Against the end of this law no man has hitherto made the least objection; no one has dared to signalize himself as an open advocate for vice, or attempted to prove that drunkenness was not injurious to society, and contrary to the true ends of human being. The encouragement of wickedness of this shameful kind, wickedness equally contemptible and hateful, was reserved for the present ministry, who are now about to supply those funds which they have exhausted by idle projects and romantick expeditions, at the expense of health and virtue; who have discovered a method of recruiting armies by the destruction of their fellow-subjects; and while they boast themselves the assertors of liberty, are endeavouring to enslave us by the introduction of those vices, which in all countries, and in every age, have made way for despotick power. Even this expedient, my lords, must in a short time fail them; the products of vice as well as of commerce must in time be exhausted; and what will then remain? The honest and industrious must feel the weight of some new imposition, which the sagacity of experienced oppression may find means to lay upon them; they will then first find the benefit of this new law, since they may, by the use of those liquors which are indulged them, put a speedy end to that life which they made unable to support. The means by which the expenses of our present designs are to be supported, such means, my lords, as were never yet practised by any state, however exhausted, or however endangered, means which a wise nation would scarcely use to repel an invader from the capital, or to raise works to keep off a general inundation, raise yet stronger motions of indignation, when it is considered for what designs these expenses are required. We are now, my lords, raising armies, and hiring auxiliaries, for an expedition of which no necessity can be discovered, and from which neither honour nor advantage can be expected; we are about to force from the people the last remains of their property, and to harass with exactions those who are already languishing with poverty; not for the preservation of our liberty, or the defence of our country, but for the support of the Pragmatick sanction, for the execution of a very unjust scheme formed by the late king, to which he purchased at different times, on different emergencies, the concurrence of other powers; but to which he failed to put the last seal of confirmation, perhaps in hopes of a male heir, and left the design, which he had so long and so industriously laboured, to be at last completed by the kindness of his allies; having, by an unsuccessful war against the Turks, exhausted his treasure, and weakened his troops.