40. But some are apprehensive, that this great Improvement in Distilling, may be of ill Consequence in making those destructive Spirits cheaper, which are already but too cheap. Had not the Improvement been of great Benefit to Mankind in many other Respects, I should have been far, very far, from endeavouring after it, or discovering it. But should the Event be to make those Spirits cheaper, and consequently, by spreading farther, more destructive, the consequence of that will be, that the increased raging Devastation will the sooner necessarily rouse the Nations to put a Stop to what must be done hereafter; for if the Ravages continue increasing, as they have done for sixty Years past, the human Species must needs not only be greatly debased, but even in great measure diminished and destroyed. And yet none of the Nations, whose very Vitals are thereby consuming and destroying, endeavour to put any Stop to it, except the Heads of the native Indians in _North-America_, who have long repeatedly intreated the _English_ to sell them no Rum; which is as effectually extirpating of them, as the Hornet did the unsubdued remainder of the _Canaanites_. 41. If Mankind, instead of receiving and entertaining this Pest with almost universal Applause and Approbation, could prevail with themselves to be in earnest to use Means to deliver themselves from it; then much might be done towards it, by lowering and weakening all kind of fermented distilled Spirits with Water, to a salutary Degree, as is now practised in our Plantations in _America_, in making Punch so weak, as not to be hurtful; which, when it was much stronger, was well known to destroy Multitudes. And where the like humane, wise, and laudable Practice has been used in Ships, it has had the same happy salutary Effect.