"With regard to their families, this pernicious liquor is still more fatal: whilst the husband, and perhaps his wife also, are drinking and spending their money in Geneva-shops, their children are starved and naked at home, without bread to eat, or clothes to put on, and either become a burden to their parishes, or, being suffered to ramble about the streets, are forced to beg while they are children, and learn as they grow up to pilfer and steal; which your Committee conceive to be one of the chief causes of the vast increase of thieves and pilferers of all kinds, notwithstanding the great numbers who have been transported by virtue of the excellent law made for that purpose. Under this head may also be added, the common practice of pawning their own and children's clothes (which exposes them to all the extortions of pawnbrokers), and their running in debt, and cheating by all the ways and means they can devise, to get money to spend in this destructive liquor, which generally ends in the husband's being thrown into a gaol, and his whole family on the parish. And this your Committee conceive to be one of the principal causes of the great increase of beggars and parish poor, notwithstanding the high wages now given to all sorts of workmen and servants. "And lastly, with regard to trade, and the public welfare, the consequences are yet more ruinous and destructive. It has been already observed, that the constant use of strong-waters, and particularly of Geneva, never fails to produce an invincible aversion to work and labour; this, by necessary consequence, deprives us of great numbers of useful hands, which would otherwise be employed to the advantage of the publick. And as to those who yet do work sometimes, or follow any employment, the loss of their time in frequent tippling, the getting often drunk in the morning, and the spending of their money this way, must very much cramp and straiten them, and so far diminish their trade, and the profit which would accrue from thence to the publick, as well as to themselves. But it is farther to be observed, that although the retail trade of wine and ale is generally confined to Vintners and Victuallers, this of Geneva is now sold, not only by Distillers and Geneva-shops, but by most other inferior traders, particularly by all chandlers, many weavers, and several tobacconists, dyers, carpenters, gardeners, barbers, shoemakers, labourers, and others, there being in the hamlet of Bethnal-green only above 40 weavers who sell this liquor; and these and other trades which make our manufactures, generally employing many journeymen and artificers under them, who having always this liquor ready at hand, are easily tempted to drink freely of it, especially as they may drink the whole week upon score, and perhaps without minding how fast the score rises upon them, whereby at the week's end they find themselves without any surplusage to carry home