifty pounds were to be paid. Whereas by the new bill a small duty per gallon was laid on at the still-head, and the license was to cost but twenty shillings, which was to be granted only to such as had licenses for selling ale. On the credit of this act, as soon as it was passed by the commons, the ministry borrowed a large sum at three per cent, but it was understood that the sinking fund was pledged as a collateral security to pay any deficiency.

In about a fortnight this bill passed all the forms in the house of commons, almost without opposition; and with little or no alteration from the scheme brought into the committee on ways and means for raising the supply for the current year, by Mr. SANDYS, then chancellor of the exchequer.

It was immediately carried up to the house of lords, where it was read for the first time on the 17th of February; and ordered a second reading on the twenty-second. On that day the commissioners of excise, according to an order of the house, brought an account of the sums arising by the last act, and a yearly account for several years past; and attending were interrogated concerning the execution of the last act.

The bishop of ORFORD particularly inquired, whether it had been effectually put in force, and questions of the same kind were asked by lord LONSDALE and others; to which the commissioners answered, that it had been diligently and vigorously executed, so far as they or their officers had power to enforce it; but that the justices had not always been equally zealous in seconding their endeavours; and that it was impossible to discover all the petty dealers by whom it was infringed, spirituous liquors still continuing to be sold in small obscure shops, and at the corners of the streets.

A motion was also made, that three of the physicians of most note for their learning and experience, should be summoned to attend the house, to declare their opinion with regard to the effects of spirituous liquors upon the human body. But this was rejected by 33 against 17.

The bill was read the second time on the day appointed, when the question being put, whether it should be committed, lord HERVEY rose, and spoke to the following effect:—

My lords, though I doubt not but the bill now before us will be promoted in this house, by the same influence by which it has been conducted through the other; yet I hope its success will be very different, and that those arts by which its consequences, however formidable, have been hitherto concealed, or by which those whose business it was to have detected and exposed them, have been induced to turn their eyes aside, will not be practised here with the same efficacy, though they should happen to be attempted with the same confidence. I hope that zeal for the promotion of virtue, and that regard to publick happiness, which has on all occasions distinguished this illustrious assembly, will operate now with uncommon energy, and prevent the approbation of a bill, by which vice is to be made legal, by which the fences of subordination are to be thrown down, and all the order of society, and decency of regular establishments be obliterated by universal licentiousness, and lost in the wild confusions of debauchery; of debauchery encouraged by law, and promoted for the support of measures expensive, ridiculous, and unnecessary.

A law of so pernicious a tendency shall, at least, not pass through this house without opposition; nor shall drunkenness be established among us without the endeavour of one voice, at least, to withhold its progress; for I now declare that I oppose the commitment of this bill, and that I am determined to continue my opposition to it in all the steps by which the forms of our house make it necessary that it should pass before it can become a law.

Nor do I speak, my lords, on this occasion, with that distrust and mental hesitation which are both natural and decent, when questions are dubious, when probability seems to be almost equally divided, when truth appears to hover between two parties, and by turns to favour every speaker; when specious arguments are urged on both sides, and the number of circumstances to be collected, and of relations to be adjusted, is so great, that an exact and indubitable decision is scarcely to be attained by human reason. I do not, my lords, now speak with the diffidence of inquiry, or the uncertainty of conjecture, nor imagine that I am now examining a political expedient, of which the success can only be perfectly known by experience, and of which, therefore, no man can absolutely determine, whether it will be useful or pernicious, or a metaphysical difficulty, which may be discussed for ever without being decided.

In considering this bill, my lords, I proceed upon stated and invariable principles. I have no facts to examine but such as, to the last degree, are notorious, such as have been experienced every hour, since the existence of society; and shall appeal, not to transitory opinions, or casual assertions, but to the laws of all civilized nations, and to the determinations of every man whose wisdom or virtue have given him a claim to regard.

All the decrees of all the legislators of the earth, or the declarations of wise men, all the observations which nature furnishes, and all the examples which history affords, concur in condemning this bill before us, as a bill injurious to society, destructive of private virtue, and, by consequence, of publick happiness, detrimental to the human species, and, therefore, such as ought to be rejected in that assembly to which the care of the nation is committed; that assembly which ought to meet only for the benefit of mankind, and of which the resolutions ought to have no other end, than the suppression of those vices by which the happiness of life is obstructed or impaired.

The bill now before you, my lords, is fundamentally wrong, as it is formed upon a hateful project of increasing the consumption of spirituous liquors, and, consequently, of promoting drunkenness among a people reproached already for it throughout the whole world. It contains such a concatenation of enormities, teems with so vast a number of mischiefs, and therefore produces, in those minds that attend to its nature, and pursue its consequences, such endless variety of arguments against it, that the memory is perplexed, the imagination crowded, and utterance overburdened. Before any one of its pernicious effects is fully dilated a thousand others appear; the hydra still shoots out new heads, and every head vomits out new poison to infect society, and lay the nation desolate.

I am, therefore, at a loss, my lords, not how to raise arguments against this bill, which cannot be read or mentioned without, furnishing them by thousands; but how to methodise those that occur to me, and under what heads to range my thoughts, that I may pursue my design without confusion, that I may understand myself, and be understood by your lordships.

A multitude of considerations are obvious, all of importance sufficient to claim attention, and to outweigh the advantages proposed by this hateful bill, but which cannot all be mentioned, or at least not with that exactness which they deserve; I shall, therefore, confine myself at present to three considerations, and shall entreat the attention of your lordships, while I examine the bill now before us, with regard to its influence on the health and morals of the people, the arguments by which it has been hitherto supported, and the effects which it will have on the sinking fund.

The first head, my lords, is so copious, that I find myself very little relieved by the division which I have made. The moral arguments, though separated from those which are either political or temporary, are sufficient to overpower the strongest reason, and overflow the most extensive comprehension.

It is not necessary, I suppose, to show that health of body is a blessing, that the duties of life in which the greatest part of the world is employed, require vigour and activity, and that to want strength of limbs, and to want the necessary supports of nature, are to the lower classes of mankind the same. I need not observe to your lordships, whose legislative character obliges you to consider the general concatenation of society, that all the advantages which high stations or large possessions can confer, are derived from the labours of the poor; that to the plough and the anvil, the loom and the quarry, pride is indebted for its magnificence, luxury for its dainties, and delicacy for its ease. A very little consideration will be sufficient to show, that the lowest orders of mankind supply commerce with manufacturers, navigation with mariners, and war with soldiers; that they constitute the strength and riches of every nation; and that, though they generally move only by superiour direction, they are the immediate support of the community; and that without their concurrence, policy would project in vain, wisdom would end in idle speculation, and the determinations of this assembly would be empty sounds.

It is, therefore, my lords, of the utmost importance, that all practices should be suppressed by which the lower orders of the people are enfeebled and enervated; for if they should be no longer able to bear fatigues or hardships, if any epidemical weakness of body should be diffused among them, our power must be at an end, our mines would be an useless treasure, and would no longer afford us either the weapons of war, or the ornaments of domestick elegance; we should no longer give law to mankind by our naval power, nor send out armies to fight for the liberty of distant nations; we should no longer supply the markets of the continent with our commodities, or share in all the advantages which nature has bestowed upon distant countries, for all these, my lords, are the effects of indigent industry, and mechanick labour.

All these blessings or conveniencies are procured by that strength of body, which nature has bestowed upon the natives of this country, who have hitherto been remarkably robust and hardy, able to support long fatigues, and to contend with the inclemency of rigorous climates, the violence of storms, and the turbulence of waves, and who have, therefore, extended their conquests with uncommon success, and been equally adapted to the toils of trade and of war, and have excelled those who endeavoured to rival them either in the praise of workmanship or of valour.

But, my lords, if the use of spirituous liquors be encouraged, their diligence, which can only be supported by health, will quickly languish; every day will diminish the numbers of the manufacturers, and, by consequence, augment the price of labour; those who continue to follow their employments, will be partly enervated by corruption, and partly made wanton by the plenty which the advancement of their wages will afford them, and partly by the knowledge that no degree of negligence will deprive them of that employment in which there will be none to succeed them. All our commodities, therefore, will be wrought with less care and at a higher price, and therefore, will be rejected at foreign markets in favour of those which other nations will exhibit of more value, and yet at a lower rate.

No sooner, my lords, will this bill make drunkenness unexpensive and commodious, no sooner will shops be opened in every corner of the streets, in every petty village, and in every obscure cellar for the retail of these liquors, than the workrooms will be forsaken, when the artificer has, by the labour of a small part of the day, procured what will be sufficient to intoxicate him for the remaining hours; for he will hold it ridiculous to waste any part of his life in superfluous diligence, and will readily assign to merriment and frolicks that time which he now spends in useful occupations.

But such is the quality of these liquors, that he will not long be able to divide his life between labour and debauchery, he will soon find himself disabled by his excesses from the prosecution of his work, and those shops which were before abandoned for the sake of pleasure, will soon be made desolate by sickness; those who were before idle, will become diseased, and either perish by untimely deaths, or languish in misery and want, an useless burden to the publick.

Nor, my lords, will the nation only suffer by the deduction of such numbers from useful employments, but by the addition of great multitudes to those who must be supported by the charity of the publick. The manufacturer, who by the use of spirituous liquors weakens his limbs or destroys his health, at once, takes from the community to which he belongs, a member by which the common stock was increased, and by leaving a helpless family behind him, increases the burden which the common stock must necessarily support. And the trader or husbandman is obliged to pay more towards the maintenance of the poor, by the same accident which diminishes his trade or his harvest, which takes away part of the assistance which he received, and raises the price of the rest.

That these liquors, my lords, liquors of which the strength is heightened by distillation, have a natural tendency to inflame the blood, to consume the vital juices, destroy the force of the vessels, contract the nerves, and weaken the sinews, that they not only disorder the mind for a time, but by a frequent use precipitate old age, exasperate diseases, and multiply and increase all the infirmities to which the body of man is liable, is generally known to all whose regard to their own health, or study to preserve that of others, has at any time engaged them in such inquiries, and would have been more clearly explained to your lordships, had the learned physicians been suffered to have given their opinions on this subject, as was yesterday proposed.

Why that proposal was rejected, my lords; for what reason, in the discussion of so important a question, any kind of evidence was refused, posterity will find it difficult to explain, without imputing to your lordships such motives as, I hope, will never operate in this assembly. It will be, perhaps, thought that the danger was generally known, though not acknowledged; and that those who resolved to pass the bill, had no other care than to obstruct such information as might prove to mankind, that they were incited by other designs than that of promoting the publick good.

It is not, however, necessary that any very curious inquiries should be made for the discovery of that which, indeed, cannot be concealed, and which every man has an opportunity of remarking that passes through the streets.

So publick, so enormous, and so pernicious has been this dreadful method of debauchery, that it has excited and baffled the diligence of the magistrates, who have endeavoured to stop its progress or hinder its effects. They found their efforts ineffectual, and their diligence not only not useful to the publick, but dangerous to themselves. They quickly experienced, my lords, the folly of those laws which punish crimes instead of preventing them; they found that legal authority had little influence, when opposed to the madness of multitudes intoxicated with spirits, and that the voice of justice was but very little heard amidst the clamours of riot and drunkenness.

We live, my lords, in a nation where the effects of strong liquors have been for a long time too well known; we know that they produce, in almost every one, a high opinion of his own merit; that they blow the latent sparks of pride into flame, and, therefore, destroy all voluntary submission; they put an end to subordination, and raise every man to an equality with his master, or his governour. They repress all that awe by which men are restrained within the limits of their proper spheres, and incite every man to press upon him that stands before him, that stands in the place of which that sudden elevation of heart, which drunkenness bestows, makes him think himself more worthy.

Pride, my lords, is the parent, and intrepidity the fosterer of resentment; for this reason, men are almost always inclined, in their debauches, to quarrels and to bloodshed; they think more highly of their own merit, and, therefore, more readily conclude themselves injured; they are wholly divested of fear, insensible of present danger, superiour to all authority, and, therefore, thoughtless of future punishment; and what then can hinder them from expressing their resentment with the most offensive freedom, or pursuing their revenge with the most daring violence.

Thus, my lords, are forgotten disputes often revived, and after having been long reconciled, are at last terminated by blows; thus are lives destroyed upon the most trifling occasions, upon provocations often imaginary, upon chimerical points of honour, where he who gave the offence, perhaps without design, supports it only because he has given it; and he who resents it, pursues his resentment only because he will not acknowledge his mistake.

Thus are lives lost, my lords, at a time when those who set them to hazard, are without consciousness of their value, without sense of the laws which they violate, and without regard to any motives but the immediate influence of rage and malice.

When we consider, my lords, these effects of drunkenness, it can be no subject of wonder, that the magistrate finds himself overborne by a multitude united against him, and united by general debauchery. Government, my lords, subsists upon reverence, and what reverence can be paid to the laws, by a crowd, of which every man is exalted by the enchantment of those intoxicating spirits, to the independence of a monarch, the wisdom of a legislator, and the intrepidity of a hero? when every man thinks those laws oppressive that oppose the execution of his present intentions, and considers every magistrate as his persecutor and enemy?

Laws, my lords, suppose reason; for who ever attempted to restrain beasts but by force; and, therefore, those that propose the promotion of publick happiness, which can be produced only by an exact conformity to good laws, ought to endeavour to preserve what may properly be called the publick reason; they ought to prevent a general depravation of the faculties of those whose benefit is intended, and whose obedience is required; they ought to take care that the laws may be known, for how else can they be observed? and how can they be known, or at least, how can they be remembered in the heats of drunkenness?

That the laws are universally neglected and defied among the lower class of mankind, among those whose want of the lights of knowledge and instruction, makes positive and compulsory directions more necessary for the regulation of their conduct, is apparent from the representation of the magistrates, in which the general disorders of this great city, the open wickedness, the daring insolence, and unbounded licentiousness of the common people, is very justly described.

Their wickedness and insolence, my lords, is, indeed, such, that order is almost at an end, rank no longer confers respect, nor does dignity afford security. The same confidence produces insults and robberies, and that insensibility with which debauchery arms the mind equally against fear and pity, frequently aggravates the guilt of robbery with greater crimes; those who are so unhappy as to fall into the hands of thieves, heated by spirits into madmen, seldom escape without suffering greater cruelties than the loss of money.