PRIOR. A very true, and as sad an Account of Things; and what inhances our Misery is, that _France_ thrives by thus draining our vital Blood from us, as the Physicians in old _Rome_, made their decay'd Patients sustain themselves, by sucking the streaming Veins of their poor Slaves. If we paid a moderate Price for our Liquor, it were something, but the _French_ raise their Demands, in proportion to our Calls for it; and our generous Importers, never endeavour to beat them down, as they find they get the greater Gain, the dearer they buy it; and our Gentlemen take up the same prudent way of Thinking, and never believe themselves so generous, as when they drink Wines, that their poorer Neighbours cannot Purchase. The present Fulness of the Treasury, vastly beyond all former Years, shews how far our Madness is risen; for this Folly of drinking away both our Estates and our Reason, has seized like an epidemical Plague, on all Ranks of Men among us. Even those of the poorer Sort, from a noble Emulation of copying their betters, drink as much Wine as they can; and where their Purses or their Credit will not reach so high, they must have foreign Liquors, tho' they be only Mum or Cyder, Porter or Perry, and seem resolved to shew they are as little afraid of a Jail, as greater Persons. SWIFT. In other Nations the Nobility and Gentry, think for the Commonalty, and govern their Manners by the Laws they make, and the becoming Examples they set them. But in this poor ill-starr'd Island, they corrupt them by their false Splendour, by their foreign Luxury, by despising Virtue, Religion and Temperance, and as fast as they can drinking themselves out of the World, and sinking their Fortunes, in both which they are faithfully copied, by their Inferiors. I have often thought while I was among them, that if our Gentlemen were oblig'd by Law, to give in Accounts to the Publick of their annual Expences, as Children do to their Parents, in order to have them regulated; what miserable Oeconomists they wou'd appear to be, both for their own and their Country's Interests. The Article of Drinking is grown so immense, and at the same Time so general, that if some Fence is not provided for it soon, this Nation will be more in Danger from this Land-Flood, than the _Dutch_ are from being overwhelm'd by the Ocean. What imbitters these Reflections the more is, that tho' all our Exports are the very Necessaries of Life, which we send off to Feed and Cloath other Nations, yet all our Imports, are the meer Superfluities of Luxury and Vanity, that keep our Natives naked and starv'd, and ruin the Healths of those of the better Sort. I say ruin the Healths, for I believe, if you and I, _Tom_, were to draw up a List of all our Acquaintances, who have died Martyrs to Wine and good Fellowship, it wou'd look like a _London_ Plague-Bill in 1666. _Pharaoh_ and his Army wou'd appear but as an Handful to those I cou'd reckon up, within these last fifty