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

As little, my lords, am I affected with the merit of the wonderful skill which the distillers are said to have attained: it is, in my opinion, no faculty of great use to mankind, to prepare palatable poison; nor shall I ever contribute my interest for the reprieve of a murderer, because he has, by long practice, obtained great dexterity in his trade.

If their liquors are so delicious, that the people are tempted to their own destruction, let us at length, my lords, secure them from these fatal draughts, by bursting the vials that contain them; let us crush, at once, these artists in slaughter, who have reconciled their countrymen to sickness and to ruin, and spread over the pitfals of debauchery such baits as cannot be resisted.

The noble lord has, indeed, admitted, that this bill may not be found sufficiently coercive, but gives us hopes that it may be improved and enforced another year, and persuades us to endeavour the reformation of drunkenness by degrees, and above all, to beware, at present, of hurting the manufacture.

I am very far, my lords, from thinking, that there are this year any peculiar reasons for tolerating murder; nor can I conceive why the manufacture should be held sacred now, if it be to be destroyed hereafter; we are, indeed, desired to try how far this law will operate, that we may be more able to proceed with due regard to this valuable manufacture.

With regard to the operation of the law, it appears to me that it will only enrich the government without reforming the people, and I believe there are not many of a different opinion: if any diminution of the sale of spirits be expected from it, it is to be considered, that this diminution will or will not be such as is desired for the reformation of the people; if it be sufficient, the manufacture is at an end, and all the reasons against a higher duty are of equal force against this; but if it is not sufficient, we have, at least, omitted part of our duty, and have neglected the health and virtue of the people.

I cannot, my lords, yet discover, why a reprieve is desired for this manufacture; why the present year is not equally propitious to the reformation of mankind as any will be that may succeed it. It is true we are at war with two nations, and, perhaps, with more; but war may be better prosecuted without money than without men, and we but little consult the military glory of our country, if we raise supplies for paying our armies, by the destruction of those armies that we are contriving to pay.

We have heard the necessity of reforming the nation by degrees urged as an argument for imposing first a lighter duty, and afterwards a heavier; this complaisance for wickedness, my lords, is not so defensible as that it should be battered by arguments in form, and therefore I shall only relate a reply made by Webb, the noted walker, upon a parallel occasion.

This man, who must be remembered by many of your lordships, was remarkable for vigour, both of mind and body, and lived wholly upon water for his drink, and chiefly upon vegetables for his other sustenance: he was one day recommending his regimen to one of his friends who loved wine, and who, perhaps, might somewhat contribute to the prosperity of this spirituous manufacture, and urged him, with great earnestness, to quit a course of luxury by which his health and his intellects would equally be destroyed. The gentleman appeared convinced, and told him, that he would conform to his counsel, and thought he could not change his course of life at once, but would leave off strong liquors by degrees. By degrees, says the other, with indignation! if you should unhappily fall into the fire, would you caution your servants not to pull you out but by degrees?

This answer, my lords, is applicable in the present case; the nation is sunk into the lowest state of corruption, the people are not only vitious, but insolent beyond example; they not only break the laws, but defy them; and yet some of your lordships are for reforming them by degrees.

I am not easily persuaded, my lords, that our ministers really intend to supply the defects that may hereafter be discovered in this bill; it will doubtless produce money, perhaps much more than they appear to expect from it; I doubt not but the licensed retailers will be more than fifty thousand, and the quantity retailed must increase with the number of retailers. As the bill will, therefore, answer all the ends intended by it, I do not expect to see it altered, for I have never observed ministers desirous of amending their own errours, unless they are such as produce a deficiency in the revenue.

Besides, my lords, it is not certain, that when this fund is mortgaged to the publick creditors, they can prevail upon the commons to change the security; they may continue the bill in force for the reasons, whatever they are, for which they have passed it, and the good intentions of our ministers, however sincere, may be defeated, and drunkenness, legal drunkenness, established in the nation.

This, my lords, is very reasonable; and therefore we ought to exert ourselves for the safety of the nation, while the power is yet in our own hands, and without regard to the opinion or proceedings of the other house, show that we are yet the chief guardians of the people, and the most vigilant adversaries of wickedness.

The ready compliance of the commons with the measures proposed in this bill, has been mentioned here with a view, I suppose, of influencing us, but surely by those who had forgotten our independence, or resigned their own. It is not only the right, but the duty of either house, to deliberate without regard to the determinations of the other; for how would the nation receive any benefit from the distinct powers that compose the legislature, unless their determinations are without influence upon each other? If either the example or authority of the commons can divert us from following our own convictions, we are no longer part of the legislature; we have given up our honours and our privileges, and what then is our concurrence but slavery, or our suffrage but an echo?

The only argument, therefore, that now remains, is the expediency of gratifying those by whose ready subscription the exigencies which the counsels of our new statesmen have brought upon us, and of continuing the security by which they have been encouraged to such liberal contributions.

Publick credit, my lords, is, indeed, of very great importance, but publick credit can never be long supported without publick virtue; nor indeed if the government could mortgage the morals and health of the people, would it be just or rational to confirm the bargain. If the ministry can raise money only by the destruction of their fellow-subjects, they ought to abandon those schemes for which the money is necessary: for what calamity can be equal to unbounded wickedness?

But, my lords, there is no necessity for a choice which may cost us or our ministers so much regret; for the same subscriptions may be procured by an offer of the same advantages to a fund of any other kind, and the sinking fund will easily supply any deficiency that might be suspected in another scheme.

To confess the truth, I should feel very little pain from an account that the nation was for some time determined to be less liberal of their contribution, and that money was withheld till it was known in what expeditions it was to be employed, to what princes subsidies were to be paid, and what advantages were to be purchased by it for our country. I should rejoice my lords, to hear that the lottery by which the deficiencies of this duty are to be supplied, was not filled; and that the people were grown at last wise enough to discern the fraud, and to prefer honest commerce, by which all may be gainers, to a game by which the greatest number must certainly lose, and in which no man can reasonably expect that he shall be the happy favourite of fortune, on whom a prize shall be conferred.

The lotteries, my lords, which former ministers have proposed, have always been censured by those that saw their nature and their tendency; they have been considered as legal cheats, by which the ignorant and the rash are defrauded, and the subtle and avaricious often enriched; they have been allowed to divert the people from trade, and to alienate them from useful industry. A man who is uneasy in his circumstances, and idle in his disposition, collects the remains of his fortune, and buys tickets in a lottery, retires from business, indulges himself in laziness, and waits, in some obscure place, the event of his adventure. Another, instead of employing his stock in a shop or warehouse, rents a garret in a private street, and makes it his business, by false intelligence, and chimerical alarms, to raise and sink the price of tickets alternately, and takes advantage of the lies which he has himself invented.

Such, my lords, is the traffick that is produced by this scheme of raising money; nor were these inconveniencies unknown to the present ministers in the time of their predecessors, whom they never failed to pursue with the loudest clamours, whenever the exigencies of the government reduced them to a lottery.

If I, my lords, might presume to recommend to our ministers the most probable method of raising a large sum for the payment of the troops of the electorate, I should, instead of the tax and lottery now proposed, advise them to establish a certain number of licensed wheelbarrows, on which the laudable trade of thimble and button might be carried on for the support of the war, and shoeboys might contribute to the defence of the house of Austria, by raffling for apples.

Having now, my lords, examined with the utmost candour, all the reasons which have been offered in defence of the bill, I cannot conceal the result of my inquiry. The arguments have had so little effect upon my understanding, that as every man judges of others by himself, I cannot believe that they have any influence, even upon those that offer them; and, therefore, I am convinced, that this bill must be the result of considerations which have been hitherto concealed, and is intended to promote designs which are never to be discovered by the authors before their execution.

With regard to these motives and designs, however artfully concealed, every lord in this assembly is yet at liberty to offer his conjectures; and therefore I shall venture to lay before you what has arisen in my mind, without pretending to have discovered absolute certainty, what such accomplished politicians have endeavoured to conceal.

When I consider, my lords, the tendency of this bill, I find it calculated only for the propagation of diseases, the suppression of industry, and the destruction of mankind; I find it the most fatal engine that ever was pointed at a people, an engine by which those who are not killed will be disabled, and those who preserve their limbs, will be deprived of their senses.

This bill, therefore, appears to be designed only to thin the ranks of mankind, and to disburden the world of the multitudes that inhabit it; and is, perhaps, the strongest proof of political sagacity that our new ministers have yet exhibited. They well know, my lords, that they are universally detested, and that wherever a Briton is destroyed, they are freed from an enemy; they have, therefore, opened the floodgates of gin upon the nation, that when it is less numerous, it may be more easily governed.

Other ministers, my lords, who had not attained to so great a knowledge in the art of making war upon their country, when they found their enemies clamorous and bold, used to awe them with prosecutions and penalties, or destroy them like burglars, with prisons and gibbets. But every age, my lords, produces some improvement, and every nation, however degenerate, gives birth at some happy period of time to men of great and enterprising genius. It is our fortune to be witnesses of a new discovery in politicks; we may congratulate ourselves upon being contemporaries with those men who have shown that hangmen and halters are unnecessary in a state, and that ministers may escape the reproach of destroying their enemies, by inciting them to destroy themselves.

This new method may, indeed, have upon different constitutions a different operation; it may destroy the lives of some, and the senses of others; but either of these effects will answer the purposes of the ministry, to whom it is indifferent, provided the nation becomes insensible, whether pestilence or lunacy prevails among them. Either mad or dead, the greatest part of the people must quickly be, or there is no hope of the continuance of the present ministry.

For this purpose, my lords, what could have been invented more efficacious than an establishment of a certain number of shops at which poison may be vended; poison so prepared, as to please the palate while it wastes the strength, and to kill only by intoxication. From the first instant that any of the enemies of the ministry shall grow clamorous and turbulent, a crafty hireling may lead him to the ministerial slaughterhouse, and ply him with their wonder-working liquor, till he is no longer able to speak or think; and, my lords, no man can be more agreeable to our ministers than he that can neither speak nor think, except those who speak without thinking.

But, my lords, the ministers ought to reflect, that though all the people of the present age are their enemies, yet they have made no trial of the temper and inclinations of posterity; our successours may be of opinions very different from ours; they may, perhaps, approve of wars on the continent, while our plantations are insulted, and our trade obstructed; they may think the support of the house of Austria of more importance to us than our own defence, and may, perhaps, so far differ from their fathers, as to imagine the treasures of Britain very properly employed in supporting the troops, and increasing the splendour of a foreign electorate.

Since, therefore, it will not be denied by our ministers, that the affection and gratitude of posterity may atone for the obstinacy, blindness, and malice of the present age; since those measures which are now universally censured, may at some distant time be praised with equal unanimity; why, my lords, should they extend their vengeance to the succeeding generation? why should they endeavour to torture their limbs with pains, and load their lives with the guilt of their parents? why should they hinder that trade to which they must owe all the comforts which plenty affords? why should they endeavour to intercept their existence, or suffer them to exist only to be wretched?

If I may once more declare my sentiments, my lords, I believe the ministers do not so much wish to debilitate the bodies as the understandings of posterity, nor so ardently desire a race of cripples as of fools. For cripples, my lords, can make no figure at a review, nor strut in a red coat with a tolerable grace; but fools are known by long experience to be the principal support of an army, since they are the only persons who are willing to pay it!

Whatever, my lords, be the true reasons for which this bill is so warmly promoted, I think they ought, at least, to be deliberately examined; and, therefore, cannot think it consistent with our regard for the nation to suffer it to be precipitated into a law. The year, my lords, is not so far advanced, as that supplies may not be raised by some other method, if this should be rejected; nor do I think that we ought to consent to this, even though our refusal should hinder the supplies, since we have no right, for the sake of any advantage, however certain or great, to violate all the laws of heaven and earth, to doom thousands to destruction, and to fill the exchequer with the price of the lives of our fellow-subjects.

Let us, therefore, my lords, not suffer ourselves to be driven forward with such haste as may hinder us from observing whither we are going; let us not be persuaded to precipitate our counsels by those who know that all delays will be detrimental to their designs, because delays may produce new information, and they are conscious that the bill will be less approved the more it is understood.

But every reason which they can offer against the motion, is, in my opinion, a reason for it; and, therefore, I shall readily agree to postpone the clause, and no less readily to reject the bill.

If, at last, reason and evidence are vain, if neither justice nor compassion can prevail, but the nation must be destroyed for the support of the government, let us at least, my lords, confine our assertions, in the preamble, to truth; let us not affirm that drunkenness is established by the advice or consent of the lords spiritual, since I am confident not one of them will so far contradict his own doctrine, as to vote for a bill which gives a sanction to one vice, and ministers opportunities and temptations to all others; and which, if it be not speedily repealed, will overflow the whole nation with a deluge of wickedness.

Lord ISLAY next spoke to the effect following:—My lords, I have attended for a long time to the noble lord, not without some degree of uneasiness, as I think the manner in which he has treated the question neither consistent with the dignity of this assembly, nor with those rules which ought to be ever venerable, the great rules of reason and humanity. Yet being now arrived at a time of life in which the passions grow calm, and patience easily prevails over any sudden disgust or perturbation, I forbore to disconcert him, though I have known interruption produced by much slighter provocations.

It is, my lords, in my opinion, a just maxim, that our deliberations can receive very little assistance from merriment and ridicule, and that truth is seldom discovered by those who are chiefly solicitous to start a jest. To convince the understanding, and to tickle the fancy, are purposes very different, and must be promoted by different means; nor is he always to imagine himself superiour in the dispute, who is applauded with the loudest laugh.

To laugh, my lords, and to endeavour to communicate the same mirth to others, when great affairs are to be considered, is certainly to neglect the end for which we are assembled, and the reasons for which the privilege of debating was originally granted us. For doubtless, my lords, our honours and our power were not conferred upon us that we might be merry with the better grace, or that we might meet at certain times to divert ourselves with turning the great affairs of the nation to ridicule.

But, my lords, still less defensible is this practice, when we are contriving the relief of misery, or the reformation of vice; when calamities are preying upon thousands, and the happiness not only of the present age, but of posterity, must depend upon our resolutions. He that can divert himself with the sight of misery, has surely very little claim to the great praise of humanity and tenderness; nor can he be justly exempted from the censure of increasing evils, who wastes in laughter and jocularity that time in which he might relieve them.

The bill now before us has been represented by those that oppose it, as big with destruction, and dangerous both to the lives and to the virtue of the people. We have been told, that it will at once fill the land with sickness and with villany, and that it will be at the same time fatal to our trade, and to our power; yet those who are willing to be thought fearful of all these evils, and ardently desirous of averting them from their country, cannot without laughter mention the bill which they oppose, or enumerate the consequences which they dread from it, in any other language than that of irony and burlesque.

Surely, my lords, such conduct gives reason for questioning either their humanity, or their sincerity; for if they really fear such dreadful calamities, how can they be at leisure for mirth and gaiety I How can they sport over the grave of millions, and indulge their vain ridicule, when the ruin of their country is approaching?

But without inquiry, whether they who oppose the bill will grant their opposition hypocritical, or their patriotism languid, I shall lay my opinion of this new regulation before your lordships with equal freedom, though with less luxuriance of imagination, and less gaiety of language.

Of this bill, notwithstanding the acuteness with which it has been examined, and the acrimony with which it has been censured, I am not afraid to affirm, that it is neither wicked nor absurd, that all its parts are consistent, and that the effects to be expected from it are sobriety and health. I cannot find, upon the closest examination, either that it will defeat its own end, or that the end proposed by it is different from that which is professed.

The charge of encouraging vice and tolerating drunkenness, with which the defenders of this bill have been so liberally aspersed, may be, in my opinion, more justly retorted upon those that oppose it; who, though they plead for the continuance of a law, rigorous, indeed, and well intended, own that it has, by the experience of several years, been found ineffectual.

What, my lords, can a drunkard or a profligate be supposed to wish, but that the law may still remain in its present state, that he may still be pursued in a track by which he knows how to escape, and opposed by restraints which he is able to break? What can he desire, but that the book of statutes should lie useless, and that no laws should be made against him, but such as cannot be put in execution?

The defects of the present law, are, indeed, very numerous; nor ought it to be continued, even though no other were to be substituted. It seems to suppose the use of distilled liquors absolutely unlawful, and, therefore, imposed upon licenses a duty so enormous, that only three were taken in the whole kingdom, and the people were therefore obliged to obtain by illegal methods, what they could not persuade themselves wholly to forbear.

The method of detecting offenders was likewise such as gave opportunity for villany to triumph over innocence, and for perjury to grow rich with the plunder of the poor. Even charity itself might be punished by it; and he that gave a glass of spirits to a man fainting under poverty, or sickness, or fatigue, might be punished as a retailer of spirits without a license.

These defects, which were not seen when the law was made, soon excited a dislike. No man enforced the execution of it, because every man knew that on some occasions he might himself break it; and they who suffered for the violation of it, were often pitied by those whose office obliged them to punish them. Thus the law, after having been executed a few months with rigour, was laid aside as impracticable, and appears now to be tacitly repealed; for it is apparently an empty form without effect.

If, therefore, the use of spirits be so destructive as is generally allowed, it is surely necessary, that the legislature should at last repair the defects of the former law, and the nation should not be vitiated and ruined, without some endeavours for its preservation; and, in my opinion, to lay a double duty upon these liquors, is very rational and prudent. An increase of the price must lessen the consumption.

To what degree the consumption will be diminished by this new duty, I am not able to foretel; but, undoubtedly, some diminution will be produced, and the least diminution will afford us this comfort, that the evil does not increase upon us, and that this law is, therefore, better than that which we have repealed.

For this reason, my lords, I approve the present bill, without inquiring whether it is perfect; it is sufficient for me, in the present exigence, that the nation will gain something by the change, and the people will be drawn nearer to sobriety, temperance, and industry.

Thus, my lords, without paying any regard to the determination of the other house, I think the bill sufficiently defensible by reason and policy; nor can I conceal my opinion, that those who oppose it are the real enemies of their country.

[The question, whether the house should be now resumed, was then put and determined in the negative by 56 against 85.

The other clauses were then read, and agreed to.

The course of their proceedings then required, that a day should be appointed for the third reading, and lord SANDWICH therefore rose, and spoke to the following effect:]

My lords, as the importance of the bill now before us justly demands the maturest consideration, it is not without unusual concern, that I observe the absence of many lords, for whose wisdom and experience I have the highest veneration, and whom I esteem equally for their penetration and their integrity. I should hope, that all those who feel in their hearts the love of their country, and are conscious of abilities to promote its happiness, would assemble on this great occasion, and that the collective wisdom of this house would be exerted, when the lives and fortunes, and, what is yet more worthy of regard, the virtue of the people is involved in the question.