amount of the duty for these last two years. the debt contracted upon that fund must become a mortgage upon the Sinking Fund. This is therefore the true question now before you, Whether you will agree to mortgage the Sinking Fund? as this ought not, I think, to be done but in a case of the last extremity, and as no such ase can be supposed to exist at present, I shall therefore be against committing the Bill. Lord Bathurst: My lords; as the noble lord who spoke last has often in this House given proofs of the acuteness of his discerning faculty as no man who knows him can doubt of his great capacity, I am surprised, he should so far mistake the design of this Bill, as to suppose it intended to encourage or promote the excessive drinking of spirituous liquors of any kind. I shall readily agree with his lordship in all he has said about the fatal consequences of this vice: I shall grant, that it impairs the health and debauches the morals of those that are subject to it: I shall admit, that it may happen to be of dangerous consequence to the public quiet; but all this is an argument for the Bill rather than against it, because, I think, it is apparent, that this Bill, if passed into a law, will diminish at least the consumption of this liquor. I know, my lords, that the Bill now proposed to be repealed was designed as a total prohibition of the retail of all spirituous liquors: the duty laid upon all such liquors sold by retail, under two gallons, was so high, that no man could propose to retail them fairly; and the duty upon licences was so extravagant, that, I believe, the projector of the Bill did not expect that any man in the kingdom would take out a licence; and accordingly not above two, I think, in the whole kingdom did take out any such licence. That Bill was therefore designed as a total prohibition of the retail trade, and actually proved a prohibition of any fair trade in that way; but every one knows, it did not diminish the consumption, nor prevent the excessive use of spirituous liquors. They were not, it is true, retailed publicly and avowedly, but they were clandestinely retailed in every coffee-house and ale-house, and in many shops and private houses; so that the use and even the abuse of spirituous liquors continued as frequent, though not so apparent, as before the act was made, and the consumption rather increased than diminished, as appears from the [VOL. XII.] Thus, my lords, the case stands at present: the perniciousness of these liquors, when drank to excess, is upon all hands admitted: an attempt has been made to prevent this excess, but by doing too much we have done nothing. This Bill is therefore designed as a new experiment, in order to correct the faults of the former, and, I hope, it will have its effect. We find by experience, we cannot absolutely prevent the retailing of such liquors; because if we prevent their being retailed in an open fair way, they will be retailed in a clandestine smuggling manner. What then are we to do? Does not common sense point out to us the most proper method, which is, to allow their being publicly retailed, but to lay such a duty upon the still-head and upon licences, as, without amounting to a prohibition, will make them come so dear to the consumer, that the poor will not be able to launch out into an excessive use of them. This, I am persuaded, will be the consequence of what is now proposed: the duty proposed upon licences is so moderate, that every ale-house and coffee-house in the kingdom will take out a licence; consequently those liquors will be openly and fairly retailed by great numbers of people; but this duty, together with the duty proposed to be laid upon the still-head, will raise the price so, as to put it out of the power of the meaner sort of people to purchase too great a quantity of them, without putting it out of their power to have a single dram when it is absolutely necessary for the support of nature, which is often the case in this cold climate, especially in damp foggy weather, or in marshy or fenny parts of the country. Thus, my lords, the additional duties will prevent the excess when the liquor is purchased from a fair retailer, and the great number of fair retailers will make it difficult for any one to retail in a clandestine manner. The law which is by this Bill to be repealed could not, we know, be executed, for want of informers whose veracity could be depended on. This will not be the case after this Bill is passed into a law; because every man who takes out a licence will be bound in interest to detect and inform against clandestine retailers, so that it is to be hoped there will be soon no such retailer in the kingdom; and it will be easy to keep fair retailers under some sort of order, because a man's [1 H] licence may be taken from him, if he should appear to be one who encourages of allows excessive drinking of spirituous liquors in his house. I therefore wonder how it can be supposed, that this Bill will encourage or promote the excessive use of such liquors. Can this be supposed of a Bill which is designed to bring the retail of such liquors under proper regulations? Can it be supposed, that the doubling of the duty upon any commodity will encrease the consumption of it? Nitimur in vetitum' is I know a common proverb, and may be assigned as one of the reasons for the late increase in the consumption of spirituous liquors; but this reason is now to be taken away, and suppose the inclinations of the poor should continue as strong as before, I think, the impossibility of their being able to drink so much after this Bill is passed, as they did before, may be demonstrated; for as the duties are now to be doubled upon all home made spirits, and as experience has shewn, that when a duty of one penny is laid upon any commodity, the retailer lays another, it may be reckoned, that the same quantity of spirits will next year cost 500,000l. more than it did this year, which is a much larger additional sum than our poor gindrinkers can possibly raise, and therefore they must necessarily retrench in the quantity they make use of, in proportion as the price is advanced.. the Bill will certainly diminish the consumption, in my opinion, at least one third and this diminution will as certainly fall upon the abuse, and not upon the moderate use of this liquor; for when necessity requires, even the poor will still be abla to purchase, but by the advance of the price, it will be put out of their power to commit a debauch, or, at least, not so frequently as they may now do; and if it should appear, that the price is still too low for preventing the poor from intoxicating themselves frequently with this liquor, you may double or treble the duty next session; for the duty itself, so far as I can find, is not to be mortgaged: it is only the duty upon licences that is to be mortgaged, and that duty, will I believe, continue to be a sufficient fund for all that is to be borrowed upon it, even though you should raise the duty upon the still-head so high as to amount to a prohibition of all home made spirits, which, on account of our British distillery, I hope you will never do. There is therefore no danger of the sinking fund's being mortgaged, by the money to be raised in consequence of this Bill, and if there were, if the sinking fund were now directly to be mortgaged, the circumstances we are in at present, and the dangerous circumstances the affairs of Europe are in, would. be a sufficient excuse for it. I shall grant, my lords, that in time of I am therefore convinced, my lords, peace, the sinking fund ought to be deemthat this Bill will have an immediate effected sacred, and ought never to be convertas to the preventing of all clandestine re-ed to any use but that of discharging a tailing of spirituous liquors, which is in itself of great consequence, because it will enable the government in a great measure to prevent the excessive use; and this, I think, is the only grievance complained of, for I never heard that a single moderate dram, even of the pernicious liquor called gin, was either a crime or a sin; and whatever some abstemious and whimsical physicians may say, others will tell you, that a moderate dram of some sort of spirituous liquors or other, or what in their terms is called a cordial, is necessary upon many occasions for the relief or support of nature: nay, even the most abstemious among them will prescribe a dram or cordial, when they are paid the usual fee for their prescription, and their friend the apothecary a most extravagant price for what he purchases, as other gin retailers do, for a mere trifle from the distiller. Beside this good effect, my lords, of preventing the clandestine retailing of gin, part of our public debts; but in time of war, and when the nation is in immediate danger, the most sacred treasure may and ought to be made use of, when it becomes necessary for our immediate preservation. For this reason, if the question now before us were really what the noble lord says it is, I should be under no difficulty in giving it an affirmative; because, I think, our very being, or at least our independency, must attend the fate of the present war in Germany; for if the German empire should be brought under a dependency upon France, which may probably be the event of the present war, if we do not most strenuously interpose, I am sure, we could not long support ourselves as a nation independent of that monarchy. But this, as I have shewn, is not the question now before us: the sinking fund may be added as a collateral security, because it is not known what the duty upon licences may produce; this is necessary for enabling the government to | with pleasure, even when he has scarcely borrow money at a low interest; but I do the power to hold it to his head. not think the sinking fund is in the least danger of becoming liable to that debt, for which it is to be made a collateral security. And as the Bill now before us repeals a law which was always deemed whimsical, and has been found ineffectual: as it establishes a method for preventing the excessive use of spirituous liquors, which, I am convinced, will have a great effect; and as it will furnish the government with a sum of money which is necessary upon the present occasion, and which cannot, I think, be in any other way so conveniently raised, I shall be for having the Bill passed into a law, and consequently I shall be for the present motion. The Bishop of Oxford :* The My lords; the question, which in this debate ought to be first discussed, is, Whether the retailing of spirituous liquors in small quantities ought at any rate to be permitted; and upon this question I can determine myself without the least hesitation: : we may allow them to be dispensed, but we ought not, I wish we never had allowed them to be retailed. drinking them to excess must by every one be condemned, and indeed the drinking of any strong or intoxicating liquors to excess must be condemned by every man who has either religion or common But the difference between spirituous and other strong liquors lies in this; of all other strong liquors a man must drink a large quantity, and must be at it a long time, before he is quite deprived of his reason: he has time to reflect of what he is about, and, I am told, even the liquor sense. itself becomes nauseous before a man can be quite fuddled; so that a man must put a sort of force upon himself, before he can swallow down so much of any other sort of strong liquor as to deprive himself of all sense and reason. But with spirituous liquor the case is vastly different: a small quantity, no more perhaps than a man can swallow down at a draught, deprives him of all reason and reflection, and the compounding distillers have contrived so many ways for rendering the spirit palatable, that it never grows nauseous, but on the contrary, the sot swallows it down Dr. Thomas Secker, whose Manuscript Reports of the Debates in the House of Lords from 1735 to 1743, have so largely contributed to the value of this Collection. Thus your lordships see, that, with regard to the temptation, there is a very great difference between spirituous liquors and other sorts of strong liquors; and with regard to the consequences of drinking to excess, there is likewise a vast difference. An excess in strong liquors may make a man drunk, an excess in spirituous liquors makes him mad. A man who gets drunk with beer or ale, or even with wine, generally goes to sleep, he is seldom mischievous; but a man who gets drunk with spirituous liquors, seldom goes to sleep before he does mischief, either to himself or some other person. An habitual drinking of strong liquors to excess may bring the gout, but an habitual drinking of spirituous liquors to excess brings certain, and often sudden death. As the pernicious consequences of drinking spirituous liquors to excess are acknowledged even by those who appear as advocates for this Bill, I shall not insist much upon them, but permit me to remind your lordships of the horrible scenes that appeared publicly in our streets before passing the law, which you are now to repeal. Almost in every street we had two or three ginshops filled with such company as sober man could view without horror, and yet this was not the worst: there was an no invisible scene still more horrible to think of; for they tell me, every one of these as by the nature of the liquor itself, is inticed to drink too much. It is this temptation, my lords, which by public shops is thrown into every man's way, that makes me against admitting of any public retail, and I wish it were possible to prevent any private. I shall not take upon me to blame our magistrates and officers of justice; but if the law now in being be such a one as cannot be executed, surely it may, and ought to be amended. Surely some law may, and ought to be contrived, which may be executed; for even the private retail of spirituous liquors produces daily most terrible mischiefs. But the other day, as I have been credibly informed, there were two children murdered by giving them a spoonful of that pernicious liquor called gin, and many children are murdered in the womb, or upon the breast, by the mother's drinking too plentifully of that inticing and bewitching liquor, which is certainly poisonous, when taken in too great a quantity, and the poison is the more dangerous, because it never nauseates, but, on the contrary, provokes a second draught, the second a third, and so on, till the unhappy patient has taken too great a dose; and when one dose is wore off by sleep, it leaves such a languor as makes a new dose necessary for recruiting the spirits, which is the reason, that those who once begin to debauch in this sort of liquor, seldom give over repeating the dose, till they have dosed themselves into their graves. Poisons, my lords, of all sorts, ought to be confined to the apothecary's shop, where the master's character, and even his bread, depends upon his not administering too great a dose to any person whatever, and where the price is generally too high for any poor man to commit a debauch. Will you then commit the care of dispensing this poison to every ale-house-keeper in the kingdom, I may say to every man in the kingdom, who is willing to pay half a crown to the justices, and twenty shillings a year to the government for a licence? Will you enable them to dispense this poison at so cheap a rate, that a poor thoughtless creature may get drunk for three-pence, and may purchase immediate death for a shilling? A cordial may be necessary in some distempers, and may be of service to the patient, when moderately and skilfully administered; but no climate, no temperature of the air, can make a dram of spirituous liquors necessary to a person in full health and vigour. Even in our most foggy weather, or in the most fenny parts of the country, I am convinced, a draught of good warm beer would have a better effect against the inclemency of the weather, than a dram of any kind; and therefore, there is no necessity for admitting of any public retail. But this Bill, we are told, is intended for putting an end to the clandestine retail trade now carried on, and that by enhancing the price of the commodity, it will diminish the consumption. As to its putting an end to the clandestine retail trade, I believe, it will have in a great measure its effect; for very few will run the risk of carrying on a clandestine trade, when they may have a licence at so cheap a rate as twenty shillings a year; and by the same method you might put an end to every other sort of clandestine trade. But as to the enhancing of the price to the consumer, or diminishing the consumption, this Bill will not, I am convinced, have the least effect. On the contrary, the commodity may, by this Bill, be brought cheaper to the consumer; because the distiller, the compounder, and the retailer, especially the latter, will sell at a less profit; for surely the twenty shillings to be paid by the retailer is not near equal to the risk every clandestine retailer now runs; and both our distillers and compounders know, that they will get more by vending 10,000 gallons at 3d. per gallon profit, than by vending 1,000 gallons at 6d. per gallon profit; therefore, in order to increase the consumption, or at least to prevent its being diminished, they will certainly, in my opinion, take the duty upon themselves, and sell their liquors to the retailer at the very same price they sold it before this new duty was imposed. That they will be able to do so, I have reason to believe, from the great estates some of them have of late years amassed, and from the low price such liquors are sold for in Holland; for if our distillers would content themselves with as little profit, I can see no reason why they may not sell their liquors as cheap as the Dutch distillers do theirs. From hence, my lords, I think, I have reason to suppose, that our home-made spirits will be sold as cheap to the consumer after this new duty takes place, as ever they were before. Whether or no I am right in my conjecture, will soon appear from experience; and if it should appear to be right, what then will your lordships have done? You will have revived that terrible grievance, which was so much, fund was at first designed, and was appropriated to the payment of our public debts contracted before 1716, yet as there was no stipulation nor engagement between the public and its creditors when that fund was established, I was always of opinion, that the public might make use of it in cases of necessity, and in such cases only; for I never thought that it ought to be wantonly meddled with, or applied towards supporting the expence of Spithead expeditions, and much less that it might be applied towards giving a sham relief to our landed gentlemen, by making them pay 700,000l. instead of 500,000l. which was the case of taking the salt duty from the sinking fund, upon a pretence of giving relief to our poor labourers and manufacturers, and reviving it the very next year, upon a pretence of freeing our landed gentlemen from the payment of one shilling in the pound land tax for one year. and so justly complained of seven years ago; and you will not then, perhaps, have it in your power to apply any remedy or redress; for if the consumption be increased, as I think it will, it will bring in such a considerable revenue, that no administration will be willing to part with it, or consent to any law for redressing the grievance, because it will annihilate, or very much diminish the revenue. This is a danger which your lordships should seriously consider, before you give your sanction to a law that may, probably, be introductory of so much mischief; and this danger is increased by the mortgage that is now to be made of the duty on licences; for it will be pretended, and with reason too, that you cannot do any thing that may lessen the produce of that duty, without the consent of the creditors to whom it is mortgaged, unless you previously pay off that mortgage; and how you will be able to pay it off, without mortgaging the sinking fund, is at present beyond my comprehension; so that the noble lord's suggestion, that the Bill now before us is only a mask for concealing a design to mortgage the sinking fund, is not so void of foundation as the noble lord who spoke last seems to imagine. What danger this nation, or the liberties of Europe, may be in at present from the ambitious designs of France, I shall not pretend to determine; but if we are in any danger that way, it is a melancholy consideration, that we must either submit to our enemies, or sacrifice the health, the industry, nay the lives of our people, for the sake of raising a sum of money to defend ourselves. I hope, we are not yet brought under such a dilemma. It is not my province to study ways and means, but those that do have, I hope, in petto, several methods for raising money, less hurtful than what is now proposed. The sinking fund ought, I grant, to be kept as sacred as possible; but rather than agree to such a destructive method as this, I should be for mortgaging the sinking fund in a direct manner, and without any disguise; and as this may be done speedily, by a short Bill brought into the other House, as soon as your lordships have rejected this, our public affairs, either abroad or at home, can no way suffer by rejecting this Bill; for which reason, I shall very freely give my negative to the motion. Lord Talbot: In this respect, my lords, I am still of the same opinion: if our ministers are resolved to exert themselves with vigour, in conjunction with our allies, for supporting a balance of power in Europe, I shall be not only for applying the annual produce of the sinking fund to the service of the war, but even for mortgaging some part of it, if it should become absolutely necessary to do so; but if we are only to make a shew of our armies in Flanders, as we formerly did of our squadrons at the Bastimentos, and upon the coasts of Spain, which I am afraid will at last appear to be the case, for such a purpose, I think, our sinking fund ought not to be meddled with, much less mortgaged, either directly or indirectly; therefore, whether you mortgage the sinking fund directly, or by way of collateral security, my approbation must depend upon the use that is made of the money so raised: if a proper use be made of the money, I shall approve of the mortgage, because, as I have said, it was always my opinion, that the public had a right to make use of the sinking fund in cases of necessity. But as several lords have, upon former occasions, declared themselves of a contrary opinion, I must say, I am not a little surprized to see some of them now proposing as a collateral security, the mortgage of a fund which they then deemed so sacredly appropriated to the payment of our public debts, that no necessity whatever ought to prevail with us to apply even its annual produce to any My lords; though the sinking other purpose. |