On Feb. 20, 1736, in the ninth year of George II., a petition of the Justices of the Peace for Middlesex against the excessive use of spirituous liquors was presented to the House of Commons, setting forth: That the drinking of Geneva and other distilled spirituous liquors had greatly increased, especially among the people of inferior rank, that the constant and excessive use thereof had destroyed thousands of his Majesty’s subjects, debauching their morals, etc., that the “pernicious liquor” was then sold not only by the distillers and Geneva shops, but many other persons of inferior trades, “by which means journeymen, apprentices and servants were drawn in to taste, and by degrees to like, approve, and immoderately to drink thereof,” and that the petitioners therefore prayed that the House would take the premises into their serious consideration, etc. The House having resolved itself into a committee on Feb. 23, Sir Joseph Jekyll moved the following resolutions: (1) That the low price of spirituous liquors is the principal inducement to the excessive and pernicious use thereof. (2) That a discouragement should be given to their use by a duty. (3) That the vending, etc., of such liquors be restrained to persons keeping public brandy-shops, victualling houses, coffee houses, ale houses and inn-holders, and to such apothecaries and surgeons as should make use of the same by way of medicine only; and, (4) That no person keeping a public brandy-shop, etc., should be permitted to vend, etc., such liquors, but by licence with duty payable thereon. These Resolutions were agreed on without debate. On March 8, Mr. William Pulteney affixed a duty of 20_s._ per gallon on gin, on the grounds of ancient use and sanction, and of its reducing many thousands of families at once to a state of despair. Sir Robert Walpole had no immediate concern in the laying of this tax on spirituous liquors, but suffered therefrom much unmerited obloquy. The bill was presented by Jekyll from a spirit of philanthropy, which led him to contemplate with horror the progress of vice that marked the popular attachment to this inflammatory poison. The populace showed their disapprobation of this Act in their usual fashion of riot and violence. We are told in Coxe’s Walpole that numerous desperados continued the clandestine sale of gin in defiance of every restriction. The duty of 20_s._ per gallon was repealed 16 Geo. II., c. 8. On the 28th of September, 1736, it was deemed necessary to send a detachment of sixty soldiers from Kensington to protect the house of Sir Joseph Jekyll, the Master of the Rolls, in Chancery Lane, from the violence threatened by the populace against this eminent lawyer. Two soldiers with their bayonets fixed were planted as sentinels at the little door next Chancery Lane, and the great doors were shut up, the rest of the soldiers kept garrison in the stables in the yard.