ld
obtain a readmission to his former business, his wants are now too
great and too pressing to be supplied by the slow methods of regular
industry; he must repair his losses by more efficacious expedients,
and must find some methods of acquisition, by which the importunity of
his creditors may be satisfied.

Industry is now, by long habits of idleness, become almost
impracticable; his attention having been long amused by pleasing
objects, and dissipated by jollity and merriment, is not readily
recalled to a task which is unpleasing, because it is enjoined; and
his limbs, enervated by hot and strong liquors, liquors of the most
pernicious kind, cannot support the fatigues necessary in the practice
of his trade; what was once wholesome exercise is now insupportable
fatigue; and he has not now time to habituate himself, by degrees, to
that application which he has intermitted, that labour which he has
disused, or those arts which he has forgotten.

In this state, my lords, he easily persuades himself that his
condition is desperate, that no legal methods will relieve him; and
that, therefore, he has nothing to hope but from the efforts of
despair. These thoughts are quickly confirmed by his companions, whom
the same misconduct has reduced to the same distress, and who have
already tried the pleasures of being supported by the labour of
others. They do not fail to explain to him the possibility of sudden
affluence, and, at worst, to celebrate the satisfaction of short-lived
merriment. He, therefore, engages with them in their nocturnal
expeditions, an association of wickedness is formed, and that man, who
before he tasted this infatuating liquor, contributed every day, by
honest labour, to the happiness or convenience of life, who supported
his family in decent plenty, and was himself at ease, becomes at once
miserable and wicked; is detested as a nuisance by the community, and
hunted by the officers of justice; nor has mankind any thing now to
wish or hope with regard to him, but that by his speedy destruction,
the security of the roads may be restored, and the tranquillity of the
night be set free from the alarms of robbery and murder.

These, my lords, are the consequences which necessarily ensue from the
use of those pernicious, those infatuating spirits, which have justly
alarmed every man whom pleasure or sloth has not wholly engrossed, and
who has ever looked upon the various scenes of life with that
attention w